■t?? ^'::;p:ccd;i; *St!''^'s?t^«f^XT'^TW»f^ m ^m}i Si-;.': Hsi:? iMMSr'!::/ Wg5#t:: Class. Book- COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS A STUDY OF THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATION BETWEEN 1871 AND 1914 BY ROBERT HERNDON FIFE, Jr. PROFESSOR IN WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY Neto 'jBoxk THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 All rights reserved Copyright, 1916, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, X916. fl^J Norinoot) i|res0 J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. APR 27 1916 ICI.A427844 TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER IN LOVE AND HONOR PREFACE No political development in the past half-century has been so striking as the growth of the German empire. Such a statement is the merest platitude to-day when the world is being rocked to its foundation by the fright- ful readjustment which may be traced mainly to this cause. It is, perhaps, equally trite to say that hand in hand with this growth there has gone forward an evolu- tion within the empire which is just as striking. Year after year as the nation went on adding to its population and piling up matchless resources in industry and com- merce and still greater possibilities in the training of its scientists and men of affairs it also added tremendously to its burdens and problems. To the growing dangers without there were added dangers within, caused by the ever sharpening strife between feudalism and democ- racy, agriculture and commerce, industry and labor. The unstable equilibrium thus caused might long since have toppled to a fall had not the rise in power without been accompanied by a growing devotion to national unity and national ambitions. Out of the turmoil of Germany's foreign and domestic struggles there has stood forth more and more clearly a great contrast, the contrast between the progress of the nation along economic lines and its arrest in political and social development. It was this contrast, which has struck the attention of so many observers, that sug- gested the present work. To an American committed to the principles of democracy it was of the greatest interest to learn why a people that has shown itself so viii PREFACE hospitable to every new idea in science should have put off so long the liberalizing of its chief public institu- tions. In a period that saw the political evolution of so many lands from Portugal to China what was it that made a nation standing at the apex of modern culture tolerate so much that is reactionary in political and social life ? Upon closer study, several things became at once clear. First, that the causes underlying Germany's ap- parent lack of inner development are closely inter- woven with the foreign relations of the empire. It also appeared that much of Germany's conservatism is only apparent and that the same ultra-modern and radical attitude exists in many sides of the political and social life of the nation as has made itself so notice- able in its economic life. Lastly, it was seen that the nation's political progress in recent years has by no means been so slow as it has seemed and that there exist many liberal and democratic tendencies that only await a favorable moment to come to the surface. This book is the result of these studies and is an attempt to bring American readers nearer to an under- standing of present-day Germany, as it has appeared to the writer. It has been necessary, first of all, to sketch the history of the nation's foreign relations since the treaty of Frankfort. Here the author makes no claim to originality : he has merely sought to tell as fairly as possible the well-known story of the growth of the empire amid friendly and hostile neighbors and to show how national unity and ambition grew with power and prestige. The second part has then been devoted to a study of the imperial government in its relation to the emperor and the parties. Especially the latter are dis- cussed in history and purpose in some detail to show how the development of free institutions has been checked by the growth of bitter class hatred and by the acute economic rivalry that came with the increase of population and national wealth. A third part treats of some of the chief inner difficulties with which the PREFACE ix national spirit has had to contend in its growth. In a fourth section certain changes and tendencies in three pubHc institutions have been studied. The city, the school and the press illustrate in a peculiar way the conservatism and progress so typical of present-day Germany, Each, however, differs so widely from its American counterpart that it has been necessary to give in some detail the striking features of each. No originality is, of course, claimed for the sketches of municipal government or school administration, but an effort has been made in each case to put the German system before the American reader as simply as pos- sible. In this section history plays naturally a less important role than in the earlier parts ; instead, I have tried to present clearly the most striking tendencies now working in these institutions. It is hardly necessary to add that this is not a war book. It was conceived in peace and deals with years of peace ; and while particularly in the first part the shadow of war necessarily falls across its pages, events since the call to arms have been mentioned only when necessary to illustrate tendencies that belong to the years before. With the lowering of the banner of peace which for forty-three years waved over Germany in its forward march along the ways of political evolution as well as material and scientific progress, a chapter in the nation's history was closed, and certainly when Mars no longer rules the hour, another and a very different chapter will be opened. It is not the purpose of this book to try to lift the veil from the future. It must be remembered, however, that no people is more deeply conservative and reverent of the past than the Germans, and that whatever the future may hold in store as the result of the present titanic conflict, the Germany of the future will be an organic growth out of the Germany of the present, and the deeds and struggles described in the following pages will form the basis of the new time. The author is well aware that anything that is pub- lished about Germany at the present time runs the risk X PREFACE of being looked upon as propaganda of one sort or an- other. Certainly nothing is further from his purpose, and those who seek here a general arraignment of Ger- many or an apology for her acts and motives will be disappointed. For those who can lay aside the preju- dices of the moment and seek in a spirit of impartiality to understand the immediate past of Germany and its people, it is hoped that this work will be of help. At the same time, it is not a mere record of scientific facts, but a study by an American for Americans of the prog- ress and problems of a contemporary nation. Under such circumstances it is not possible to lay aside alto- gether the glasses of national prejudice, and the author does not claim to have done so. Nor has he been able to hide a deep and abiding faith in free institutions nor a sympathy for the forces of democracy in German life. He is satisfied if his work shows something of the spirit of tolerance, the highest virtue to which the student of a foreign culture can aspire. This spirit realizes that every national ideal, ambition or prejudice has deep roots in the nation's history that explain and to a greater or less degree justify it. It knows also that no institu- tion can be praised or blamed until it is fully understood in its relation to the nation's past ; still less can a whole people be indicted or extolled until its opportunities and difficulties have been thoroughly weighed. Finally, it takes as the safest philosophy the sublime admonition of the Sermon on the Mount: "Judge not that ye be not judged ! " An effort has been made to present a readable book. For this reason statistics have been cut down to the lowest point possible for clearness of illustration and everything in the way of learned apparatus has been kept out. It would be idle to try to name authorities. The study of Germany and German life has been my earnest occupation for many years, and in giving a pic- ture of recent German history I have laid under tribute every source that has been enjoyed : years of study and travel in Germany, the association with German friends PREFACE xi and particularly the reading through many years of the German periodical press. In conclusion it must be said that any such work as this is of course a fragment. It is not possible to put into one book the spirit of a nation. The purpose of the work will be fulfilled if it makes plain a few sides of the life of a great people in the throes of development. Grateful acknowledgment is due to my colleague, Pro- fessor George M. Dutcher, for a careful revision of the entire proof, where his criticisms and suggestions have been of the greatest importance. To another colleague, Professor C. H. Conley, who has kindly read the proof, I also owe a number of valuable suggestions. Dr. George Kartzke, now of Yale University, has given me helpful hints regarding the subject-matter of parts of Chapters XV and XVI. The Rev. Stanislas Musiel of Middle- town, Conn., has kindly helped with information regard- ing Polish words and proper names. Thanks are due to the editor of the North American Review for permission to reprint a part of Chapter II. To my wife I am sincerely grateful for constant help and encouragement throughout the writing of the book. In the preparation of the index she has done the greater part of the work. CONTENTS PART I THE EMPIRE ABROAD CHAPTER PACK I. The French Mortgage 3 II. Allies and Enemies to the East ... 26 III. The Rivalry with England 50 IV. Expansion and Ambitions 72 PART II THE EMPIRE AT HOME V. Personal Government and Parliamentary Rule 10 i VI. The Government and the Parties . . .114 VII. Feudalism and Agriculture 139 VIII. Liberalism and Industry 159 PART III THE EMPIRE'S PROBLEMS IX. The Proletarian in Politics . , . . 177 X. The Church in Politics 200 XI. The Conquered Provinces 217 XII. The Polish Question . - o ^ . • 234 xiv CONTENTS PART IV TRANSFORMATIONS AND TENDENCIES CHAPTER PAGB XIII. The Rule of the Cities 269 XIV. The City as a Business and Social Agent XV. Conservatism and Progress in Education XVI. State and Church in the Schools . XVII. The Press and Public Opinion . 294 317 336 359 PART I THE EMPIRE ABROAD CHAPTER I The French Mortgage "Soldiers of the Q;prman army, I leave to-day the soil of France, on which the German name has won so many of war's honors and where so much beloved blood has flowed." With these words telegraphed from Nancy on March 15, 187 1, Emperor William the Victorious, as the Germans are fond of calling him, bade farewell to the German soldiers who still occupied French fortresses. Peace had been made and the conditions had just been confirmed by the French national assembly hastily sum- moned to meet at Bordeaux. Alsace and a part of Lorraine had already become to all intents and purposes German territory. Thiers, the temporary head of what government there still was in France, had 3delded to Bismarck's hard conditions only when yielding seemed necessary in order to prevent the complete dismember- ment of France, and the aged statesman was already considering plans to raise the thousand million dollars war indemnity and so remove the German army of oc- cupation. The German conditions on which the war of 1870-71 was brought to an end were hard, but they proceeded from a policy which is at least comprehensible. It is a common fallacy to suppose that Emperor William and Bismarck weakened and humihated France as revenge for the humiliations put upon Prussia by the great Napoleon at Jena and after. There is no doubt that Prussian and Saxon hearts burned with a wild and justifiable joy when the nephew of the great Corsican 3 4 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS was carried off a prisoner to a German chateau, and French arms, which had brought so much humiliation and sorrow to Germany, were themselves humbled into /the dust. It was, however, no such sentimental con- siderations as these which dictated the treaty of Frank- fort in 1 87 1, but a resolute determination to secure for generations to come the new-forged German empire against French revenge for the defeats before Metz and the frightful catastrophe to French arms at Sedan. In fact, in the appropriation of French territory the German general staff under the leadership of the great tactician Moltke insisted on taking more than the statesman Bismarck had wished to demand. Not only were Alsace to the height of the Vosges mountains and the German part of Lorraine to be ceded, but the new boundary was to dip to the westward and include Metz, which had been won with so much blood. Thus the two strongest fortresses west of the Rhine — Strasburg, the eye of the upper Rhine valley, and Metz, the key to the upper Moselle — were to be a barrier against the French advance when the war for revenge should really come. ;^^ ; "France will consider any peace simply as an armis- tice," wrote Bismarck immediately after Sedan; and he firmly believed that the revenge idea would become dominant as soon as the urgent business of the day was disposed of. In this faith it seemed the highest patriotic duty to provide that that business should be heavy enough to give the young German empire time to work out its problems, and to soften the suspicions of Bavaria, Wiirtemberg and some of the smaller states into a com- mon German patriotism. Hence Bismarck laid upon the demand for the two provinces another for a billion dollars, to be paid in three years, a drain which in the opinion of himself and his councillors would give France so much to do that her financial recovery would be a matter of generations. / THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 5 In this he was mistaken. In recent years it has ceased to be the fashion to picture France as a decadent nation. Those who still incline to this opinion should read over the wonderful process of recovery and growth which make up the history of the first decades of the third republic. At the end of the "terrible year" in the spring of 1871 France found herself sunk to the position of a fourth or fifth rate power, over half a milKon of her fighting youth killed or wounded or in hospitals, a milhon and a half of her sturdiest and most progressive people lost to the French name and tongue. Such was the energy, however, with which Thiers and his cabinet met the situation that within nine months after peace was concluded, two-fifths of the war indemnity had been paid, and in September, 1873, the last sou of a sum which was for that time colossal was turned into the German treasury and the last German helmet left French soil. Even in view of the much greater sums to which the world has become accustomed during the great European war, it is astonishing to read that in July, 1872, the French government actually refused eight billions of dollars oversubscribed on a five per cent loan. The energy which justified this immense credit also showed itself in the recreation of the army. In De- cember, 1872, the French miHtary forces were reorganized on the Prussian system with a five-year compulsory miHtary service ; in May of the following year competent observers already judged the French army stronger than before the war. It would not have been natural had Germany watched this process of new growth with anything approach- ing satisfaction. All German statesmen and soldiers were thoroughly obsessed with the idea that France was only biding its time for revenge, and each new step in the development of the new republic was accompanied by warnings and threats from across the Vosges. In 1872 Moltke predicted war for the following spring; 6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS two years later, during the strenuous days of the Kultur- kampf, Bismarck threatened France with war on account of pro-clerical agitation across the border. In 1875 ^ regular campaign was begun in the Berlin Post, then as now distinguished for its chauvinism, and continued in that and other journals for months. France had added a fourth battahon to its military organization, making an addition of 144,000 men, and German generals talked of striking at once before the republic could complete its preparations. How much of this agitation, which went on for months in spite of the anxious protestations of Decazes, the French ambassador at Berhn, was based on nervousness and intended by Bismarck as a serious warning to the Gallic people, how much was a part of the political game at home, cannot be said. It had one re- sult which Bismarck did not foresee : it brought about the first drawing together between the young republic and Russia. Czar Alexander II, beset by the anxious entreaties of Decazes, intervened tactfully with the Ger- man court and satisfied himself at least that he had pre- vented a war. It is impossible not to sympathize with a gaUant nation enduring humiliations such as those which France suf- fered from Germany during the "terrible year" and the decade following; but it is not worth while discussing what might have been the results of a different poHcy at the close of the war. The triumphant war-lords who gathered around Emperor William's council table at Ver- sailles in the winter of 1871 would not consent to offer France, prostrate and helpless, the same generous treat- ment which had been accorded the fraternally related Austria in 1866, and in view of the bitter humiliations which German lands and particularly Prussia had suffered from French arms within the memory of their venerable sovereign, such generosity 'would have been more than human. Even if France had been spared the loss of her territory, it is doubtful whether she, Hke a good THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 7 sportsman, would have learned to forget her temporary humiliation as Russia has forgotten Sevastopol and Austria Sadowa, allowing the dreams of revenge to be swallowed up in new international interests. Anyway, Bismarck on behalf of the new empire was not prepared to take any risks, and with the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine all hope of a friendly relation within the Hfe- time of any of the actors in the drama disappeared. This may also explain the vigorous elbowings which the Iron Chancellor gave the young republic while it was still struggling against the wolves of anarchy in the Commune and trying to estabhsh itself against royalist intrigues. "The kindly affections," said Bismarck to his secretary Busch, "have as little place in the calculations of politics as they have in those of business." "Toujours y penser, jamais en parler/^ "ever present in thought, but never to be spoken of," said Gambetta in speaking of la revanche, and it is certain that dreams of revenge were never very far absent from a multitude of French hearts in the forty-odd years of peace. That they did not play a more important part in France's foreign policy was due in the main to two causes : the conquest of power by the business class in the late seven- ties and the complete outstripping of France by Germany in the growth of population and in industrial develop- ment. The French bourgeoisie is like the middle class every- where, peace loving to the last degree. After the resig- nation of MacMahon and the passing of the hopes of royalty in 1879 a succession of men came to the helm in the republic who had everything to lose and nothing to gain by war. For the Ferrys, the Waldeck-Rousseaus, the Loubets and Briands and Poincares, grown up over lawyers' briefs and problems of civic administration, no laurel crowns waved before the cannon's mouth. And in this they fully represented their constituents. That, however, the bitter experiences of the early seventies. / 8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS which made so deep a mark on French character, remained unforgotten and unforgiven in French hearts cannot be doubted. It was not because the French people had grown less honor-loving that it held revenge plans in the background. The honor of a business man consists first of all in paying his debts, protecting his family from dis- aster and laying up a balance for a rainy day ; and the French "neo-bourgeoisie" in the saddle of the third republic preserved a business man's poise in the midst of all the noise and hubbub of Boulanger episodes, anti- semitic propaganda of Dreyfus days and Morocco jingo- ism. At least three times after the establishment of the parliamentary republic France and Germany seemed on the edge of a struggle : once in 1887, when the adventurer Boulanger was seeking to make himself dictator by ap- pealing to French jingoes, and twice during the Morocco episode — ^in 1905 when the French minister Delcasse interposed determined resistance to Germany's demands for an international conference and again in the summer of 191 1 after a German cruiser had been sent to the Moroccan port Agadir. In each of these crises the difficulties dissolved before the cool second thought of the French people. Boulanger was driven into exile, Delcasse was forced into temporary retirement, and the Moroccan negotiations were accompanied by a reserve on the part of the French people that made war impossi- ble. But it was not merely the fact that the individual Frenchman had grown wealthy, and from the Norman peasant with his well-filled woollen sock to the richest stockholder of Paris had much more to lose than in 1870, that made French statesmen and electors cling to a pacific policy for more than forty years in the face of elbowing and toe-treading from German diplomacy. With the eyes of business men Frenchmen saw clearly enough the growing risks of a war with Germany. In 1870 the popu- lation of France was almost equal to that of Prussia and THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 9 her German allies : after that time the population of the republic remained almost stationary, while that of Ger- many in the forty-three years following the treaty of Frankfort increased sixty-seven per cent. In spite of the falling off in the birth-rate in Germany, which has been especially apparent since 1900, the decrease in the death- rate since the introduction of compulsory workingmen's insurance in the eighties has been more than suf&cient to maintain the general increase in the population. In the period from 1881 to 1890, during which the various systems of compulsory workingmen's insurance were introduced, the excess of births over deaths was 11.7 per thousand; in the period from 1901 to 1910, when the full result of these systems was for the first time visi- ble, the surplus was 14.3 per thousand, striking enough when it is noted that in the same period the birth-rate declined from 38.2 to 33.9 per thousand. On the basis of these figures German statisticians have been accus- tomed to estimate that before 1925 the Fatherland would have a population of over eighty millions and even then be considerably less densely populated than other indus- trial countries, Uke England or Belgium. In France there were in this period several years when deaths totaled more than births. It is not to be wondered at that Ger- many's growing preponderance in men capable of bearing arms was a factor which grew more and more important in its bearing on French plans and ambitions. Even more important than this to thinking Frenchmen was the solidification of national feeling and the central- ization in mihtary affairs that went hand in hand with this bounding forward of Germany's population, and as the years went by far surpassed the most enthusiastic dreams of 1870. The military spirit, which in that year was markedly Prussian, or at least North German, pene- trated by degrees to the most distant valleys of the Bava- rian and Swabian highlands. Where once in the smaller states a vague enthusiasm for German unity among the 10 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS people forced their rulers, jealous of Prussia, to cast in their fortunes with the North German confederation against France, now dynasties and people with ardent patriotism have come to look upon the empire under the hegemony of Prussia and the leadership of the Hohen- zollern war-lord as a mighty entity, in comparison with which the boundaries which divide Wiirtemberg and Baden and Hesse have only insignificant importance. If the growth in population and resources and the solid- ification of the national spirit of their neighbor across the Vosges impressed the French banker and lawyer states- men, still less could they close their eyes to the vast military organization upon which Germany worked un- ceasingly after the peace of 1871. Forced by the logic of events to exist as a nation by the power of the sword, united Germany was obliged to keep it always in readiness. Again and again the French dreams of revenge were held up to force from the Reichstag military concessions, which in the early days of the empire Clerical and Liberal groups were unwilling to grant. Thus in 1874, upon the introduction into France of enforced military service after the Prussian model, with the incorporation of a fourth battahon into the regimental cadre and the work- ing out of a new line of defences on the eastern frontier, the German legislative body passed the Septennat, pro- viding for a military budget for seven years with a peace establishment of one per cent of the population. In 1887 in a fight for a renewal of the Septennat and a further increase in the peace establishment, Bismarck declared in the Reichstag: "Not a single voice in France has re- signed hopes of recovering Alsace and Lorraine ; at any moment a government may come to the rudder which will begin war," and he asserted that in case of such a war each party would try to bleed the other to exhaustion. This brutal statement had its effect, and a national wave of patriotism swept the opposition away. Again in the early nineties, when France's long period of isolation had THE FRENCH MORTGAGE ii come to an end through the alliance with Russia, Bis- marck's successor Caprivi turned this to account in carry- ing through a further increase in the number of recruits which were each year called to the colors ; once more in 191 2, following on the troubled summer of the preceding year, when a conflict with France over Morocco seemed almost unavoidable, the war department obtained from the Reichstag, with only the Socialists and anti-national groups in opposition, important increases in the peace footing of artillery and cavalry and a big subsidy for aviation. After 191 2 Germany's arming had nothing directly to do with France. As we shaU see, in the previous decade the eyes of German statesmen had been turning more and more toward the southeast. The outbreak of the first Balkan War in the fall of 191 2 and the victorious progress of the Balkan Alliance toward Constantinople made a great danger suddenly loom up in the D anube lands. The creation of the closely welded league of small states, some of which were certainly under Russian influence, made the position of Germany's aUy, Austria, and consequently of Germany herself, precarious, and the Kaiser's ministers were obliged to take immediate and drastic measures to restore the threatened balance of power. It is, however, noteworthy that in introducing into the Reichstag the Defense Bill in April, 1913, the Chancellor, Bethmann- Hollweg, called attention once more to the mortgage of French hatred, and that the chamber in voting additions to the army aggregating 136,000 officers and men, besides an immense amount of war material, did so with a clear appreciation of the fact that while a new danger drew all eyes toward the southeast, it was impossible to relax for one moment the watch upon the western bound- ary. The sudden danger to the Fatherland's security and aspirations called for a great sacrifice, and the sacrifice was cheerfully made. Upon aU estates of over twenty- five hundred dollars the new bill laid a property tax, 12 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS varying from .15 per cent to 1.75 per cent, a measure which was accepted without heartburnings by all, from the peasant landholder up to the ruling dynasties, which had heretofore enjoyed immunity from taxation. Peas- ant and prince, merchant and manufacturer, heavy-laden with taxation as they already were, looked upon this new contribution as additional insurance, protecting the Fatherland against pressing dangers, among which the French mortgage had come to be regarded as ever present and irremovable. This tremendous addition to her eastern neighbor's war power had an immediate echo across the Vosges. The difference in population had become too enormous for France to hope to meet Germany's armament by put- ting additional recruits into the field. French states- men already viewed the military disproportion with grave misgivings and were taking measures to restore the balance as best they could, when the introduction into the Reichstag in April, 191 3, of the Defense Bill above referred to forced them to immediate action. The result of their deliberations was a bill providing for three years' service instead of two, which after various amend- ments finally passed the French Senate on August 7, 1 91 3. It was estimated that this new sacrifice of French youth would add 1 70,000 to the peace footing of the army. What the final results would accomplish towards restor- ing the balance could not be exactly foretold, but it was confidently hoped that through this additional sacrifice the French people would, to a considerable degree, com- pensate for the difference in population. The events of the second half of 1 914 made it clear that French statesmen had not exaggerated Germany's prep- aration for attack. Practically every German of mili- tary age who was physically sound was found in the crucial hour to be trained in some way for service and made available for mobilization, and events showed that every feature of organization and equipment was in as THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 13 nearly perfect condition as technical education and punc- tilious fulfilment of duty could make it. In 1870 it was said that the German engineers had better maps of the French country next the frontier than the French general staff ; and in the years following the same patient method and careful organization marked the preparations for another struggle. The best ordnance and tools of war for which the Krupps are famous always went to the French frontier, where no railway embankment was raised nor new highway paved without careful consider- ation of its ultimate bearing as an item in the national defenses and in that swift advance which German officers always counted upon in the event of a war with France. Field-Marshall Roon, who was minister of war at the time of the outbreak of the war of 1870, often declared that the two weeks following the memorable night on which the order for mobihzation was given were the idlest and most care-free of his life. So completely had all details gov- erning the movement been worked out that the War Office did not have to reply to one inquiry during this time on the part of the commanders in charge of opera- tions. This was the model which German strategists held up before themselves during the succeeding four decades. How to mobilize half a million men in forty- eight hours, and without stripping the fortresses on the Russian frontier, hurl a powerful force across the French line between Verdun and Toul, isolating these tremen- dous fortresses in preparation for the sweep on Paris through Belgium, — this was the task which the general staff had always before it as its first and most important theoretical problem. How well the problem was solved was fully shown by the events of August, 191 4. The force which, in thirty days after the notices of mobilization were posted, rolled almost within gunshot of the Paris forts, was a model war machine in mobility and striking power. It was that in great measure because its individual units were the 14 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS product of the military schoolmastering which begins when the German lad of six or seven enters the Volks- schule. It would be a bold historian who would give to any modern European nation the palm for courage, — so much the more are discipline and technical training necessary for efl&ciency. In the conflict between France and Germany, however brilliant the achievements of French officers, however glorious the courage and in- domitable the tenacity of French soldiers, it could not be left out of consideration that the percentage of illiteracy for French recruits is 3.3, while in Germany, the classic land of the Volksschule, it is two-tenths of one per cent,^ there being practically no ilhterates in the Fatherland except recent Slavic and Italian immigrants. Again, as compared with the feudal soHdity of the German mili- tary system, the French have had to contend with all of those difficulties of administration which seem inseparable from a republican form of government. While no one doubts the individual efficiency of French war ministers, it must be recalled that practically every crisis in Franco- German affairs in the forty years down to 191 1 found the French army from one cause or another unprepared for a conffict. The most striking instance of this was in 1894, as brought out in the testimony of General Mercier, the Minister of War, before the second Dreyfus court-martial at Rennes five years later. In this crisis, when the Kaiser's court believed its honor offended and the Ger- man sabre was rattling loudly, Mercier was obliged to inform the anxious cabinet in Paris that the French army was so imperfectly equipped for the conflict that any humiliations would have to be endured. Nor is it easy for even the tried patriotism of French officers to obliterate the memory of the many scandals which have clouded the military history of the third republic. To all of this the Germans opposed a discipline, semi-feudal and brutal at times, but based in the last instance on a ^The figures cited cover the conscript-levy of 1908. THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 15 feeling of personal honor and appealing to the sentiment of duty to the Fatherland, which pervades and ennobles the entire German military system. After the fall of Bismarck in 1890 a change for the better came over Franco-German relations. The foreign poHcy of the repubhc seemed lamed for a long time to come through the Panama and Dreyfus scandals, and William II, who had forced Bismarck from the Chancellor's table, adopted a more conciliatory policy. The young emperor is said to have visited Paris as a youth and felt the charm of French brilliancy and dash. From being the Bellona of Europe the nation of gallant men and charming women seemed content to become the arbiter of taste and fashion. A continually rising stream of German visitors found its way to Paris and reached its height at the Exposition of 1900, when German manufacturers, artists and scholars swarmed everywhere and were received with true Gallic grace and hospitaUty. The Franco-Russian Alliance seemed more than counterbalanced by the Triple Alhance, which had knit together the central European powers for twenty years. With the dimming of memories of the war, such incidents as the annual Sedan festival, which the Germans held on September 2, with its oratorical outbursts of Teutonic fury, grew less intense. The peace program of WilUam II seemed to have won the French heart. That, however, Sedan was not forgotten, on either side of the boundary, was soon to be apparent. The drawing together was only superficial, and it needed but the rub- bing of counter-interests in North Africa to make it plain that the old wound was still raw and bleeding. The immediate cause of the rupture of friendly relations lay in the fact that German diplomacy had found it almost impossible to keep pace with the demands which Ger- many's phenomenal growth made upon it. The colonial expansion of France, which began in 1881 under Ferry, met at first with something like benevolent approval in 1 6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Berlin, where it was hoped that GalHc energy would find a new outlet in China and Africa and cease to "stare hypnotized at the gap in the Vosges." In the chan- celleries of Europe it was practically conceded that France, which had at last subjugated Algeria and since 1881 exercised a close protectorate over Tunis, would sooner or later bring the restless tribesmen of Morocco under its sway. England might, it was supposed, re- sist an effort to endanger its route to India or its position in the Mediterranean, and Spain would, when the time came, enforce its claims, but it was not considered that Germany had any claims whatever. With the end of the century, however, the problem of finding an outlet for German emigration and expansion in a temperate climate had begun to be acute. German merchants and capital had penetrated Morocco, on a much smaller scale, it is true, than English and French, but made up in aggressiveness what was lacking in quantity. At home loud voices, not merely those of Pan- German agi- tators, began to demand that the rich sultanate should not be disposed of without consulting Germany. When in 1904, as a result of an agreement between France and England, the former received a free hand in Morocco in return for the resignation of all claims in Egypt, German pride was cut at the coolness with which the richest part of the barbarian world still "unprotected," right at the gates of Europe, was given away without even a "by your leave" to the greatest military power on the Con- tinent. The events of the Morocco crisis, involving at first chiefly France and Germany, soon drew in all of the Euro- pean powers. They are briefly recalled here because they throw a strong light on Franco- German relations three years before the final rupture and no less on the some- what uncertain and erratic nature of German diplomatic methods in the decade preceding the outbreak of war. On March 31, 1905, Emperor William made an unex- THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 17 pected and spectacular appearance in the harbor of Tan- gier, where he assured German residents of the protection of the Fatherland. Immediately afterwards the Berlin government declared itself unwilling to accept the Anglo- French agreement, and demanded a conference of the powers to settle the status of the sultanate, following up its demand with a persistence which was explainable, but which was unfortunately accompanied by violent talk from the jingo press, only too reminiscent of the "sabre-rattling" policy that Bismarck occasionally used with such skill against France. Delcasse, France's adroit foreign minister, who had negotiated the arrange- ment with England and warmed it into an entente, de- clared that the Germans were bluffing, but once more France was in the midst of changes of armament which rendered her unprepared for war, and the lawyers and business men of the Chamber of Deputies sacrificed Delcasse and accepted the conference. From the con- ference of Algeciras German diplomats emerged greatly disappointed. Its net result was a much closer alignment of England with the Franco-Russian alKance and a weak- ening of Italy in its support of Germany that shook public confidence in the Triple Alliance. Only Austria stood fast by her old ally. The integrity of Morocco was mildly endorsed, France and Spain receiving special privileges in the matter of policing. It waS'K:lear that Germany could not recede from her position without some compensation, and the affair remained a source of irritation. This showed itself at Casablanca in northern Morocco in September 1908, over a matter which had on other occasions led to bitter feeling in Germany, the arrest of German deserters from the French Foreign Legion. In February of the follow- ing year an arrangement was concluded between Ger- many and France which while guaranteeing the integrity of Morocco and insuring for Germany an absolutely open door for trade, conceded to France predominating 1 8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS political influence in the sultanate. An honest effort had been made to settle the matter in this agreement, but diplomacy could not foresee the future, and another crisis came very speedily. The recurrence of internal troubles in Morocco led to the French march on Fez in May and June 1 91 1, and it soon became clear that the absolute dependence of the Sultan on French arms to maintain any order whatever among the unruly tribesmen would lead to a long, if not a permanent, occupation. German journals ran the whole gamut from mild protest to bitter arraignment of Galhc lack of faith; the Paris press breathed a half -restrained defiance. When on July 2, 1 91 1, the German cruiser Panther dropped anchor in the splendid but little known harbor of Agadir, the crisis reached an acute stage. The negotiations which filled the summer and fall of 191 1 were embittered by the entry of Great Britain into the controversy. As usual when Franco-German re- lations were agitated, the conversations of the diplomats, Jules Cambon and Kiderlen-Wachter, were accompanied by a chorus of misstatements and braggadocio in the journals of Paris and Berlin. The sad part of it was that in this affair, which brought three great nations, stand- ing at the apex of culture, to the brink of war, the ques- tion of the rights of the Mohammedan inhabitants of Morocco was never raised at all. All parties were merely fired by a selfish desire for national profit. The whole Morocco affair being without any ethical basis whatever, simply resolved itself into a matter of bargain, the out- break of the latent hatred of England among popular circles in Germany furnishing the only element of na- tional enthusiasm. Whatever the mistakes of German diplomacy, the impartial observer cannot deny that German prestige would have suffered greatly if France had been permitted without protest to extend her power over Morocco. Nor can any one doubt that this is just what she had determined to do, exactly as she herself THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 19 had done thirty years before in Tunis, as England had done in Egypt, and as Italy was even then preparing to do in TripoH. In spite of popular excitement, diplomacy triumphed, and the treaty of November 4, 191 1, put Morocco, excepting such portions as should fall to Spain, forever under the control of France, awarding Germany more than 100,000 square miles of the French Congo as compensation. The bitter dissatisfaction of both sides would seem to indicate that so far as Germany and France were concerned, the bargain was a fair one, although the investigation of the German Colonial Ofi&ce in 191 2 disclosed that the acquired region. New Kamerun, while probably rich in lumber and rubber, was so com- pletely a prey to the sleeping sickness and other Central African torments that its exploitation would be exceed- ingly difl&cult. As an element of international misunder- standing Morocco was out of the way ; as a symptom of Franco- German feeHng the entire Morocco affair showed how little progress had been made toward a mutual understanding and what a gulf of mistrust still separated these two leaders of modern civilization. Morocco, however, had been removed as a source of irritation and that was felt as a gain on both sides. Un- der clearing skies it seemed that France and Germany might enter upon one of those periods like that in the nineties of the last century, when their relations, although not exactly friendly, were nevertheless upon a workable basis. Many Frenchmen and many Germans hoped so ; and in spite of the train of forces set in motion by Italy's attack on Turkey's North African possessions in 191 1, hopefulness continued. At the London Confer- ence in 1 91 3, which settled the Balkan chaos, French and German diplomats discovered no points of irritation; indeed, while Germany sought to render Austria's de- mands for an independent Albania less peremptory, France tried to restrain her ally Russia from uncondi- tional support of Serbia's demands for an opening to 20 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the Adriatic. But after the Balkan crisis seemed to have passed, the deep distrust still remained. The German Defense Bill of 191 3 and the French Three Years Service Law were greeted with bitter criticism by the press on the opposite sides of the Vosges. Each nation regarded itself as the direct object of the other's armament, and it was evident that the correct and even conciliatory atti- tude of ministries and diplomats would give way to a dangerous tension the moment any object of dispute arose. It was evident too that the tone of public opinion on neither side had changed, and that the alliances by which both nations had sought to strengthen themselves in eastern Europe would draw both into the vortex the moment the unstable equilibrium of the Balkans should end in a crash. "In the end we must pay for the windows which our journalists break. ' ' This oft-quoted remark of Bismarck's has applied peculiarly to Germany's relations to France. The causes of the violence and irresponsibility of a cer- tain section of the German chauvinistic press will be taken up in a later chapter ; here it is merely to be noted that this irresponsibility and violence bore especially evil fruit in Franco-German relations. The French press has its own peculiar sins to answer for and they are not light ones either, as will be shown in the chapter on Alsace-Lorraine. But something may be said in excuse of the humiliated antagonist, smarting with a sense of powerlessness which had grown constantly more acute through the passing years. Certainly much may also be said in justification of German distrust of French intentions and watchfulness lest an unfavorable international conjuncture might find the empire sur- prised by an effort to win back Alsace and Lorraine, which the German sincerely believed to be his by every law human and divine. It has long been evident that any better understanding between Germany and France must rest not on the approaches of rulers and puppet THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 21 statesmen, but on something like a revolution in the thought of the people themselves, and in such a revo- lution the pubhc press, the nation's schoolmaster in po- litical affairs, must play an important part. For this reason it is regrettable that the German press beginning with the early nineties assumed an attitude of con- tempt toward the repubhc that not only fanned into flame a keen feeling of resentment west of the Vosges but also grievously misled the Germans as to the nature and tendencies of their western neighbors. The papers which in the seventies sounded the long roll at every sign of France's regeneration began later to picture the republic as a decrepit antagonist which the empire could crush into humiliation at any convenient time. The shadow sides of Parisian life, the "depopulation problem" in France, the aU-too-frequent scandals in French pubUc and private Hfe, the sordid phases of French literature and art, — all were exploited in certain journals of Berlin and the lesser capitals, presenting in their composite to the German reader the picture of France as a degenerate nation. The effect of all this on the national attitude must not be underestimated. It bred among the rank and file of the German middle and lower classes the feeling that France was wormeaten and ripe for destruction before the healthy battaUons of the Fatherland. That these ideas were not shared by well-informed Germans, is a matter of course ; still less was the general staff in Berlin ignorant that even with Germany's tremendous accession of strength, France's powers of resistance were many times greater than in 1870. It is a fact though that there gradually took possession even of cultured circles a conviction of French weakness and degeneracy and that feelings of this kind have an important influence on the creation of just such waves of war sentiment as ran through western Germany in the summer of 191 1. "In two weeks we shall be in Paris," was commonly heard in hotels and on 22 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS railroad trains in the Rhine and Moselle country, and after the formation of the Triple Entente, metropolitan and provincial papers frequently assured their readers that France would have to pay for all of the windows that England might break. / If the idea of an easy conquest of France, so long f disseminated by a certain section of the German press, facilitated the creation of a war spirit to the east of the Vosges, it is not surprising also that the extravagant programs set forth by Pan-Germanists produced a feel- ing of extreme nervousness in France. At such times as the Morocco crises one might read even in journals of standing that the annexation of Champagne or Franche Comte was one of the aims of German expansion, or hear that high financiers had demanded of the government the acquisition of maritime rights in Brest or some southern French port as unconditionally necessary for the development of Germany. Such things were in' their turn taken up and dihgently exploited and bitterly glossarized by the more hectic Paris journals. The / vigorous tone of German diplomacy, which retained the dictatorial ring of Bismarck's day, made even just con- cessions difficult for French statesmen. Thus while Germans felt that France waited only for a favorable international conjuncture to undertake the recovery of the lost provinces, there grew up among Frenchmen the feehng that Germany was determined sooner or later to bring French honor to bay and that further concessions and humiliations might delay but could not avert a conflict. In the history of the past century there is no sadder or more discouraging spectacle for the student of civiliza- tion than that offered by France and Germany. The conflicts between the Germanic and the Romance world, which have flowed unceasingly back and forth across the Vosges and up and down the Moselle and the Meuse, left an inheritance of hate and distrust which all of the / THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 23 progress of civilization has only intensified and em- bittered ; and one must search history carefully indeed to find in modern times an instance where two nations standing at the forefront in the arts of peace have faced each other for so long a period ready for instant war. Increasingly for more than forty years Metz, Verdun, Strasburg, Toul and Belfort bristled with war material. Feverishly year after year the French engineers planned and replanned defences for the great highway that leads past Mars la Tour into the heart of Lorraine. The tour- ist who descended into the death gorge of Gravelotte or wandered over the hills to St. Privat or Vionville, where since 1870 thousands of Germans and Frenchmen Ue buried under the wheatfields, was always under the glasses of the sentries at Point du Jour and the other forts crowning the wooded heights around Metz. The political crises which have been recalled above, 1887, 1905 and 191 1, were reflected by an access of watchful- ness on the border. A panic of spies filled the air, dis- trust and fear were apparent to the most unobserving traveller. Nominally the two nations were at peace, but actually the conditions were almost those of war. To those who know the peace-loving nature of the in- dividual Frenchman or German such a situation seems monstrous. Its existence could only be explained by the feeling of distrust which had become chronic in Franco-German affairs, a distrust founded on centuries of French interference and aggression and refounded upon a great humihation imposed upon France and forty succeeding years of humiliation. Despite political rivalry and popular distrust there have been features in the relations between Germany and France which gave and still give hope and encourage- ment. Intercourse in trade and business constantly growing brought a growing recognition on both sides of the supplementary qualities which each possesses in the field of business undertaking. German method and 24 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS thoroughness have taught much to French scientific men in recent decades, and the publication of works like those of Henri Lichtenberger testifies to an interest in German thought such as was unknown in France be- fore the end of the last century. Political rivalry, Hke war, speeds the interchange of cultural influences, and in the forty-odd years between peace and war Germany, which through the centuries had always been the borrower, began to repay to France a part of the intellectual debt of former times. Indeed, the conquest by German phi- losophy, science and music was so complete that it may be said of the average cultured Frenchman of the twen- tieth century, — something that was certainly never true of any generation of his ancestors, — that he is more at home in the intellectual world of Germany and more capable of appreciating German character than the German is of entering into the peculiar soul-world of the French. On the other hand, there has never been a time when Gallic dash and energy were more admired in Germany, even in the days of Frederick the Great, when every German princehng aped the vices of Versailles and every shopkeeper on the Rhine greeted his neighbor with Bon jour! Massenet and Debussy won their way slowly in spite of German musical aloofness, and the inroads of French art on the German market caused in 191 1 the formation of a defensive league. The rivalry with England had at last begun to undermine the old feeling of hostility to France; convinced of French weakness, the Germans gave rein again to their natural admiration for French brilliancy and taste. In 191 1 and 191 2 and 1913, writers Hke Maximilian Harden of the Berlin Zukunft, who felt that in permitting the formation of the Triple Entente German diplomats had allowed Bis- marck's worst nightmare to become a reality, began to call loudly for an attempt to win the friendship of the nation to which German culture owes so much. Un- THE FRENCH MORTGAGE 25 fortunately the bonds of culture do not guarantee peace ; but even in the present stage of human infirmity they can do something to create conditions favorable to it. French and German scholars have met in ever increasing numbers at learned congresses; French and German sportsmen, who learned to know each other's quahties on many fields, could not part save with feelings of mutual admiration. The exchange of teachers between the French and Prussian ministries of education, carried on with much more enthusiasm on the German side, it is true, did its part to cultivate a better knowledge of the neighbor. These influences, although interrupted by war, will in the end do much to weave forgetfulness over the bitter, bloody work of the past and present and to lay the foundation for the mutual understanding which is the hope of the future. CHAPTER II Allies and Enemies to the East "The question at issue is decided, now it is our duty to bring back the old friendship with Austria." This far-seeing remark of Bismarck's immediately after the Prussian legions had overwhelmed the Austrian forces at Sadowa in 1866 gave the keynote to his poHcy toward Prussia's eastern neighbor and ancient rival. This poHcy he carried through only after a bitter struggle with Crown Prince Frederick and the victorious generals who had humbled the Habsburg eagles. It was a clear vision of the life-necessity for a good understanding between the two great powers of central Europe that made the Chancellor offer almost the same terms when on a victorious march on Vienna, as had been contained in the Prussian ultimatum at the beginning of the war, and the desire to pave the way for a peace without heartburnings on Austria's side made him deny to the impatient war lords the satisfaction of leading their legions in triumph through the Danube capital. Prus- sian generosity was rewarded by Austria's neutrality at the outbreak of the war with France, a neutrality which was persistently upheld by the Emperor Francis Joseph and the Hungarian statesmen in spite of all the efforts of the Austrian foreign minister Beust, who had worked for years to girdle Prussia about with a league between Austria, Italy and France. In spite of Prussia's generosity and the friendship between the Habsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties, the league which binds polyglot Austria with Germany 26 ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 27 would never have sustained the wear of a generation were it not riveted by a constant common danger, the danger of a union of Slavic interests under the leader- ship of Russia. The fear of such a union looms now large now small on the horizon of eastern Europe; and while keeping strong the bond which unites the Germans of Austria to their brother Germans of the west, it has also since the end of the seventies cemented the old vmion between the Magyars of Hungary and the German race into an alliance which bids fair to outlast the wear of generations. Friendship with Russia had been for more than a century a tradition of the Prussian royal family, and Bismarck found it easy in 1872 to bring about an under- standing between the three monarchs of autocratic tendencies, — the Czar Alexander II and the two emper- ors, Francis Joseph and WiUiam I. Undoubtedly this "Three Emperors' Agreement" rested upon a soHd basis, a common sympathy with autocratic institutions and a strong family friendship; but in 1872 the days of the Holy Alliance were irrevocably past, and in the last quarter of the nineteenth century foreign poKcies, even in Russia, could no longer be determined by personal considerations, when these colHded with such a racial impulse as that which draws North Slavs and South Slavs together. The first wedge which was to separate Russia and Germany was driven in 1875. In that year, as has been shown above (page 6), the influence of adroit French diplomacy on a vain despot brought about the inter- vention of the Czar with Emperor WilHam in favor of France. The real cleavage came, however, in the fol- lowing year, when Russia was arming for her advance on the Dardanelles under the pretext of a holy crusade to emancipate the South Slavic peoples from the Turk, and, as before, found Austria-Hungary in her path. In answer to the questions of the Russian foreign ministry, 28 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Bismarck was finally obliged to declare, after long fidgeting and evasion, that in the event of a war between Austria and Russia, Germany would refuse to sit idly by and see her ancient friend, the Danube monarchy, bled to exhaustion. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which marked the high tide of Germany's prestige as a neutral power, the necessity arose of choosing clearly and definitely one of the eastern neighbors as an ally. At this Congress Russia saw herself and her Slavic con- federates stripped one by one of the fruits of Slavic victory, while Austria-Hungary received as a reward for a war in which she had remained neutral the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, finally winning these two splendid Balkan provinces, with their 97 per cent of Slavic population, with a sacrifice of scarcely five thousand officers and men. After this it was impossible for Bismarck to teeter longer between the two rivals in the Balkans, and he chose as ally the partly blood- related Austria-Hungary, all of whose interests de- manded peace and the maintenance of the status quo in, the southeast. The alliance concluded in 1879 between Bismarck and the far-sighted Hungarian statesman An- drassy, foreign minister of the Dual Monarchy, was a defensive league against the great Slavic state and a wall against the Slavic advance from the Baltic to the Bosphorus. While the fear of Russian aggressions drove Germany and Austria-Hungary into an alliance for mutual in- dependence and defense, it was the attitude of France that finally brought Italy to their side and gave rise to the Triple Alliance. United Germany and united Italy had, in a measure, undergone their baptism of fire together. It is true that after the French and Italian forces had defeated Austria at Solferino in 1859 and the whole of Venetia lay open before the liberators, Prussian diplomacy stayed the hand of Napoleon III and delayed for seven years the redemption of all of northern Italy ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 29 from the Austrian yoke. But when emancipation finally came, it came through Prussian help. As early as 1862 Bismarck sounded the court at Turin as to what its attitude would be toward a joint war against Austria, and even less astute statesmen than Cavour foresaw that henceforth Itahan and Prussian development must go hand in hand. Thus it came about that Prussia and Italy had their common reckoning with the Habsburg in 1866. Italy might indeed have been spared this war, had Victor Emmanuel II been willing to accept Venetia from the intermediary hand of France and break his plighted word to Prussia. The gallant king refused, and his refusal set the seal on German and ItaHan friendship for a generation. But something more than the common interest with Prussia was necessary to bring Italy into an alliance which included the ancestral enemy Austria. That something was, as we have seen, the fear of France. Like Germany, Italy began her united national exist- ence with a French mortgage. From Charlemagne to Napoleon III the interference of France had been a con- stant obstacle to the union of the Italian states and the development of Italian interests. Even after the in- vasion of France by German troops in 1870 had recalled every available French soldier to defend his native land and had forced Napoleon to leave the Pope to his fate, opening the Porta Pia to the infantry of Savoy, a French warship remained in the harbor of Civita Vecchia ready to rescue the Pope, remained there indeed till 1874, when the final triumph of the bourgeoisie over the royalist and clerical parties in Paris at last relieved the young kingdom of Italy of the nightmare of a war with France. The French gunboat sailed away, but left in Italy bitter memories of generations of French interference in her affairs. The hatred which these engendered was kindled afresh when the Italian national spirit found itself checked by France in its expansion in the Mediter- 30 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS ranean. In 1881 France spread a protectorate over another choice morsel of the disintegrating Ottoman empire, Tunis, where there were and normally are twenty Italian residents to one Frenchman ; and Italy realized that only through an alliance with the great mihtary powers of central Europe could she get a backing which would protect her from being further outflanked. The next year Victor Emmanuel visited Berlin, where he met an enthusiastic reception from court and populace, and very soon thereafter the conclusion of the Triple Alliance was announced. Italy entered it without en- thusiasm, but with a very clear realization of the benefits which it would bring to her. The Triple Alliance which thus came into being was signed originally in May 1882 for a period of five years. It was renewed in 1887 for a like period; and then in 1891, 1902 and 1913, the last time for five years. The league between Germany and Austria had bound each of these powers to come to the aid of the other in case of an attack by Russia. The purpose of the Triple Alliance was more purely defensive. The exact terms of the treaty were not published, but no secret was made of its main object. It guaranteed to the three powers mutual assistance in maintaining their terri- tories ; and it is apparent that its founders had in mind an insurance on Germany's security in Alsace-Lorraine, Austria's in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italy's in Rome. With the changes of the years new guarantees were assumed, emphasizing, as it seemed, the defensive character of the alliance. Thus Italy secured in 1902 and 1 91 3 concessions which assured to her compensation in case of an Austrian advance in the Balkans, although the Teutonic powers did not pledge themselves to pro- tect the peninsular state in her conquests in the eastern Mediterranean. Certain it is that the advocates of the Triple Alliance did not claim too much when they as- serted that no international league of modern times has ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 31 been more productive of peace, and that from its founda- tion in 1882 until 19 14, when the rivalry of Teuton and Slav in the Balkans passed beyond restraint, this union between the Germanic states of central Europe and Italy acted as a balance wheel in every European crisis. Very different was the character of the Austro-German agreement of 1879, which Bismarck published to all the world in 1888. It contained from the beginning the germs of war, which must come whenever the Russian advance threatened the prestige of either power. It was plain from the first that the danger clouds hung in the unruly Balkans, the area of Austrian and Russian rival- ries. Anything in the strife of nationahties in that troubled zone which led to the aggrandizement of the Slavic states must find Russia's support and in the end check Austria's ambitions. For a time the wiliness of Bismarck kept Russia isolated and retained the Czar's friendship. "I have thrown a bridge across to Vienna without breaking down the older one to St. Petersburg," declared the Iron Chancellor after the first successful approaches to Austria in 1872. So long as the Bismarckian tradition dominated German diplomacy, this continued to be true. The "Three Emperors' Agreement" was renewed in 1884, and in 1887 it gave place to an understanding between the German government and Czar Alexander III, by which each agreed to remain neutral in case of an attack by a third power, a form of "reinsurance" which Bismarck's successor, Caprivi, who was a soldier and not a diplomat, found to be a violation of loyalty to Germany's ally Austria. So strongly pro-Russian were the traditions of the Prussian royal house that old Emperor William in the last days of his life refused to sanction a marriage between his granddaughter and the abdicated Prince Alexander of Bulgaria, otherwise a most desirable match, for fear of hurting Russian sensi- bihties, and report says that the aged monarch on his 32 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS deathbed urged his grandson, William II, to maintain good relations with the Czar. This deference to the great power to the east was based partly on a fear of the Russian military power, a feeling inherited from the days of the Seven Years' War, and partly no doubt on a feeling of sympathy entertained by the autocratic Ger- man ruler for Russian absolutism. Whatever the cause, it could not withstand the march of events. Bismarck had been clever enough to keep intact the league with Austria and yet prevent Russia from joining France; his successor, Caprivi, a stranger to the more devious ways of diplomacy, found the task beyond his powers, and in 1891 the strange combination between the auto- cratic Csar and the Gallic republic came into being as a counterpoise to the Triple Alliance. The exact terms of this instrument were not made public, but enough was known of its contents to make it certain that from the first it was directed against Germany. It gave France a support which she needed against Germany's elbows, and in this way contributed for two decades to European peace. Not however to the peace of Asia. The Dual Alliance gave Russia access to the well-filled savings banks of France, and from these the Czar's gov- ernment drew the sinews for the aggressive advance in the Far East which was finally hurled back by Japanese bayonets at Port Arthur and Mukden. The formation of the Franco-Russian alliance did not at first bring any clouds over German and Russian rela- tions. Prussia is the only state in Germany which marches with the territories of the Czar, and the in- fluential landed nobility of Prussia still continued to find the institutions of Russia according to their own feudal tastes. Under these reactionary influences the Prussian government often stooped to do police duty for the ministers of Russian tyranny. Before the revolu- tion of 1905 Russian consuls in the German university towns maintained a spy system in order to follow up ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 33 revolutionary suspects among the Russian students, and in certain Prussian and Saxon cities they received wilUng aid from the police authorities, who exercised readily their power of expulsion. For instance, at Russian social gatherings in Leipsic in 1900 and 1901 Russian student friends pointed out such spies to me, with the assurance that a word to the police from one of these agents was all that was necessary in order to have the suspected disciple of science transported immediately beyond the frontiers of Saxony. During and after the revolution, when the closing of the Russian universities brought increased numbers of Slavic students, many of Jewish faith and many with very slender purses, Prus- sian ministers of education showed by their treatment of these orphaned children of the muses that the spirit of the Holy AUiance was not entirely dead in Prussia. While Prussian officialdom showed its sympathy with the Czar's government in its ruthless methods towards revolution, in the decade following the war with Japan a very general change took place in the attitude of the German press and people toward Russia. Whereas until the early years of the twentieth century the Hohen- zoUern-Bismarck tradition was still so strong that every German lad seemed to feel instinctively the necessity for keeping on good terms with the powerful neighbor to the east, after 1905 a tone of barely disguised contempt crept more and more into press and public speech. The colossus, whose feet of clay the sturdy Japanese had ex- posed, no longer inspired dread; and the agitations of this mightiest Slavic people, whose political life was just passing through its birth throes, were watched across the Niemen and Vistula with something very like mis- chievous joy. In a balance so nicely adjusted as that between the European powers, Russia's weakness at once tipped down the Teutonic-Magyar arm of the scale. The benefits of this change were reaped almost entirely by 34 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Austria ; Germany garnered nothing but Muscovite hatred, sincere, though for the time impotent. When the Triple Alliance was formed, Austro-Hungarian states- men under the leadership of the far-sighted Andrassy acknowledged definitely and finally Prussia's claim to hegemony in the Germanic world and just as definitely and finally resigned the ancient Habsburg claim to rule in the Italian peninsula. This did not mean, however, that the aggressive Habsburg dynasty gave up the family tradition of aggrandizement and conquest, but that the Dual Monarchy was from now on to turn its ambitions toward the Balkans, where small and weak states and the decaying Turkish empire offered less resistance to the advance of Austrian influence. Here the backing of the first military power of Europe armed Austrian diplomacy with a force that made itself felt more and more from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and enabled Teuton and Magyar for a generation to hold in check the minor Slavic states and their great Slavic protector, Russia. In 1878 Bosnia and Herzegovina fell under Austrian protection, as we have seen, almost without a blow, as Austria's spoil from the Slavic attack on Turkey. In the decades that followed the Dual Monarchy proceeded with the organization of these two provinces into model states, drilling and schooling the population, which is almost entirely Serb, under Teutonic and Magyar sergeants and schoolmasters. In 1908 Francis Joseph's government seized the conjunction of Russia's weakness and the revolution in Turkey and declared these two Balkan states annexed forever to Austria-Hungary. Slavic pride was stung to the quick by this action : Serbia mobilized and Russia began to do so ; but the Berlin government stood firmly by Ger- many's ally. It was then that Kaiser William "showed himself in glittering armor," to quote a popular expres- sion in the Berlin papers at the time, and certified Austria's title to the annexed provinces with the poten- ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 35 tial weight of Germany's army corps. The Russian general staff undoubtedly felt that a war with the Ger- man-Austrian combination could have but one ending, and the Czar demobilized and, to complete his humilia- tion, the government at St. Petersburg was obliged to yield to a suggestion from Vienna via Berlin and call off Serbia. The Dual Monarchy pocketed the two provinces and defied any general conference of the powers to question her title. Furthermore, Austrian influence was slowly making its way among the Christian Albanians across the Turkish frontier through the es- tablishment of ecclesiastical schools and other institu- tions ; the statesmen of Vienna and Budapest were drawing ever tighter the ring around Serbia and were easily able to hold in check the efforts of the poet-warrior Nicholas, king of tiny Montenegro. Bismarck once declared that the whole Balkan ques- tion was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. To him the Austro-German alliance was an insurance against Russian aggression and a guarantee of the maintenance of the status quo in eastern Europe. Irresistibly, however, the centre of gravity had moved from Berlin to Vienna, and every readjustment in the Balkans brought Germany in the train of Austria more and more squarely in the path of Russian advance. Backed by Germany the Dual Monarchy had won the two richest provinces in the Balkan peninsula, and through the same backing had maintained the status quo in European Turkey and' prevented Russia from reaping any advantage from the Turkish revolution of 1908. When a divergence showed itself between Austria's and Italy's plans in the Balkans, German sympathy and diplomacy placed itself unhesitatingly upon the side of the Teutonic ally and assisted in beating off any combination of Italian and Russian interests which might block the path of the Dual Monarchy tow- ard the southeast. Thus in 1906 the Vienna ministry, 36 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS aided by Berlin, was able to checkmate Russo-Italian plans for a Transbalkan Railway, which should connect the Adriatic with the Danube, by preparing to carry out a counter plan to drive a railroad through the Sanjak of Novibazar, thus connecting Austria-Hungary's Balkan provinces and Vienna itself with Saloniki, the great gateway of trade on the JEgesin and the Mecca of Habs- burg hopes in the southeast. When in 191 2, through the formation of the league of Balkan states, the Dual Monarchy was shut ofif from further advance, Germany stood faithfully by her ally. With her backing, Austria faced down Russian dissatis- faction and blocked Serbia's way to the Adriatic by carving out the kingdom of Albania, for which Germany furnished one of her mediatized princes, William of Wied, as ruler. Once more the Teutonic-Magyar com- bination had checked the Slavic advance, and although the expansion of Greece and Serbia seemed to have put an end to Austria's hopes of a port on the JEgean, the Austrian and German diplomats rose from the London Conference of 1913 without disappointment. Once more they had checked the Slav in his march to blue water. Once more the big brother Russia saw his little brothers Serbia and Montenegro shorn of the most coveted fruits of victory, and when the break-up of the Balkan League and the second Balkan War followed in the summer of 1913, it seemed as if Austrian intrigue and the weight of Germany's legions had forced back the Slavic wave for another decade. In the meantime the Berlin government was not ignorant that the dragons' teeth which it had sowed in Russia in 1908 and again in 191 2-13 had sprung up into the bitterest hatred. It had long been acutely sensitive to the dangers which lurked in the unruly Balkans, and for this reason the formation of the Balkan League, and the staggering blows which it gave Turkey, caused a shock in Berlin scarcely less unpleasant than ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 37 in Vienna. The fact that Austria had now to face a strong alliance instead of several weak states moved the German general staff to quick measures, and the Defense Bill above referred to (page nff.)) which passed the Reichstag in July 1913, was Germany's anchor to the windward. Before its passage, however, the results of the London Conference and the events in the Balkans had relieved the pressure. In the meantime Russian journals and publicists took on an increasingly bitter tone toward Germany, and the reorganization of the Russian army after the Japanese War seemed complete, while it was well known that the Czar's government was busy with the construction of strategic railways in the western borderlands. Nevertheless all surfaces of irritation seemed removed for the present and the watch on the Vistula went on without any feeling that an im- mediate settlement of the age-old rivalry between Teuton and Slav was impending. That it came little more than a year after the adjournment of the London Con- ference was due directly to the wide differences in the whole field of culture and civilization which separate Austria from her southeastern neighbors, differences which together with racial and religious antagonisms have made the Balkans the danger zone of Europe. Here, where for generations every European crisis has acted as an irritant, was now set off in the summer of 1914 an explosion which turned Bismarck's great league for the preservation of peace into one for the dissemina- tion of war. In the fanatical patriotism of the Serbians lay the spark which was to end Germany's forty-three years of peace. It was not merely in foreign affairs that Germany's support brought for so many years security to Austria- Hungary. It likewise gave the Dual Monarchy peace and the opportunity of development within its borders. In this patchwork of races the Slavic peoples form 45 per cent of the total population, and the history of latter- 38 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS day Austria has been a continuous struggle to balance off over against each other the distracting demands of Czechs, Moravians, Poles, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Ru- thenians and Slovenes. Facing these the Germanic inhabitants make up only 24 per cent of Austria-Hungary or 35 per cent of Austria. Backed by the alliance with their blood-relatives to the west, the Austrian Germans have maintained the leadership in this ethnic crazy- quilt, and the government at Vienna has found itself free to treat its Slavic subjects with energy and de- termination, without the fear of a greater Slavic alliance under the leadership of Russia. Under these circumstances the Danube state went for- ward to a point where universal suffrage and the conse- quent forcing to the front of inner social questions, such as compulsory workingmen's insurance and the secular- ization of the schools, began to break the soHdarity of the "national" parties, whose bitter enmities for so many years disgraced the sessions of the Reichsrath and Austrian public life generally. Some years ago it was quite commonly said that the death of Francis Joseph would bring an end to the Dual Monarchy and perhaps the dissolution of Austria itself ; with the grovrth of the new century, however, there arose a feeling of optimism. It seemed certain that the union of the monarchies and the permanence of the djmasty were guaranteed so long as the Teutonic Austrians and the Magyars found in the alliance with Germany a guarantee of protection from without and the possibility of inner development. Thus it happened that the nine and one-half million Germans who live in the ancestral Habsburg lands, — upper and lower Austria, Bohemia, Styria and Tjnrol, — even though cut off by the national boundary posts from their Bavarian, Saxon and Prussian relatives, were able to retain the leadership in this heterogeneous empire. They had lost political unity, perhaps forever, with the larger body of the German race, but maintained a po- ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 39 litical attachment to their cousins in Germany which was able to keep the peace in Austria in spite of the aggres- siveness of the Bohemian Czechs and the Galician Poles and the Russian cousins, the Ruthenians. Unquestionably both without and within Austria took much more than she could give in the alliance with Germany. Nevertheless the advantages to Germany were significant. Through the increase of Austria's prestige in the Balkans Germany was guaranteed an open door for her trade, not merely into all of the Balkan states but beyond in Asia Minor and throughout the eastern Mediterranean. And while after Bismarck's day the alliance was of the greatest value to Germany in making her independent of Russia, it also assured her freedom to proceed with the aggressive nationalizing of her own Polish subjects without the danger of a Slavic league being formed against her, for it must not be for- gotten that Germany has on her eastern marches nearly three million Poles who still entertain hopes of a Greater Poland. The two strongest military powers of Europe, the one completely German, the other German in dynasty, military traditions and leadership, offered without further alhes a counterbalance to the whole of Slavic and Ro- mance Europe, and one may say that an alliance between them was and is really necessary for the maintenance of European peace. Thus in spite of all efforts to win them away, Austria-Hungary's representatives stood by Ger- many through thick and thin at the conference of Al- geciras (page 17), and the unbreakable front thus presented enabled the Kaiser's diplomats to face a ring of hostile powers and to retire, with disappointed hopes, it is true, but without humiliation. It is clear then that so long as loyalty is one of the cardinal virtues of the German soul, the Germans of the Empire could not desert the Austrian Germans in the face of an attack either within or without the Dual 40 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Monarchy, The march of affairs in the Balkans after the Young Turk revolution of 1908 brought the danger of such an attack constantly closer. The enthusiasm for a Greater Serbia, rudely checked in that year, had fed large upon the military successes of the two Balkan wars and in the five years following Austria's annexa- tion of Bosnia and Herzegovina had grown by leaps and bounds. It had long before jumped the boundaries of the Dual Monarchy and burrowed a hundred under- ground passages of revolution from Belgrade into the Serb provinces of Austria. In 1908 the government of King Peter had made a promise, underwritten by Russia, to abstain from all anti- Austrian propaganda. It was a promise which the Belgrade government could not and the Serbian people would not keep. Twice, in 191 2 and 1913, the Dual Monarchy had mobilized against Russia and Serbia ; now the Vienna ministry saw itself condemned to stand always on guard against Serbian aggressions. There seemed no choice save between the continuance of a maddening condition of irritation, with bankrupting military crises, and a sharp and decisive war. The murder of the Austrian heir apparent, Francis Ferdinand, on June 22, 1914, by the bomb and pistol of two fanatics of Sarajevo, crazed with Serbian racial patriotism, supplied the trigger action, and Austria's peaceful mission in the Balkans was at an end. The present generation will probably never know just what took place between the courts of Vienna and Berlin in July, 1 9 14. It is idle to speculate as to whether Kaiser William and his advisers really believed that Russia could again be held in check as in 1908-09 and 191 2-13. The character of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia of July 23, 1914, was such that it could only have come from those who had made up their minds to cut once for all the web which Russian diplomacy had spun about the Dual Monarchy and who knew that the help of the German ally could be reckoned upon. Those who have ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 41 observed the infinite care with which all things connected with the national security are followed up in Germany cannot doubt that from long before 1908 the last eventual consequences of the support of Germany's ally against the South Slavs had been carefully weighed and all the risks considered. Whatever desire for peace was felt in Berhn did not go so far as to admit the possibility of the humiHation of the ally on the Danube. Whatever the issue of the conflict was to be, it should relieve Austria from the nightmare of Slavic pressure. While stern necessity held Germany and Austria- Hungary together, Italy's adherence was felt to be less necessary and her position was by no means so consist- ent. She had entered the Triple Alliance to protect herself from French pressure. When with the fading of monarchical and clerical hopes in France, this pressure diminished, there sprang up a strong party in the penin- sula which looked for sympathy and support to Paris rather than to Berhn and Vienna. Like the great minister, Crispi, not a few Itahan leaders have been men of repubhcan training and sympathies, to whom French repubhcan institutions made a direct appeal. Popular sentiment for the blood-related Latin nation beyond the Maritime Alps turned strongly on various occasions toward a league with the republic. England's friendship too had always been eagerly sought by Italian statesmen and people ; and British sympathy and gold were ever sponsors for Italy's position among the great powers. To many great Englishmen, indeed, Italy has been a second homeland, and they have followed the struggles of the peninsular state with something more than neutral feeling. English and French naval bases flank the Italian coast, while Germany's boundaries no- where touch Italy. Austria, on the other hand, having blocked the way to Italian unity as long as she could, still exerted herself to suppress every movement of ra- cial patriotism in the three-quarters of a milhon ItaUans 42 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS on the northeastern border of the Adriatic and in the valley of the Adige. In the face of such conditions it is not to be wondered at that the Roman cabinet, striving to build up a national consciousness in the midst of frightful economic difficulties and bitter party strife, followed a policy in international affairs which was often vacillating and often selfish, nor can one blame Italian statesmen if, as the Germans declared, their position toward the northern allies was that of those who take all and give nothing in return. This trend of events reached highwater mark with the Algeciras conference. The Triple Alliance had become unpopular. Italy was slowly nursing plans for an attack on the Mohammedan world, and Italian statesmen in- clined strongly towards an understanding with the Anglo-French entente. How far this understanding went at Algeciras is xmcertain. Italy's opposition to Germany's proposals was more negative than positive; but Germany, facing an unsympathetic world, was ex- tremely sensitive, and the German press teemed with the bitterest attacks on Italian faithlessness. After the conference the opinion was general that the Triple Alli- ance was doomed to dissolution and that Italy was surely drifting towards the Triple Entente, which Anglo-French diplomacy had girdled around Germany. The settlement of the Morocco question in the fall of 191 1, however, brought a change. ItaHan policy once more veered around. With a suddenness and a well- oiled organization that took the chancelleries of Europe completely by surprise, Italy seized Tripoli, with this one act blocking French advance toward the eastern Mediter- ranean, placing herself astride of England's route to Egypt and India and giving a shock to Turkey that sent its thrills into the most distant valleys of Macedonia and Asia Minor. The first news of this move echoed in every German and Austria-Hungarian newspaper in a cry of outraged amazement. Germany had for twenty ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 43 years considered herself Turkey's sponsor in Europe. Her officers, the miHtary authority Koknar von der Goltz at their head, had reorganized Turkey's army; in the day of Abdul Hamid's rule her statesmen and journals had condoned the crimes of Islam's religious fanatics in Cilicia and of Turkish political leaders in Macedonia and Albania. Indeed, in those days of misrule before the Young Turk revolution of 1908 Germany was the only civilized land that seemed utterly deaf to the cry of distress from Armenian, Cretan and Bulgar. And now after such championship to see the last remaining frag- ment of Moslem North Africa faU to Italy brought forth the bitterest attacks from journals which had a few months before been eloquently championing Germany's right to acquire southern Morocco. It is not surprising that the Italians did not turn the other cheek to the smiter. From the Alps to the Maltese straits the old hatred of the Teuton flamed up with a truly Guelphic intensity. Memories of Austrian despot- ism in Lombardy and Venetia, slumbering lightly be- neath half a century of independence, sprang into life and inspired hundreds of pens, from Gabriel d'Annunzio's to that of the humblest provincial journalist, to a vitriolic denunciation of German lies and Austrian treachery. Never did the Triple Alliance prove its worth for Italy more than in this crisis, when the rapidly shifting scene showed that the danger to Italy's forward movement, in so far as it concerned the Mediterranean, lay to the west- ward. A series of irritating incidents which occurred with the French ships carrying contraband made clear once more that the strongest opponent to Italy's expan- sion was to be found in the same power which since Richelieu's day has considered a strong and united Italy inconsistent with her own welfare. Italian statesmen anticipated the revulsion of popular feeling toward the allied state to the north. D'Annunzio's vitriolic ode was suppressed, too violent newspapers restrained, and 44 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the interchange of diplomatic visits between Berlin, Vienna and Rome gave assurance that the three govern- ments were in accord. Italy refrained from any incite- ment of the Balkan peoples, and the war moved forward in the grooves which the friendly diplomacy of Austria had marked out. In the Triple Alliance Italy had the strongest guarantee that she would be able to hold her conquests without being obliged to have her title revised by unfriendly powers, thus fulfilling the prophetic words of the Italian statesman Prinetti on the renewal of the Alliance in 1902: "If ever the present condition of affairs in the Mediterranean is disturbed, Italy will be sure of finding no one to stand in the way of her just ambitions." A league of peace it had been for Italy within as well as without. Had it not been for this anchor, the rivalry between Italy and Austria in the Adriatic and Albania might early in the twentieth century have come to a decision of arms. It was directly due to the lack of aggressiveness in Italy's leaders in 1866 that the boun- daries of their kingdom were not made to march with the Julian Alps, and that the continuance of an Italia Irri- denta in southern Tyrol and on the Adriatic remained a sore spot to Italian patriots. From a shore almost lack- ing in ports where even a coasting freighter can ride protected the Italian mariner looked covetously over to a splendid succession of deepwater harbors from Trieste to Cattaro in Dalmatia, the historic outlet of his vigorous and fertile race. Italians as residents and immigrants swarmed along the Istrian and Dalmatian coast, and offered a perplexing problem to Austrian administration and diplomacy. Furthermore Italy sought for years to extend her influence in Albania, and Italian statesmen looked forward hopefully to a time when their country should be ready to extend a protectorate over the south- ern districts and coast of this rugged land. This of course ran directly counter to the plans of Austria, which ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 45 for many years had sought by means of schools and re- ligious institutions to draw the Christian inhabitants of northern Albania directly under her influence. The marriage of King Victor Emmanuel III to the daughter of the doughty warrior-poet, King Nicholas of Montenegro increased the natural sympathy of the house of Savoy and the Italian people for this tiny state, which had become such a thorn in the side of Austria, and which with a curious mixture of chivalry and barbarism was ever ready to dig up the hatchet afresh. In the days before the Balkan wars of 191 2, when the snow melted on the Albanian mountains in the spring and the bold tribesmen saUied forth in their annual campaign against Turkish misrule, they equipped themselves with Italian war tools, brought over the Montenegrin mountains. I In these ethnic storms the Triple Alliance proved a strong anchor, and the Balkan wars of 191 2 and 1913 seemed to knit Italy more firmly than ever to the north- ern powers. Whatever her rivalry with Austria, Italy must view the advent of an aggressive Slav state on the opposite shore of the narrow Adriatic as a mortal blow to her ambitions, and her suspicion of the Teuton was forgotten in the common danger. It seemed better to surrender forever her hopes of political expansion in Albania and the Epirus than to welcome a new rival to her seas. The ItaHan ambassador joined the other representatives of the Triple Alliance at the London conference in depriving Serbia of an Adriatic port and in forcing the Montenegrins out of Scutari. With Austria Italy stood as joint sponsor for the new state Albania. Nevertheless, neither the Italian statesmen nor people ceased for a moment to doubt Austria's intentions. ItaHan warships lay off Durazzo as interested observers of the struggle which Prince William of Wied made to maintain himself on his tottering throne against the attacks of the Moslem Albanians. Essad Pasha, the 46 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS leader of the Albanian Mohammedans, found refuge in Italy after his expulsion from Durazzo; and the fact that Prince William had to fight with only hired troops and a few adventurers, while Austria forbade the re- cruiting of troops for his service in her dominions, pointed to rigid Italian watchfulness. Each of the jealous powers would apparently rather see anarchy continue in Albania indefinitely than run the risk of permitting the other an advantage. Another result of the Balkan wars which made the Triple Alliance of the greatest importance to Italy was the rise of the Greek power. The Hellenic king- dom was shorn of her conquests in the Epirus by the London diplomats, with Italy's earnest support. Dur- ing the war with Turkey in 191 1 the Italian navy had seized twelve of the Ionic Islands, the southeastern Sporades, which under the treaty of Lausanne were to be returned to Turkey when all of the terms of peace had been complied with. The following year Greece had oc- cupied the other islands of the ^Egean and meant to hold them if possible. The islands held by Italy, Hellenic in population and enthusiastically Greek in spirit, yearned to come under the Greek flag. More than any other power Greece had profited by the Balkan wars, and it was apparent that any further growth of the Hellenic spirit might easily threaten Italy's position in the eastern Mediterranean. Plainly then from the fall of 191 1 to the summer of 1 914 the support of the Triple Alliance had been of the greatest possible moral help to Italy's security and ad- vancement. However, it must also have been plain to German and Austrian statesmen that, judging the future by the past, sic rebus stantibus had always to be underlined by those dealing with the peninsular kingdom. Bismarck once said that all contracts between great nations cease to be binding when they clash with the struggle for existence. Germany's ministers could not ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 47 fail to be aware that while Italy's development had been made with the backing of the Triple AlKance, her progress was still girt by such dangers on every side that her very existence as a state might be threatened by her entry into war. Her western and southern coasts are washed by the home waters of the French fleet, her cities from Genoa to Brindisi He open to British naval guns. The conquest of Tripoh still occupied her army and weighed upon her finances. The sons of her fertile loins, who are to be found in every zone of both hemispheres, might at any moment call upon the mother land for protection. At home the Socialist organization had for years wielded a great political power, and had been aided in industrial crises by a violent spirit of republicanism and anarchy which repeatedly brought the government almost to the end of its resources. That in spite of these difficulties, in spite of general strikes and bitter party conflicts, in spite of a total lack of coal and a very scanty supply of other mineral resources, in spite of the appalhng want and misery of the agricultural provinces, Italy had been able to retain and improve her position among the great powers, was due to a poKcy of intense selfishness towards alKes as well as opponents. Nor could those German and Austrian agents whose duty it was to discover and weigh foreign opinion have been ignorant of Italian sentiment toward the northern allies. Public opinion, a stronger force in the peninsula than in either of the Germanic states, had always looked upon the Triple Alliance as a hard necessity. As a part of his national heritage the Italian breathes in from child- hood a deep-going and unique hatred of Austria. This f eehng rests not merely upon the age-old interference of the Teutonic race in ItaHan affairs. The individual German has also grown unpopular since the foundation of the new empire because of his thrift and the success with which he has invaded Italy's business life, as well as for the abruptness with which he sought to militarize the 48 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS rounded outlines of Italian character. He has grown unpopular most of all for the way in which he has during the past four decades taken possession of the commerce and industry of the peninsula. That the situation must have been clear to the cabinets of Vienna and Berlin goes without saying. They prob- ably did not deceive themselves with any hopes that the peninsular state would support Teuton and Magyar against the Slav, nor could they have expected more than a strict neutrality from Italy in any conflict which brought France and England against the northern alhes. A tendency to misjudge Italian character and Italian policy has, however, always been one of the great weak- nesses of German diplomats since the Triple Entente came into existence. It is doubtful indeed if in the two decades which preceded the European War German press and people made any real progress toward an under- standing of Italy and its people. This ancient Teutonic incapacity, so productive of evil since the days of the Franconian and Hohenstauf en emperors, was never more manifest than at the time of the Algeciras Conference and during the Italo-Turkish war. For ages Italy had been the Mecca of cultured Germans, in recent decades every middle-class German crossed the Brenner or the Gott- hard at least once in his life, and German was heard increasingly in restaurant and art gallery, mountain inn and village tavern from Domodossola and Chiavenna to the Maltese Straits. Yet in German books and news- papers one still found the traditional criticisms of Italy as the classic land of art and filth, of beggary, bribery and administrative rottenness. Acres of newspaper articles discoursed on the squalor and misery of the Calabrian peasants or the exploits of the Neapolitan Camorra, but of such clean and model cities as Turin or the modern and efficient methods of irrigation and of agriculture in the Po Valley very little appeared, and the vigorous growth of the national spirit under the rotting ALLIES AND ENEMIES TO THE EAST 49 crusts of old despotisms almost escaped notice. It was this persistent inability to understand the evolution of modern Italy which led to the surprises that shocked German diplomats at Algeciras and found German press and pubKc entirely unprepared to appreciate Italy's position at the outbreak of the European War. CHAPTER III The Rivalry with England Of all the national hatreds which blazed into fierce flame in the summer of 19 14 none struck the neutral observer more painfully than that between Germany and England. Teuton and Slav, German and Frenchman had struggled against each other for centuries in the valleys of the Vistula and the Meuse, and the renewal of the age-old rivalry in its most brutal form, though a staggering blow to modern civilization, had neverthe- less a certain historical justification. That Briton and German should really come to death-grips, however, seemed a defiance of the laws of nature. Sister peoples they are of what is in the main Teutonic stock. But as quarrels within a family are marked by a hatred more intense and a spirit less forgiving than is shown in strife with those of alien blood, so in the wild crescendo of hate which swelled from rival parties and camps in August 1 9 14 and after there was no note so shrill as those which rang across the North Sea. "The illusion of British world power must be destroyed once for all!" "The threat of German domination must vanish from Europe!" Indeed, one may say that not since the le- gions and galleys of Rome and Carthage locked in their death-struggle had there been shown a greater deter- mination on the part of two hostile peoples to humilate each other into the dust of national impotence whence no rise should be possible for generations to come. That this feeHng was not new was of course well known to those who had watched the progress of Anglo- 50 THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 51 German relations since the Boer War. In this period ahnost the first political chord which struck the ear of the foreigner who crossed the German frontier was that of hostility to England. It became in the first decade of the twentieth century the ground-tone of every polit- ical conversation and spread to every class of Germans, finally including the higher circles of the aristocracy and the serried ranks of the Social Democracy. This feehng had as its base a deep distrust of the island empire and its poHcies. "Perfidious Albion" as completely pre- occupied the mind of the German professional man or bourgeois shopkeeper as it did the mob in Paris in the days of Robespierre. This deep conviction of England's utter lack of honesty in diplomatic affairs and the general distrust of her world policy were the more striking in view of the historic friendship between Prussia and Great Britain. Fred- erick the Great faced successfully the circle of his foes only through the support of British subsidies; and although he bitterly resented the way he was left in the lurch by EngHsh statesmen in the later days of the Seven Years' War, British diplomats remained almost the sole support of Prussian policy during the last years of Frederick's reign. It was during the Napoleonic wars, however, that Prussian enthusiasm for England ran highest. The sturdy island kingdom, holding the great usurper at bay on the sea and slowly rolling his legions back in the Peninsular campaigns, was an inspiration to the Prussian patriots who were secretly sharpening their swords for the uprising against the tyrant, and British and Prussian arms celebrated a glorious common triumph at Waterloo. In these years of the Wars of Liberation German en- thusiasm for things English reached flood tide. The English lord appears in the romances of Jean Paul Richter as the personification of individual culture, an aristocrat not merely in birth but in heart and manners. 52 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Forth out of the narrow relations of hfe as pictured in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister or Jean Paul's Hesperus, the two most popular novels of Germany one hundred years ago, the German looked upon the travelled Englishman as the typical representative of that high personal cul- ture which the age regarded as the end and aim of exist- ence. The German of the beginning of the nineteenth century travelled Httle and Uved at home under th.6 hard hand of officialdom and squeezed into the narrowest social conditions : the Briton, in German eyes, drew in freedom with his first breath, and carrying his liberties with him, roved Hke a king through the world. This enthusiasm for the individual EngHshman found its culmination in the ideaHzation of Byron's character. To German youth of the twenties and thirties, half suffocated under the pressure of the pohtical reaction of those days, the English poet seemed a hero of individ- ual development. It was not only the individual Englishman with the cosmopoHtan poHsh of the man who had travelled far and seen much that impressed German pubHcists in the early part of the nineteenth century. The British con- stitution was the ideal of German liberals. The men who made the revolution of 1848, the poHtical idealists of the abortive National Assembly in the St. Paul's church in Frankfort, regarded the British constitution as the last word in Hberal development, an attitude which Prussian liberals kept for years after. When Bismarck took the rudder in Prussia in 1862, with the determina- tion to reorganize the miUtary system of the country, constitutionally if possible, independently of the con- stitution if necessary, the men who faced him on the Liberal benches stood for the British parliamentary system through thick and thin, and it was this enthu- siasm for British guarantees and restraints on arbitrary power, backed by the influence of Crown Prince Fred- erick, that resisted Bismarck until the victories of 1866 THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 53 finally brought him a majority in the Prussian Diet. Even after the foundation of the new empire, the Crown Prince and his English wife, the daughter of Queen Victoria, formed a centre of liberalism in Berlin, in which enthusiasm for British institutions gave way very slowly to the advance of the German national spirit. Indeed the British constitution remained in many ways the ideal of National Liberals and Radicals in Germany for years after 187 1, though a deep hostility to British " imperialism " had long since taken possession of all classes of German Hberals. The beginnings of anti-British feeling in Germany must be sought in the attitude of the British press and public toward the young German empire. DisHke and distrust beget like feelings only too readily ; and while British public opinion heartily endorsed the breaking of Napoleon's power in 1870, the success of German arms was too thorough and the rise of the new confederacy too sudden not to alarm British prejudices. EngHsh sym- pathy with France increased as the end of the war came. The humiliation of the ancient rival was so complete as to arouse deep resentment on the part of the sport- loving nation across the Channel, and as usual, this resentment expressed itself toward the conqueror with a freedom and sharpness that could not fail to cut German sensitiveness to the quick. Bismarck's memoirs and those of his secretary Busch are filled with references to the bitter struggle which the Iron Chancellor waged against the court cabal in British interest centering around the Crown Princess Victoria. Slowly the con- viction won its way among the German people that in his opposition to this coterie Bismarck was not merely fighting liberalism, but that he was contending for a national policy of the greatest importance. Thus in the seventies and early eighties the foundation was slowly but strongly laid for the anti-British feeling which was later to overtop every other national enthusiasm. 54 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS That the feehng against England remained latent for so many years was due to British foreign policy, which was until the end of the last century chiefly directed against Russia. England has always made it her aim to protect the balance of power on the Continent by opposing that power which seems to threaten the bal- ance most aggressively. Thus she opposed France under Louis XIV in the age of Queen Anne, France and Austria in the following generation, and Napoleon until the Cor- sican usurper ended his days on one of the most barren British islands. She could not be insensible to the rapid advance of Germany's miHtary power, reinforced as it was in 1879 and 1882 by alKances with Austria and Italy. It was, however, a period of Russian ag- gression, and Russia was the power with which British interests colUded. To see how thoroughly this idea pervaded English offlcial and miHtary circles until toward the end of the century one needs only to read Kipling's sombre tale of the Indian border, "The Man who Was." Thus it came about that British diplomats supported Bismarck against Russia at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 ; and after the latter's check in the Bal- kans had turned the activities of the Czar's statesmen and soldiers from the Bosphorus toward Afghanistan, British diplomacy made Germany far-reaching con- cessions. In 1884 and 1885 Great Britain met Bismarck fully halfway in the negotiations which preceded the establishment of the German colony in southwest Africa. Here for the first time the great Chancellor came fully and fairly into collision with British diplomacy and more than held his own. Several years later, while fighting the intrigues of the court circle about the Empress Victoria he summed up German opinion of English diplomats in a conversation with his press agent Busch : "Humanity, peace and Hberty, — those are always their pretexts, when they cannot by way of a change invoke Christianity and the introduction of the blessings of THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 55 civilization to savage and semi-barbarous peoples." In fact the supposed influence of the EngHsh royal family on the Emperor Frederick and his son, WiUiam II, was the cause of the bitterest and coarsest attacks which have ever been made on the Hohenzollern dy- nasty by its otherwise loyal subjects. No Socialist writer has ever ventured to go so far in denunciation of WilHam II as the monarchical Pan- Germanic press did during the exciting days of the Boer War. Long before Bismarck's retirement German industrial development had begun to go forward in a way that threatened British trade. While up to 1880 Germany had hardly been regarded as a competitor of England at all in the international market, in the sixteen years which elapsed between the acquisition of the first German colony and the Boer war EngHsh salesmen found themselves anticipated by German wares even in the remotest corners of South America and Asia. Until 1890 British trade had dominated the colonial markets ; after 1890 there began an influx of an ever widening stream of the products of German industries. These wares were introduced by carefully trained men, who understood the language of the buyer and were prepared to meet his demands and adapt themselves to his tastes. It is dangerous to generaHze as to national traits, but it may safely be said that at this time a concih- atory spirit was not characteristic of the British manu- facturer, who was wont to rely too much on the quality of his product for a successful sale. The German manu- facturer gave to the subject of sales the same careful attention as to the perfection of the means of production, and the far-flung network of industrial and trade schools — with their capstone, the Handelshochschulen, the commercial universities, which came into being toward the end of the century — won so many vic- tories for German trade that they soon attracted an ever increasing number of English students to the 56 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Fatherland. Trade rivalry always creates a basis favor- able to political bitterness ; and the enormous growth of German trade, going in German bottoms into mar- kets which up to the last decade of the nineteenth century had been preeminently English, was destined to lay the basis for a national rivalry which was certain to express itself as soon as the political situation per- mitted it. Many minor signs of the growing German dislike for EngHsh poHcy and EngHsh resentment over German rivalry showed themselves in the early nineties. The explosion came when Dr. Jameson made his ill-advised raid into the Transvaal in 1895. At this violation of the rights of the racially related Boers German wrath against the British burst into an expression of hatred which was nation-wide and found vent among all classes, occasionally in dignified form, more often, as is apt to be the case with national feeling deeply aroused, in ways that were violent and sometimes puerile. After Jameson and his party were suppressed. Kaiser William, in January 1896, probably at the suggestion of his foreign minister, the aggressive Marschall von Bie- berstein, whose work in building the Turkish alliance will be described below (page 77), telegraphed to President Kriiger, congratulating him on having over- come the enemies of his country without the necessity of calling on friendly foreign powers. No act could have been more unfortunate from an international standpoint, unless Germany really meant to go to war in defense of the Boer states. In England the publication of the telegram was greeted with amazed resentment; in Germany it was the match which exploded the whole mine of bitter dislike, the pent-up sense of restraint before England's power, the hatred of the older com- mercial rival who claimed to play the role of dictator in every corner of the world overseas. And when in 1899 the inevitable war between England and the South THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 57 African republics finally broke out, it found the Germans as one man on the side of the Boers. To those who know the force of German idealism this could be no surprise. During all of the European crises for one hundred years, from the Greek struggle for in- dependence down, German pubhc opinion has inclined to champion the cause of the weaker party, even when national interests were involved on the other side. Now the empire through press and publicists raised its voice as one man in favor of the two Kttle states in their struggle against the British world monopoly. This, however, was the attitude of every European people and of both Americas as well : what gave a pecuHarly sharp point to German invective against England was not rage at the throttling of the Boer republics nor the much-exploited racial kinship between Dutch and Ger- man. No European nation was so thoroughly informed as Germany, thanks to the patient, scientific methods of its press, as to the real character of the Transvaal repubhcs, and no nation would have made shorter shrift with the Boers, had Germany stood in Great Britain's place. The real cause of Germany's ardent champion- ship lay in the feehng, often expressed during the war, that the sturdy Dutch South Africans were really fight- ing the battles of Germany against the hated Anglo- Saxon rival. To an American who spent the years 1899 to 1901 in Germany and who lived through the anti-British demon- strations which accompanied the English defeats and still more the EngHsh victories in South Africa, there can be little pleasure but much enHghtenment in re- calKng the manifestations of national intolerance. The pro-Boer, or rather the anti-British feeling showed it- self at every public gathering, from the full-throated singing of the Boer national hymn in restaurants and theatres to prayers in the churches for the success of the Boer arms. Some of the demonstrations took the form 58 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS of a rowd3dsm which is happily rare in German life, such as the insulting of Englishmen and Englishwomen on the streets or the breaking of windows in English boarding homes in Hanover and Dresden. For such things one can hardly hold a nation responsible : they are the manifestations of political unripeness which come to the fore in certain quarters whenever the national soul is deeply moved. Even newspapers of high standards added their testimony as to the agitated condition of the public mind by allowing themselves to accept every report of Boer success and every rumor of British cruelty as gospel. The press in Germany, as will be pointed out below, has the habit, not unknown in other lands, of allowing its editorial views to en- croach on its news columns, and this political im- maturity, — for it can be called nothing else, — which warps and twists the unwelcome news of defeats into victories, displayed itself during the days of the relief of Ladysmith and Mafeking even in the larger met- ropoHtan journals. It was the same political imma- turity which during the war between America and Spain caused reputable newspapers in Berlin, Cologne and Munich to accept the wildest reports of Spanish vic- tories sent out from Madrid with perfect creduHty, and to spread them before their readers in the blackest of type, while the Associated Press despatches from Washington were printed in obscure corners and usually in garbled form, plentifully besprinkled with editorial question marks and exclamation points. Similarly the German press in the war between Italy and Turkey in 1911-12, having backed the losing horse, printed and endorsed many extravagant reports from Constantinople regarding Turkish victories in Tripoli and Cyrenaica, even though the editors and every intelligent reader knew that communication of news between North Africa and the Golden Horn was out of the question. Already during the Boer War the press tone in Germany THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 59 toward England had become marked by the notes of slander and hatred which swelled fifteen years later into shrill discords. A perfect riot of abuse of everything British ran at that time through even the better informed press. On the other hand, with a romanticism truly German, the makers of pubHc opinion introduced the Boers to their readers as a race of peasants Kke those famihar to every German in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, — simple and pious children of nature attacked in their holiest rights. To the same readers the British were represented as a cruel people, steeped in Hes and reeking with the blood of primitive races, eager for an easy conquest over inferiors but pusillanimous in battle with equals. The motives of a nation's actions are as mixed as those of an individual, and tribute must be paid to the noble feeling which inspired many Germans in their en- thusiasm for the under dog. Nevertheless it cannot be doubted that well-informed German editors were under no illusion regarding the barbarity and selfishness of the Boers : the very immaturity of public expression in Germany betrayed the fact that the greater part of the nation cared nothing for Boer success but everything for the humihation of England. "They are fighting our battles down there on the kopjes of South Africa," was heard again and again, and there is no doubt that many Germans, nursed on the legend of England's decadence, already saw the Union Jack fading before the black-white-red banner as the ruling standard of the colonial world. England's naval position was, however, in no wise weakened by the struggle ; and the jealousy of Dual and Triple Alliance of each other prevented any harmony of action towards the intervention which Russia at least would have welcomed. In addition, the German Emperor himself, as shown in a memorable interview in the London Daily Telegraph in 1908 (cf. page in), had at that time extremely friendly feelings 6o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS for England, and went so far as to work out a plan of campaign for the British advance, which he caused to be criticised by his general staff and forwarded to London. This act of "personal government," in its way as arbitrary as any ever committed by the Peters and Alexanders of Russia, might perhaps have caused revolutionary outbreaks, had it become known in Ger- many at the time of greatest national excitement, in- stead of nine years later. The Boer war, which marked the beginning of so many new movements in the political life of England, opened a new chapter in the relations between England and Ger- many. The Germans saw their great rival, who had preceded them into the field of " imperial " politics by four generations, enfeebled almost to the point of exhaustion, and yet so weak was the German fleet that the empire was unable to take advantage of the favor- able conjuncture in any way, or even, if need arose, to protect its own merchant marine from arbitrary search or seizure by British cruisers scouting for contraband. No object lesson could have been driven home upon any people with more telling force. If Germany were ever to play a more important role than that of an impotent and agitated spectator in overseas affairs, the mailed fist must also be able to make itself felt on blue water. Enthusiasm for the building of a great fleet, which had begun to be nursed into Hfe by friends of the colonies in 1896 and had made great progress even before the war, grew now by leaps and bounds. In the spring of 1898 the government had forced the naval bill through the Reichstag in the face of the opposition of the entire Left and a part of the Centre : two years later amid demonstrations of popular enthusiasm and with the support of practically all parties in the Reichstag ex- cept the Social Democrats and the anti-national fac- tions, a new law was passed which should in six years more than double the size of the German fleet. In the THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 6i meantime the Navy League, which had been organized in 1898, found all classes receptive for the agitation which it carried on by means of public meetings, illus- trated lectures and countless articles in the press. After 1900 the enthusiasm for the building of a great fleet grew rapidly to a point where the ministry could hardly bring in proposals fast enough to suit the majority of the nation. Most surprising was the way in which the naval storm swept the entire Left along, when one recalls how slowly and hesitatingly the Liberal and Radical parties in Germany had risen to the conception of the colonial and overseas future of the Fatherland. The SociaHsts still protested, but it was a hfeless and formal protest. Here and there a Radical paper sounded a note of warning at the speed with which the nation was pledging away its resources in the effort to rival England on the seas; nevertheless in 191 2 the entire Radical party voted tremendous additions to the fleet, and when the Defense Bill of 1913 was brought forward, no member of the Left except the Social Democrats Hfted his voice against a further strengthening of the navy. Most striking of all was the way in which districts Hke Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, remote from the seacoast, were swept along in the common enthusiasm, showing how fully local selfishness and particularism had given way before the idea of a " Greater Germany." As usual the British were slow to take alarm. Bitter- ness over Germany's trade rivalry and deep resentment at the violent partisanship and accusations of the Germans during the Boer war were increasingly evident in the Enghsh press, but the new century was well started before EngHshmen reaHzed that the industrious Germans were really preparing to threaten Britain's naval su- premacy. Not indeed until the publication of the naval program of 1906 did the London papers and their readers become thoroughly aroused. EngHshmen, al- ready restive under the rapid growth of Germany's 62 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS trade, could not construe the tremendous increase of the German fleet in any other way than as a direct threat to overthrow the mistress of the seas. The time- honored idea that Britain's existence as a nation de- pends on her abiHty to hold the ocean against the combined forces of any two hostile nations must be aban- doned ; the island kingdom must exert itself to maintain a safe leadership over the German empire alone. After the first alarm, as soon as the popular mind had become convinced that the Admiralty was alive to the situation, pubHc anxiety was relieved, only to arise anew as from time to time the Conservative press brought Germany's naval growth more and more clearly before British readers. Certain London papers, indeed, made of the "German peril" a regular bugaboo in order to put life into the poHtical situation at home. Since 1904 English foreign poHcy has had the " German peril" as its ground tone. It was this that brought England and France together in 1904 and created the Entente, for which King Edward's foreign poHcy has usually received the credit. It was the weakening of Russia in the war with Japan and the consequent loss of balance in eastern Europe in favor of the Triple AlHance which induced England to open the way for the ancient enemy and rival, now weakened and for the present harmless, to enter a friendly understanding. The Triple Entente between England, France and Russia which finally came into being in 1907, had its prelude in common action at the Algeciras Conference of 1906 ; and the entire Morocco controversy showed a com- munity of interest among Germany's three rivals and solidified the ring which English diplomacy had been drawing around the growing ambitions of her feared antagonist. The matter reached a crisis in the summer of 191 1, when the German warship was sent to Agadir on the coast of southern Morocco (cf. page 18), and Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George, the former in the THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 63 House of Commons, the latter in a Guildhall speech, declared in language but thinly veiled that under no circumstances would Great Britain permit the German Empire to secure any point which might serve as a naval base on the West African coast. To understand the bitter explosion in Germany over this curt warning one must recall that many voices, not merely Pan- Ger- manic voices, were clamoring for the cession of southern Morocco, and there seems no doubt that France, if left to her own devices, would have wilUngly yielded to Germany control over the country to the south if she could thereby have secured a free hand on the Mediter- ranean and in northern Morocco. So much the more humiliating therefore was the declaration of the British ministry, and even a less sensitive and honor loving nation than the German would have resented it. All the world now knows how close England and Germany were to war in August and September 191 1 ; only the greatest self-restraint on the part of the two foreign offices, for which Germany, as in a sense the aggrieved power, deserved the greater credit, prevented a clash of fleets in the North Sea and the frightful disaster to civilization which finally came two years and eleven months later. That portion of German pubHc opinion which was ever able to view the affair calmly severely criticised the government for leading the nation into a bhnd alley and provoking a humiUation. Once more Germany gave back before England's sea power, and accepted a settlement with France which resigned hopes of a foothold on the West African coast for an inland equatorial district of minor economic value and no strategic importance. Once more the empire saw its freedom on the sea, a freedom which is directly dependent on naval bases, checked by British jealousy. Stripped of all the wild words of Pan-Germanic chauvinists, Germany's attitude toward England was just this : " Great Britain rules over one- 64 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS fourth of the earth's surface and one-third of its in- habitants. She has girdled the globe with naval sta- tions and fortified ports. She opposes and checkmates Germany in all of her efforts to obtain naval bases and coaHng harbors, and she looks with a bilious and dis- approving eye on the building of a fleet which is to enable the empire to furnish adequate and legitimate protec- tion to its growing commerce. If she takes every op- portunity to thwart Germany's natural ambition, she must accept the consequences when the young German fleet shall have grown great enough to hazard a conflict with the colossus. When that day comes, let England look out ! Then the storm-defended isle shall have its security tested." One did not need to look in the fire- breathing BerHn Post or the Tdgliche Rundschau for such expressions : they were to be found even in such well-balanced journals as the Frankfurter Zeitung or the Kolnische Zeitung, and in provincial newspapers from Strasburg to Konigsberg. The additions to the fleet in April and May 191 2 and again in the budget of 191 3 were voted by a Reichstag, the majority of whose mem- bers were Liberal or Socialist, with enthusiasm, and every expression of Winston Churchill's in the House of Com- mons with respect to Germany's naval power, especially the unfortunate reference to the German fleet as a "luxury," called forth bitter outbursts of distrust and indignation in the Reichstag and the pubhc press. England then — so held German patriots — was Germany's great stumbling block. All that German thrift and industry had been able to accomplish in the past decades, all the attainments of German inventors and technicians, all the triumphs of Germany in the rivalry for the world's trade, rested upon an insecure basis, so long as Great Britain ruled the seas and blocked every avenue to German political advance oversea. It was not British technicians or scholars or workmen or salesmen that kept Germany from taking the "place THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 65 in the sun" to which she was justly entitled, but the rude power of British bottoms and cannon. Having by robbery and chicane won numerous naval vantage spots, Great Britain now interposed with dog-in-the- manger insolence a determined opposition to the reason- able claims of the empire to poKtical expansion. '' Car- thage must be destroyed!" cried the Pan-Germanists, and not only these. "Great Britain has by her h5^o- critical diplomacy and by treacherous incitement of one nation against another ruled the world long enough. Sooner or later she will try to destroy Germany's power ; either she or we must perish." This wave of bitterness, which reached its first flood height just after the close of the Morocco episode, soon had its effect in England. Across the Channel, as has been noted, hostile feeling against the Germans first became keen as a result of the Boer war. Frenzied attacks on the British national character, unpleasant caricatures of the British royal family, including the aged Queen Victoria, outbreaks of rowdyism toward EngHsh residents and travellers, all bore their natural fruit in England. National mistrust of German poHcy had, as we have seen, a far deeper foundation, resting on the commercial and industrial rivalry by which Germany had continually gained upon the former un- disputed mistress of the world's trade. To this is to be added the wild and irresponsible talk of the Pan- Germanists, in whose mind the young empire was some day to revive the glories of the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, and the Hohenzollern, Hke Henry V or Barbarossa, to hold sway over a succession of vassal states from the North Sea and the Baltic to southern Italy. Such fantastic dreams as this, though entertained by not a few German patriots, were not taken seriously by the great majority of the nation. Nevertheless, it is not to be wondered at that the British public, already exasperated by the violence of loose- 66 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS mouthed German journalists, grew mistrustful over the reports of these and other wilder dreams of German brochurist and editor, especially when accompanied by accounts of the rapid growth of the German fleet. The British rate-payer, hard hit as he was by the introduction of compulsory insurance and other social legislation, might have been willing to accept the explanation that the German fleet was for defense rather than conquest but for the constant stream of chauvinist threats launched from Berlin and the provincial press. Why did the Germans need a great fleet? This was a question which the average Englishman now refused to answer save in one way : "It is a threat against England." In fact, during the several crises of the Morocco negotia- tions, notably in 1905 and 191 1, a panic developed which did no credit to the British reputation for poise and self-control. While the government in August 191 1 unostentatiously made all preparations to mobilize the home naval strength against a German naval attack, frightened Enghshmen began to see the smoke of Germany's battleships already on the horizon and to smell out a spy in every German waiter. The arrest and trial of spies, one of the most disagreeable tasks that can fall to the duty of any government, began to be carried on in 191 1 on both sides of the North Sea with more enthusiasm than judgment, with, however, the difference that German judicial procedure has cer- tain Star Chamber methods which are highly repugnant to British feelings. Such trials as those of Captain Stewart of the British Naval Reserve, who was sentenced by the Imperial Supreme Court in Leipsic in January 191 2 to five years' imprisonment, aroused deep resent- ment in England. In the meantime naval armament went on. In 191 2 the British Admiralty formally abandoned its "two for one" poHcy, and announced that henceforth British navy yards would lay down three warships for every THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 67 two which were undertaken by the leading rival nation, a program which was afterwards taken to mean "six- teen to ten" in comparative fighting units. No end of the battle of pocketbooks was visible. So long as Germany was convinced that England was constantly plotting to isolate the empire and block its legitimate efforts towards poHtical expansion, so long as Britons felt that the German fleet was destined for the destruc- tion of the British sea power and a threat against Eng- land's national existence, so long must the terrific race continue. Hypnotized by its dread of the other, it seemed that neither party could pause until the moment of exhaustion should be reached. There were signs on both sides, however, that business circles felt that the limit was being approached. Before the end of 191 2 'there were not lacking voices, chiefly Liberal and Radical, in both countries which called loudly for an end to the exhausting competition. With the Balkan Wars of 191 2 and 1913 a turn in the poHtical relations of Germany and England seemed to have been reached. Each of these crises tried to the utmost the resources of European diplomacy. The formation of the Balkan Alliance had endangered Austria-Hungary's position and Austria-Hungary was Germany's only dependable ally. In case of an attack by the Franco-Russian coalition, even unsupported by England, Germany would, without the help of Austria, have had a desperate task to maintain herseh. Thus, as we have seen, the German general staff brought before the Reichstag in the spring of 19 13 a Defense Bill, which increased the active strength of the army by 136,000 officers and men and 27,000 horses, provided for the aviation corps, added to the transportation and intelhgence equipment and prepared for an enormous amount of new war material. These additions in men and material which cost the Entente Alhes so dear in the early stages of the European War were mainly ad- A 68 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS ditions to the army. The lesson of 191 1 had, however, taught both Germany and England that a conflict between the two countries would find British troops fighting on the Continent with Germany's opponents. As shown by the documents found by the Germans in the Belgian archives at Brussels, the British authorities had counted upon the violation of Belgian neutrahty as a strong probability and were laying plans during the Morocco crises in 1905 and 191 1 and during the Balkan crisis of 191 2 to face this emergency. In 1913 the rift in the Balkan League relieved Austria and her Germanic ally from the fear of a solid alliance of the southeastern powers, fired by Russian intrigue, but the question of an outlet for Serbia to the Adriatic was still pending and big with terrible possibilities. The searching of diplomatic hearts which followed the outbreak of war in August 19 14 revealed how close Europe had been to a conflagration in the two preceding years. The London Conference of the powers which marked off the new boundaries in the Balkans, carving out an autonomous Albania as a buffer state and a breastwork against the Slavic march to the Adriatic, stood under the leadership of Sir Edward Grey, but Germany shared control with England, and both powers seem to have worked honestly and earnestly to preserve the world's peace, which at that time tottered to a fall. For the delay of a year in letting loose the horrors of war upon Europe the honest effort of both powers deserves all credit. Indeed, it must be emphasized that when in January and April of the fateful year 19 14 the German press began to be filled with mutterings of Russia's war preparations, the greatest military and the greatest naval power in the world had at last settled down to a state of affairs which, while armed and watch- ful, nevertheless seemed to contain some possibilities of a final understanding. In 191 2 Germany had sent her best diplomat, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 69 as ambassador to London. He it was who had spun the web of German influence around the Turkish sultan, and much was counted on from his trained touch, which Hke the hand of steel under a silken glove knew how to bring the play of force under the form of a caress. But fate willed otherwise. In less than a year Baron Marschall died and his place was taken by Prince Lichnowsky, a member of the Silesian landed aris- tocracy. A gentleman of culture and refinement, the new German ambassador won the respect of the British diplomats and seemed in a fair way to accom- pHsh much for the improvement of Anglo- German re- lations when the bomb and pistol of the assassins of Sarajevo lighted a fuse which no diplomatic skill could extinguish. To the superficial observer it would seem, indeed, that the most sensitive questions of difference between Germany and England had been settled. Morocco was defiiiitely out of the way. The Bagdad Railway, which had seemed so big with trouble, had reached a stage of preliminary agreement. This question will be treated in some detail in the next chapter. It was, in effect, nothing more than a race between Great Britain and Germany as to which power should develop the fat basin of the Tigris and Euphrates. However, in the face of the far more dangerous potentiahties of the Balkan problem both powers showed themselves ready to give and take, and a conference on the Bagdad Railway between the governments of London, Berlin and Constantinople in the spring of 191 3 was carried on in a new spirit of conciliation. Liberal journals on both sides of the North Sea greeted with enthusiasm these signs of an attitude of compromise, which is the first essential to a lasting peace between nations. Indeed, during the two years preceding the outbreak of the European War many elements in both countries were feverishly at work, striving to make a conflict between 70 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Germany and England impossible. Far-sighted men on both sides of the North Sea recognized how much peace- ful rivalry had done and might yet do in stimulating both nations in the field of commercial enterprise, and Ger- man trade circles particularly bent the weight of their influence on Radical and National Liberal press and parHamentary leaders to cultivate better relations with England. Peace between England and Germany was, however, not to be. The sources of their rivalry lay too close to the heart of each people and had become too vitally interwoven with the ambitions of the British and German races. Enough has been said to show that it was not the neutrality of Belgium or the protection of French ports, no mere "scrap of paper," whether it contained an international treaty covering Belgian neutrality or a British agreement with Russia, that brought Great Britain into the circle of Germany's foes in August 1914. Ever since the Boer War the stage was being set for the conflict, and if in 191 1 over a question in which the safety of British commerce was only indirectly involved peace could scarcely be maintained, it is hardly thinkable that in a struggle which put at stake the entire balance on the European continent, the British people would stand idly by while the central powers triumphed. This was the fact, and the diplomatic sparring revealed in White and Yellow and Orange books and papers reads like the arguments of clever lawyers over a case which all had decided must be appealed to a higher court. Despite all humanitarian feeling and talk about Bel- gium, Great Britain must sooner or later have taken up arms to prevent Germany from making herself stronger on blue water as an issue of the conflict. The only way in which the Berlin diplomats could have kept Great Britain out of the war would have been by accepting from the London government such restrictions on the movements of the Kaiser's armies and fleet against France THE RIVALRY WITH ENGLAND 71 as would have insured Germany's defeat. To this point the iron logic of events had brought the rival nations. The failure to reahze this clearly before the beginning of the negotiations which led up to the war of 1914 must be set down as one of the most grievous mistakes of German diplomacy. CHAPTER IV Expansion and Ambitions If in the first decade of the twentieth century the nations outside of the Triple Alliance had been asked to vote as to which power constituted the greatest danger to the peace of the world, there is no doubt that the verdict would have fallen almost unanimously against Germany. "Not believing in peace, the Ger- mans do not know how to organize peace," writes the French historian Gabriel Hanotaux with respect to the establishment and continual strengthening of the mihtary system by which the Germans stood on guard against French revenge and Russian aggressions. In fact, most historians would probably agree with the French academician and statesman in putting upon Germany the responsibility for the so-called "armed peace" which prevailed in Europe for forty-three years after the rise of united Germany and united Italy. Having torn Alsace and Lorraine from France by vio- lence, the empire felt obliged to retain them by a con- stant display of force. The presence in central Europe of a great power armed to the teeth made it necessary for its neighbors to adopt the same poUcy ; and France and Austria, Italy and even Belgium and Switzerland and Holland put forth unremitting and exhausting efforts to get every man of weapon-bearing age within reach of the call to mobilization, pouring out the wealth of their taxpayers for new cannon, new explosives, new uniforms and new-model equipment of every character. 72 EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 73 Scarcely was the infantry equipped with a new type of magazine rifle when the invention of some deadlier device demanded an expensive substitution. Each fresh discovery in the field of science, such as the wire- less telegraph, the dirigible balloon and the aeroplane, was immediately organized into an instrument for help in war with further demands on the taxpayers. When government means did not suffice, the drum beat of the chauvinistic press called forth voluntary offerings from private citizens, and here again nation rivalled nation, as in the public subscriptions for the equipment of an aviation corps in France and Germany in 191 2. In arraigning Germany for inciting to this mad race of pocketbooks, foreign critics are apt to forget that the Empire is almost entirely without natural defenses. It has, as Joseph de Maistre once said of Austria, "neigh- bors on every side and frontiers nowhere." One forgets also that for centuries Germany was a battle ground for the selfi.shness and bloodlust of Frenchmen, Dutch- men, Swedes, Spaniards and the Slavic peoples, and blames the nation for having taken the only means which under the infirmities of the present stage of civiHza- tion are effective for insuring peace and prosperity within the confines of a great state. The picture of Germany as the naughty boy on the international playground was drawn and retouched by the Russian, French and British press until the popular mind outside of central Europe came to accept it without question. Here the Germans were greatly handicapped by the lack of an international press agency of standing. Reuter's Bureau, which enwraps the world with its network of correspondents, is under British control. The great London dailies, like the Times and the Daily Chronicle, have at their disposal a host of far-scattered newsgatherers, highly trained men, whose position with these powerful organs — by weight of tradition, if nothing else — gives them an insight into difficult 74 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS situations all over the world and enables them to speak with authority. Against these efl&cient organs of newsgathering and publicity Germany has had only Wolff's Bureau, a comparatively weak of&cial mouth- piece, altogether without standing outside of the Father- land, and newspapers whose names are scarcely known beyond the German-speaking world. The shortcomings of the German papers as newsgatherers will be dis- cussed below, here it is enough to note that the tone of immaturity and triviality which has marked the German press in dealing with poHtical affairs has been especially noticeable in its foreign correspondence. In Paris, Washington, St. Petersburg and Rome the correspond- ents of the leading London papers are men whose intel- lectual and social gifts often give them almost a diplo- matic standing. How different the material is from which German correspondents are drawn becomes appallingly clear when one reads over a few of the futile, captious and misinformed letters which have appeared from these capitals in the Berlin press. The international in- fluence of the German press is also greatly reduced by the fact that German is only just becoming an inter- national language. For centuries French and EngHsh have been the medium of world discourse, and the difl&- culties of German make its rivalry with the two West European dialects no easy matter. Up to the outbreak of the European war most German news came to America through EngHsh channels, and our journals rarely took an entirely independent attitude toward Germany's for- eign relations. *■ The results of this Anglo-French control over news channels were evident in every crisis. Not merely among its rivals, but in every country where German is a foreign idiom, Germany was made to appear as an interloper in international affairs. In the struggles in Samoa in 1898, in the Morocco affair, in Austria's an- nexation of the Balkan provinces in 1908, in the war EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 75 between Italy and Turkey, in the contest between Turkey and the Balkan states, Germany was regularly repre- sented to the world by the Anglo-Franco-American press as a trouble maker. The supposed vaulting ambi- tion of the German Emperor or the greed of the Berhn government appeared always as a cloud on the European horizon. In their zeal to publish to the world the German danger the opponents of the empire did not even pretend to be logical. Thus German efforts to get a predominant influence in southern Morocco caused bitter criticism in the same London and New York journals which found France's assumption of practically sovereign rights over an ahen race a step in the beneficent progress of civilization. Germany, it was said, could be building a great fleet only in order to satisfy her "land hunger," while practically the same movement on the part of France and Russia appeared in the British in- fluenced press as a perfectly natural step in national development. In the discussion of every international question Germany was made to appear in the uttermost parts of the civiHzed world marked with the stigma of a disturber of the peace. For this attitude of the great family of civilized nations outside of Austria-Hungary not all of the blame rested upon foreign misrepresentation. A considerable part was to be credited to the faults of German diplomacy. Bismarck once said that the want of finesse was, accord- ing to circumstances, now a strength and now a weak- ness of German policy. In the field of latter-day diplo- macy it showed itself almost entirely a weakness. The fluctuations and uncertainties, the false starts and sub- sequent withdrawals of German poHcy in the years between 1895 and 191 5 led again and again to sharp criticism in the Reichstag and among thinking German publicists. The vacillating course which entered on a vigorous policy in China, only to abandon it after expensive investments, showed a gleam of over-zealous 76 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS friendship for Spain on a memorable May i in Manila harbor and then sought by every means to re- move American suspicions, neglected a golden oppor- tunity for England's friendship after the Boer War, failed to win the support of Spain in the early stages of the Morocco imbrogho, — this course cost German patriots dear in the two decades after Bismarck's retire- ment. These demi-voltes have been ascribed by many Germans to the strong personal influence of the Emperor on the nation's foreign poHcy ; but many of the failures of the German diplomatic service both at home and abroad were to be charged to the feudal organization of the department, which reserved the higher posts for the vigorous but self-willed aristocracy. In part these failures were most certainly due to the sturdy independ- ence of German character, which cannot substitute clever subterfuge for brutal frankness and which often seems incapable of successful diplomatic intrigue. It is unfortunate that so many German statesmen have sought to model their conduct after Bismarck, who, like Robert Guiscard, was a combination of lion and serpent, masking under a sturdy Teutonic frankness of approach a rare capacity for the subterranean methods of diplomacy and possessing a real gift of second sight in his ability to penetrate the moves and motives of his opponents. The statesmen that followed him retained Bismarck's bluster without the clever strategy by which the Iron Chancellor outflanked his opponents. Instead of a poHcy, they advanced many and often self-contra- dictory policies, and on several occasions during the Morocco crises showed themselves sadly lacking before the smooth finesse of the French ambassadors or the far-reaching selfish statesmanship of the British diplo- mats. That the possession of the finer diplomatic qualities is not inconsistent with German character was illustrated by the record of the late Freiherr Marschall von Bieberstein, transferred in the spring of 191 2 from EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 77 the ambassador's post at Constantinople to that of London (cf. page 68). In nearly a score of years at the Turkish capital this sturdy Swabian aristocrat continually strengthened the position of Germany with the Porte, holding by his frankness and cleverness the respect of friend and foe, outflanking English, French and Russian manoeuvres and inoculating the Young Turk leaders of 1908, some of whom had spent years of exile in Paris and London, with the same friendship for Ger- many which had been a steady tradition of the old despot Abdul Hamid. Baron Marschall was an ultra-Conservative and had been a leader many years before of the Conservative group in the Baden Chamber. However, an ultra- Conservative from Baden or any other one of the South German states is almost a Liberal as compared with the Prussian members of the feudal class, with their rigid feeling of caste and their intolerance of anything which scents even faintly of popular government. This class, standing knee-deep in military and feudal traditions, seeks its political ideals in the Prussia of the days of the Reaction rather than in the Germany of the present day, with its swift pulsing industrial life and far-flung com- merce. Unfortunately for Germany's international in- terests, this class, which stands so close to the imperial administration, has furnished by far the larger part of Germany's diplomatic representatives. German diplomacy has blunders enough on its shoulders, but the German people themselves were largely respon- sible for the "sabre rattling" which became associated with Germany's entry into every international crisis. All — diplomats, emperor and people — seemed to have something of the uncertain attitude of the parvenu who is not just sure of his ground. The new power had grown too quickly to give either rulers or people the poise and self-confidence possessed by those nations which had longer played a leading role in the inter- 78 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS national drama. This explains the lack of self-restraint and the mixture of hesitation and bravado so marked during the Morocco affair and the Balkan wars, not merely in the more chauvinistic organs and the misin- formed provincial journals, but even in such dignified pubUcations as the Kolnische Zeitung or the Milnchner I Allgemeine Zeitung. The trouble lay in the exaggerated / self-consciousness which developed throughout all classes in Germany during the entire period which lay between the two wars. The easy conquest over France had fostered the idea that power is all that counts in the world of nations, and the phenomenal growth of Ger- many's trade and industry and the overwhelming suc- cess due to her educational accomplishments, especially in the technical field, inflated national consciousness to the point of egotism. Our fathers were wont to com- plain of British superiority of manner : the present generation could with justice complain of German bumptiousness. Uninterrupted success and prosperity bore the same fruit as in the days when " Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked." The German knew that his nation had the best military system in the world; he was fully aware that his efficient elementary schools, his industrial and technical schools, his industrial and commercial organization and especially the won- derful dovetailing of industry and commerce with higher education had put the Fatherland in front of the nations of the world as regards the efficiency of its units; while a remarkable sense of discipline and subordination, begotten of the German character and developed through centuries of efficient schooling, made it possible to forge these units into a national machine of rare efficiency. The German felt and knew all of this and rejoiced therein until he developed an egotism which blinded him in a measure to his own national weaknesses and to the strong sides of his neigh- bors. He grew to regard it as a matter of course that the EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 79 Frenchman was decadent, the Italian lazy and corrupt and the Russian an ignorant barbarian ; and he finally came to the point where the British empire was an insult to his own powers. He loved to point out the mistakes of the administration in Egypt and India and to ridicule the British army, made up, not like the German army, of "a people in arms," but of "hirelings" who rented their fighting abilities. His journals con- stantly pictured the British citizen as a tradesman-soul without love of honor and devotion to Fatherland, and held up to their readers the monstrous fabric of the British empire as an anachronism. A consideration of his own efficient methods convinced the average Ger- man that he was a better teacher, trainer and adminis- trator than the Briton, who Hved in degenerate ease on a capital gathered at a time when England had no com- petitors. Paired with this confidence in himself there went a blind confidence in the general staff and all the powers of his central administration and an exu- berant optimism as to the nation's power to meet any crisis. The fact is that in the international family Germany was still a youth, and its youthful expressions of jin- goism sounded often Hke our own Western bumptious- ness in the salad days of the republic. Thus the seizure of Kiao Chau in 1897 and the expedition against the Chinese Boxers in 1900 were accompanied by an ex- plosion of national enthusiasm as if the imperial eagle had already spread its claws over the Far East ; and the spectacular visit of the Emperor to Tangier in 1905 led to an outburst of jubilation which could hardly have been exceeded if Germany had already successfully annexed the southern half of Morocco. This bounding optimism, at once a characteristic of youth and of German romanticism, led to correspondingly unjustifi- able fits of depression. Thus after the Morocco affair the bitterest criticism was directed against the govern- 8o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS ment for not fulfilling hopes which ought never to have been entertained. Aside from these exhibitions of political immaturity, often taking the form of a dangerous chauvinism, Ger- many certainly owed the world no apology for her mili- tary preparations or expansive impulses. Whatever verdict historians may finally reach as to the causes of the European war of 1914, it is clear enough that after 1 87 1 Germany had no choice save to keep her matches burning, and that if she was to defend her existence as a nation, she must maintain a powerful army and con- stantly increase its efl&ciency. Without attempting to justify the moves of German diplomats or the bluster of German journals, it must also be conceded that the nation had ample reason for the building of a strong fleet, since a glance at the figures showing the German movement of population in the four decades after the Empire came into existence proves that it was no mere "land hunger" that provided the nation's expansive power. The causes were in no sense political ones, but the outcome of stern social and economic forces. While in the period 1876 to 191 1 the nation's birthrate fell ^^ per cent, a much more rapid fall being registered in the large cities and industrial centres, this loss was more than compensated by a steady decrease in the deathrate as a result of improved social conditions, such as old age pensions, accident insurance, sick insurance, sanitary progress and the strenuous efforts on the part of the governments and private associations to reduce the mortality rate of infants. At the time the nations of Europe went to war in 1914, the prospective surplus of births over deaths in Germany was close to 850,000 per year and as has been stated, statisticians predicted with confidence that by 1925 the population of the Fatherland would be well over eighty millions. Even at this figure the ratio to the square mile of the entire territory would be smaller than that of Belgium or EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 8i England and even less than that then existing for the province of Westphalia.' If this enormous growth was to be maintained, the additional mouths must be fed at home, or they must emigrate. The colonies which Germany possessed were not adapted either in climate or economic conditions to accommodate a large number of immigrants, nor did it seem that they would be able to do so for many years to come. Emigration to America, however, or to any one of the British possessions meant of course that the emigrant was lost as a political dependent to the Father- land, and that he soon ceased to have anything more than a very slight culture importance for the German-speak- ing world. If this fast increasing population was to live within the boundary posts of the empire, it must be fed and must seek its bread by labor. It was evident to Ger- man statesmen that the German people were rapidly reaching the position which the British had occupied for so many years: they were becoming less and less able to feed themselves on homegrown products. Even * Population December i, 1905, 60,641,489; December i, 1910, 64,925,995 ; the increase of population from 1871 to 1910 was 58.1 per cent, or from 75.9 to 120 per square kilometer. The large cities and industrial districts showed of course a much larger growth : thus Berlin grew 106 per cent, the kingdom of Saxony 88 per cent, the Rhine- land 99 per cent and the province of Westphalia 132 per cent. The average annual movement of population per 1000 in the decades since the foundation of the Empire was as follows : 1871-1880 Birthrate 40-7S Excess of births over deaths . 11.9 In the decade 1901-10 there was a decrease in infant mortaUty from 20.7 to 16.2 per annum. The maximum excess of births over deaths was reached in 1902 (15.6 per 1000) ; after that the decline in the birth- rate became so sharp as to alarm German national economists, bring- ing the rate of excess for the years 1911-13 to a point below the average for any decade since 1871. Even at this Germany still showed an ex- cess of births over deaths greater than any first class power except Russia. The estimated population June 30, 1914, was 67,812,000. G I88I-1890 I89I-I900 1901-1910 38.2 37-3 33-9 II.7 13-9 14-3 82 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS with the most careful fostering of agriculture by pro- tective measures, by the recovery of waste land and the improvement of the means of production, by the es- tabUshment of land banks and state assistance in the colonization of small farmers, the importation of bread- stuffs mounted steadily from year to year. In the period 1895 to 1905, while the population of Germany increased 16 per cent, all of this fostering aid to agriculture availed to increase the production of the bread grains, wheat and rye, only 8 per cent. It is plain that Germany, shut in as she was between neighbors whose hostihty was only too easily aroused, had exactly the same interest in keeping her harbors open for the purpose of feeding her people as England had. The eight hundred thousand to one million new mouths which were to be fed each year must be fed by labor. The host of new Germans could not find employment in agriculture. In spite of all efforts to the contrary, the number of persons dependent on agriculture, including forestry, diminished in the period between the vocational census of 1895 ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ 19^7 from 35.8 to 28.6 per cent of the whole population.^ The entire future of the nation lay in the growth and development of its industries, in retaining its old markets and finding new ones, and thus the Emperor's words, "Our future Hes on the water," came home to thinking Germans with terrific force. The Fatherland must be able to insure an open door for its products and an open road for such raw material as could not be found at home. It must be able to protect the capital and hves of its children from the greed of foreign officials, and it must be able to give force to a fair interpretation of trade agreements and to afford full backing to its rapidly growing merchant marine in every corner of the world where misrule or ^ In the same period the percentage of the total population dependent on manufacturing and mining increased from 35.1 to 42.5, while the number dependent on trade and transportation grew from 9.9 to 13.3. EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 83 jealous trade rivals might bar the way. The future of Germany depended on peace ; but unfortunately at the . present stage of civiHzation peace can be secured for a great power only by submission to the stronger or by the ability to defend itself sturdily. ''We Germans," said Bismarck, "must be either hammer or anvil." Spoken of the nation's situation in the centre of Europe between hostile powers, it was no less true in the world overseas, where conflicting pohtical interests and hostile trade rivals stand ever ready to prey upon him who is not ready to defend himself. The Germans had become convinced that their life interests demanded the building and maintenance of a strong fleet. But a fleet without coaHng depots and wireless stations is useless for the protection of overseas interests in case of war with any nation that does possess these assets. It was clearly foreseen that without them England would speedily whip German commerce from the seas, as actually happened immediately after the declaration of war in August 19 14. It is no wonder then that Germany sought long and eagerly for suitable naval bases on the various highways of commerce. It was the ambition to secure just such a point on the west coast of Morocco as much as any desire for terri- torial expansion in the Moorish kingdom that drove the government to its aggressive policy between 1904 and 191 1 . The failure of this policy the Gerrnans charged with justice to England's reckoning, and it was one of a long list of checks which they wrote upon the British score. National feeling boiled at the thought that the British octopus, secure in the possession of numerous strategic points on the African and Asiatic coasts, should regard the ocean ways that encircle these con- tinents as her own private waters and be able to block Germany's moves to the acquisition of any commercial stepping-stone which might later be converted into a station of war. . 84 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS If the political expansion of Germany in Africa and the Far East had reached a point where it must halt before the British "Thus far and no farther ! " any move- ment toward acquiring a foothold in America was as effectually checked by the Monroe doctrine. It seemed indeed that German patriots must resign their desire for colonies where the constantly growing population might find an outlet without being lost entirely to the German name and culture. The more gratifying it was, then, that the question of emigration had ceased to be a pressing one. The best blood of Germany no longer went to spend itself in building up English nations, for with the growth of German industries during the decades following 1890 the economic forces which drove young Germans away from the Fatherland ceased to exist. A comparison of the figures after 1893 shows how this decrease in emigration went hand in hand with the growth of industry, until before the beginning of the present century the stream of German youth flowing outward through the ports trickled so slowly that the loss was more than made up by Slavic immi- grants whom the industrial progress of Germany was drawing into the Eastern marches.^ It was naturally a source of pride to German patriots that they had ceased to export men and women, and were now ex- porting the manufactured products which enabled them to feed and clothe their increased population at home. In 1908, and again in 191 1 , the writer talked with people in various parts of Germany regarding opportuni- ties in America, and met in place of the old romantic longing for the land of unlimited possibiKties, always the same answer: "We are better off here! We are quite contented ; America doesn't mean to us what it * For each 1000 persons there emigrated in 1893, 1.76; in 1903, .62 ; in 1913 less than .39. The total emigration for the year last named was but 25,843. Since the middle nineties Germany has become an " immigrant country." EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 85 once did." The causes assigned for this in some cases reflected sharply on the flaws in our government and especially on our apparent helplessness in solving the problems of sound banking, adequate control of great industry and honest municipal government, but beneath it all lay a great confidence in the industrial future of Germany and in the growth of a liberal spirit in gov- ernment, without which no real patriotism can exist in a civihzed modern state. Outside of the United States and the British possessions, the greatest number of Ger- mans had found their way to Brazil and Argentina, where in the midst of a Romance people they main- tained and bid fair to maintain forever their language and national culture. Unfortunately these Germans were lost to the empire politically, nor had Germany been able to acquire colonies where the cKmate and other physical conditions were favorable to the development of a large population of German stock. The nation naturally entered the race for colonies late. Not until 1879 did Germany first break into the group of colonial powers, and then only mildly through the acquisition of a marine station in the Samoan Islands. Very gradually and in the face of the bitter opposition of the Conservative and Radical-Liberal forces the colonial idea took root and grew. In 1884 considerable possessions were brought under the protection of the black-white-red banner in the Togo and Kamerun districts of western Africa and a vast tract in southwest Africa. Hamburg merchants had led the way in Samoa and West Africa; in 1885 Karl Peters, a rough and ready explorer with the soul of a Cortez, finally brought the East African district under a German protectorate. At the same time a vig- orous expansion went on in the South Seas, where in 1884 a German protectorate was extended over the northeastern part of New Guinea, — later baptized as Kaiser Wilhehn's Land, — and the neighboring Bismarck Archipelago, to 86 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS which were soon added the Marshall Islands and a part of the Solomon group. Finally, by a purchase-treaty with Spain in 1899, the Carolines were brought under the empire's South Sea Protectorate. Bismarck and the men of the ''old course" entered upon the acquisition of colonies with much hesitation. They had won their spurs and celebrated their triumphs in a Europe which was still the Europe of the Congress of Vienna, and especially after the Berlin Congress of 1878 German diplomats had no desire to add further to the complications which foreboded through the renaissance of France and the aggressiveness of Russia. The commerce of Germany could not, however, be held in leash ; the lustily growing national spirit followed, and Bismarck was carried along in spite of himself. His intention was to establish in the colonies the rule of the merchant rather than the despotism of the bureau- crat. Unfortunately this was not done, and the first thirty years of German colonial history left a record of failure through a lack of commercial initiative on the part of German business men and an unfortunate stingi- ness in the treatment of the colonies by the Reichstag. The immense stretches of western and southwestern Africa, peopled by a savage and freedom-loving people, like the Hereros in Southwest Africa, were an excellent though painful school of experience for German admin- istration and legislation. The mechanical transference of the Prussian bureaucratic system to Damara Land and to the equatorial villages of East Africa led to bloody insurrections, which in 1904-07 threatened the entire future of the Southwest African colony. The lack of experience in administration and organization in the col- onies was matched by a lack of legislative experience at home : the old Bismarckian prejudice against all overseas adventures descended to the "little Germans" of cer- tain Radical groups and to the Social Democrats. It was not that Germans lacked the gift for colonization : EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 87 German historians complain bitterly that the children of the Fatherland have formed the KuUurdiinger, — have fertilized civiHzation, — for the whole world overseas. It is true that Germany's colonies did not come directly as the result of trade or settlement; but it must be noted that England's colonies in the torrid zone did not come that way either, but were the outcome of a desire to anticipate trade and especially to block the advance of the Romance peoples. But England's colonial ad- ministration is the result of centuries of apprentice- ship. Out of a wealth of experience with all sorts of dependent peoples she evolved the system which hides a firm control under the appearance of self-government, the mailed fist under the silken glove,"a system that finds its best illustration in the administration of India. The Germans had had no such experience. The government at home was a bureaucracy, for which the model had always been the Prussian system, developed under a series of great drill masters since the Great Elector. Ofl&cials trained in the iron ideals of the Prussian school were transferred to the colonies and called on to face conditions which called for an original- ity and adaptability that the military system at home had given them no opportunity to develop. In this difficult position they were further hampered by a lack of understanding of conditions by their superiors at home and the narrow parsimony on the part of the Reichs- tag. No policy could be less adapted for dealing with the children of nature in the Cameroons and Damara Land and East Africa; and the blood and treasure which had to be expended in Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century purchased very high-priced experience. This experience, however, slowly educated the in- dividual German to a sense of the responsibilities of overseas dominion. Once thoroughly awakened in a small circle of ardent patriots, the interest in the colonies 88 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS was sytematically spread by those methodical and thorough, if somewhat pedantic, means so characteristic of the German nature. The Colonial Society, founded in 1882, by its large membership ^ and numerous publica- tions, by the lectures and addresses given under its auspices and by the unique Colonial Museum in Berlin, did much to educate Germans to a broader view of colonial expansion. Every step of progress was taken only after a fight with the spirit of ignorance and prej- udice in colonial matters, which was the natural result of Germany's previous isolation from all overseas affairs. Emperor William took the lead, bringing with him the active support of the higher aristocracy; little by little even the Bavarian and Swabian shopkeeper and the East Prussian landholder began to raise their eyes to the field of Germany's future beyond the confines of Central Europe. In spite of the "little Germans" and the reckless rhodomontades of the Pan-Germans, the wave of enthusiasm for political expansion beyond the seas to keep pace with Germany's industrial growth rose higher and higher. A natural development was the building of the fleet, so carefully fostered and directed by the Emperor and his advisers, which soon infused into the nation's public life a spirit of hopefulness and en- thusiasm for national interests overseas which no bun- gling diplomats and no disappointments could ever halt. A strong evidence of the vital interest of Germany in world affairs was to be found in the books and pam- phlets treating of some phase of the Fatherland's interests beyond the seas, which crowded the bookshops in ever increasing numbers. In 1900, when German troops were sent to China under Count Waldersee to assist in the suppression of the Boxer outbreak, there appeared a perfect flood of literature bearing on the expedition; and in every periodical of metropolis or village the wondering burgher could read the details of the Father- ^ It had in 191 2 an enrolment of 41,000 subscribing members. EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 89 land's cooperation in the distant East, from the Em- peror's ringing valedictory to Count Waldersee down to the last detail of the equipment of the individual soldier. In 1910 and 191 1 South Morocco was the sub- ject of numerous pamphlets, containing excellent maps and registering all sorts of valuable information, col- lected and sifted for popular consumption. This longing for political influence overseas, this ardent desire to participate in the government of non- Caucasian races and to see the standard of the nation float where German industry and commerce were con- stantly winning fresh laurels in the end completely mastered a part of the German people. Consciously or unconsciously it came to dominate the thoughts of the younger and more progressive element, rising stronger after every crisis Hke the Morocco crisis of 191 1 or the Balkan crisis of 1912-13. Scratch a German and you will find a romanticist, and it was not only the Pan- Germanists, fired by the growth of the nation's naval, military and industrial power, who drew an analogy be- tween the present empire and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation under Henry VI or Frederick II, when, nominally at least, the imperial eagles held sway from the North Sea to the Straits of Malta. There was this same mixture of romanticism and prac- tical poHtics in the trend of German hopes towards the Near East. The lure of the Orient with its unchangeable stately picturesqueness threw something of the same magic spell over the case-hardened capitalists of Cologne and Hamburg as it had over the mediaeval knights who followed Frederick Barbarossa over the sands of the Cilician desert. Emperor WiUiam himself in the course of his travels felt drawn ever and again toward the Mediterranean. In 1906 he purchased the beautiful es- tate of the late Empress Elizabeth of Austria on the island of Corfu, whither he began to make annual visits. It was partly this romantic trend of the German mind 90 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS and partly the growing necessity for securing new avenues of outlet for German trade, avenues which could be de- fended only by checking Russian plans in the Levant, which brought about German friendship for Turkey. Abdul Hamid, deposed in 1909, was eager for support against Russian pressure from without and Slavic and Macedonian unrest within the Balkans, and throughout his infamous reign he leaned heavily on German and Austrian support. A Prussian officer, the gifted Kolmar von der Goltz, was called to Constantinople and re- mained from 1883 to 1895 in charge of the reorganization of the Turkish army. The Armenian massacres, which aroused the conscience of England on numerous occa- sions and in 1895 brought intervention from England, France and Russia, evoked no feeling of hostility toward the Turkish regime from Germany, a curious illustra- tion of the way in which selfish poHtical considerations may influence the most elementary expressions of human- ity. Every German felt that to Germany as well as to Austria the maintenance of the status in Turkey was a necessity ; and hopes of poHtical and industrial advan- tage in Asia Minor blinded the eyes of publicists and lamed the arms of humanitarians even during the worst days of Abdul Hamid. Thoroughly romantic was the visit of Emperor William to Jerusalem in 1898, when the German papers delighted to draw parallels with the crusading heroes from Godfrey to Frederick II. This triumphal progress, which was accompanied by a visit to Constantinople, renewed the bonds between German and Turk and made the way easier for German capital in Asia Minor. Just ten years later, in 1908, the Young Turk revolution gave a check to German influence in Turkey from which it was slow to recover. The Young Turks had been trained in British constitu- tional methods, and for years some of them had found asylum and financial assistance in London. That their opposition to Germany did not assume even more acute EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 91 form was due largely to the clever diplomacy of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, German ambassador at Constantinople after 1897 (cf. page 77), who until his departure in 191 1 did much to reorganize and renew German influence on the Golden Horn. The ItaUan- Turkish war put Germany in a difficult position as be- tween her ally and Turkey, but the German papers by their suspicious and envious attitude toward Italy did much to remove Turkish prejudice. The same press and, indeed, the Berlin government, too, misjudged Turkey's military strength. Neither ap- pears to have doubted on the outbreak of the first Balkan War in 191 2 that the Ottoman power would be able to defend itself against the Balkan League. Yet, when the Turkish debacle came and the Bulgarian guns were thundering at the Chatalja defenses of Constantinople, Germany could do nothing to aid the Turks, since all of her influence was engaged in pro- tecting her Austrian ally from the threatened Slavic advance. In the following year, however, with the first steps toward the rehabihtation of the Turkish army, the Sultan's government called in German aid. Enver Bey, who had vaulted into power with the crash which followed the crumbling of Turkey's defenses, had in common with other Young Turk associates implicit faith in the German military system. At the call of the Sultan's government General Liman von Sanders and a large staff of subordinate officers were allowed to resign from the German army and enter the Turkish service, to begin immediately that thorough and effi- cient reorganization which less than two years later steeled the Turkish armies to their successful defense of the Dardanelles and the hinterland from the Anglo- French attack. It was, then, as coworker and heir of the Turk that the German hoped to find outlet for a part of his surplus political and commercial energy. Asia Minor 92 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS and Mesopotamia, with a heterogeneous and in part very energetic population, have great natural resources and only wait the touch of European capital to awaken to great wealth. Germany had long recognized this, and her leverage at the court of the Sultan was early brought to bear in the effort to secure a foothold here. She regarded this field as pecuKarly hers : hence the clever flattery of Abdul Hamid through so many years, hence the failure to cooperate with the other European powers in their protests against the brutalities of Turkish rule and their efforts to assist the Hellenic people in Crete and elsewhere, hence the hostile attitude of the German press against Italian occupation of the islands of the ^gean in 191 2 and the eager championship of the Turkish cause by the same papers at the outbreak of the first Balkan war. German efforts were crowned with preliminary success, and the peaceful penetration of Anatolia by German capital went on apace. Abdul Hamid granted German capitalists a concession for the Anatolian Railway, which was to penetrate the wild gorges of the Taurus Mountains and connect Konia with Adana near the Gulf of Alexandretta. British capi- talists, it is said, would willingly have built this railway without guarantee ; the clever German diplomats suc- ceeded in obtaining from the Turkish government a per-kilometer guarantee for the maintenance of the line, which could only by degrees become a paying invest- ment. By the terms of a later concession the Germans were eventually to continue the railway eastward toward Mosul and eventually down the valley of the Tigris to Bagdad and on to the Persian Gulf. The dormant romanticism in the German soul was thoroughly awakened by this adventurous undertaking on the trail of Alexander the Great. The whole apparatus of the Arabian Nights and of Omar Khayyam passed before the bewitched eyes of the grandsons of those EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 93 Germans who had dreamed over Goethe's Westostlicher Divan and Bodenstedt's Songs of Mirza Schaffy. With this romantic enthusiasm there was blended in the practical soul of the modern German a very real ap- preciation of the ultimate business value of this con- cession and its possible political consequences. The whole affair illustrated to some extent, however, the timidity of German capital in overseas enterprises. The building of the road was delayed by the Young Turk revolution of 1908, which boosted British stock at Constantinople and made the German position difficult; and with the clever conquest of these hin- drances, the financial question came to the fore. The construction of the road was attended by great engineer- ing difficulties and uncertainties, the Turkish govern- ment showed its usual vacillating policy, and Hke every other semi-official business undertaking in the Ottoman Empire, the whole project was surrounded by a nimbus of mystery. It was usual in German prints to blame British jealousy for failure to enhst foreign capital in the enterprise : it would seem, however, that it was another case of the lack of boldness and faith in the prosecution of overseas undertakings which had caused German capital to lose so many races for foreign advan- tage ever since the end of the sixteenth century, when the Hansa cities of the North Sea neghgently resigned to England and Holland their share in the conquest of the colonial world.^ That in this case the prize was worth struggling for and that Germany had already won a great lead in the ^The first concession for the Anatolian Railway was granted the Deutsche Bank in 1888, and the line was completed as far as Konia in 1896. The extension to Bagdad, with valuable shipping and mining rights, was put into the hands of a syndicate of bankers in 1902. The work of construction went forward in sections, and by 19 14 nearly all of the line between the Taurus mountains and the Euphrates, including a branch to Aleppo, had been finished ; but the grades and tunnels through the Taurus and by far the greater part of the line east of the Euphrates crossing were yet to be built. 94 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS race toward the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris is evidenced by the efforts which were made by her rival in this field to checkmate her advances. England years ago assured herself of the friendship of the Sheik of Koweit and otherwise made her influence strongly felt on the Persian Gulf in order to check Russian advances to deep water through Persia. After the Japanese war, when the growth of Germany's navy began to cause uneasiness across the North Sea, England joined forces with her old Muscovite enemy and divided Persia into spheres of influence, securing for herself the southern half. Thus she was braced on a powerful political basis to meet the German commercial advance into Meso- potamia. British statesmen are accustomed to cal- culate a long way in advance, and they have for many years looked with yearning toward the time when a string of contiguous provinces under English protec- torate should connect India with Egypt. It was only the fear that Germany might some day steal a Hnk from this chain that induced British statesmen to back up the Russians in driving out Mr. Morgan Shuster, the successful American agent of the Persian treasury in 191 1, flinging to the winds the traditions of British fair play and British Hberality toward a dependent people, and it was only the fear of Germany and the desire for Russia's friendship at any cost that induced British public opinion to back up the action of the government. The eventual control over the port terminus of the Bagdad Railway and the collision of British and German interests on the Persian GuK formed the subject of negotiations with the Turkish government after 191 1 and between London and Berhn in 1913. The spirit shown by both sides in these negotiations seemed to point, as has been said, to a new era in the relations between Great Britain and Germany in which a spirit of conciliation should dominate both sides. A prelimi- nary agreement was reached in May 1913, by which the EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 95 German right to financial and economic control of the line as far as Bagdad was assured. Between Bagdad and Bassora the Hne was to be internationalized, Great Britain and Germany each having representatives on the governing board. Bassora is, however, not a deep- water terminus; and by her arrangement with the Sheik of Koweit, Great Britain reserved to herself the right to control the line to the port on the Persian Gulf.^ The German public received the announcement of this agreement with mixed feelings, although it was generally conceded that Great Britain had shown a fair spirit of compromise. As yet unregulated was the important question as to which of the two nations should supply capital and enterprise for doing in the valley of the Euphrates what Great Britain has done in the valley of the Nile, since the rivers of Mesopotamia need only the restraining hand of modern science to make their valleys blossom as the rose. The contrast between Germany's commercial and po- litical position outside of Europe was a matter that riveted the attention of German patriots more and more as the passing years of the twentieth century brought ever greater industrial success. They saw their country grown by leaps and bounds until it was the second ex- porting nation of the world and the second in the carry- ing trade. They told themselves with justice that this had not been accomplished by treading under foot the rights of any people, but in the face of a more or less hostile world by patient labor, high technical training and self-denial. They saw themselves the object of suspicion on the part of all of the great powers except Austria, as they firmly believed for no other cause than the legitimate growth of German population and trade. In the days of their power they were obliged to look on while the Mediterranean lands were divided out among their rivals, while the utmost efforts of German states- ^ The distance from Bassora (Basra) to the port at Koweit is 85 miles. 96 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS men could secure for the Fatherland nothing more than savage stretches of equatorial Africa. Their merchant fleet carried aloft almost solely the pennants of British and American lands, and their battle fleets in girdling the earth must fill their bunkers and file their cable- / grams almost entirely under foreign guns. And when they joined in the predatory race for the control of minor peoples, they saw themselves branded as dis- turbers of the peace. No proud nation can endure to be told that its province is science, literature and philos- ophy, and not government, and that its over-production in sons and daughters must enlist their abilities under foreign flags, where success can be bought only by the surrender of native language and culture. And if one argued that the Scandinavian lands and Mediterranean powers and other nations proud of their independence are content to carry on their commerce and prosper regardless of the fact that England rules the seas, the German would answer that his position and responsibil- ities in the world had grown to be such that he could not do business overseas on England's sufferance, but on the contrary they gave him full as good a right to sea rule as England could claim. The desire for power, it must be admitted, is as essential a part of an ambitious nation as of an ambitious man. Much has been said and written of the philosophical theories which were supposed to lie at the bottom of Germany's ambitions, and the names of the historian Treitschke and the philosopher Nietzsche have been flung about, as though the impulse to power, felt alike by German manufacturer and tradesman, landholder and artisan, financier and statesman and soldier, were based on some abstract theory of the rights of the state and the morals of con- quest ; and much has been said of Pan- Germanism, as though a comparatively small group of noisy theorists could fill a nation of peace-loving, hard-working builders with a devouring lust of conquest. As a matter of EXPANSION AND AMBITIONS 97 f / fact, what foreign critics have often called German militarism and Pan- Germanism is but an exceedingly primitive impulse, found in every vigorous nation as well as every vigorous individual : the determination to be independent and to expand the circumference of rule as his powers permit. In view of all of this, one can appreciate why the question of army and navy armament took with the passing years such deep hold, not merely upon the so- called ruling classes, but upon the middle and lower classes as well. In the Reichstag of 191 2 only the So- cial Democratic members and the anti-national groups voted against the increases in the army and navy, and in 1913, despite some perfunctory Socialist opposition, practically the whole nation welcomed the Defense Bill, with its tremendous sacrifices, as insurance that the Fatherland would be permitted to hold what had been won and look with hopeful eyes to the future. Indeed, even the most prosaic of burghers in his village shop in Thuringia or Swabia began to dream of fleets and con- quests overseas. The enthusiasm which his father had felt for a Germany at last united, the twentieth century German felt in his hours of romantic dreaming for a Germany as mistress of the seas and arbiter of the nations. This enthusiasm had its ebbs as well as its floods, but the floods rose higher each time. It had gradually invaded and gripped all classes in the empire, and began to make of the German a hardened and seasoned cosmopolitan in the British sense, a cosmopoli- tan whose realism was warmed by a deep romantic enthusiasm for Germany's glory. It had gradually transformed the Philistine burgher of the eighties, who could not raise his eyes above the narrow horizon of central Europe, into a citizen of the world. PART II THE EMPIRE AT HOME CHAPTER V Personal Government and Parliamentary Rule The German empire has the advantage or disadvan- tage of working under a written constitution. This constitution can be amended by vote of the two organs of legislation, the Bundesrat, the Federal Council, and the Reichstag, the Imperial Diet, with the approval of the Emperor. Bismarck, who in 1871 practically took over the constitution of the North German Con- federation for the newly born empire, had sought in that instrument to create a balance between the Em- peror, the dynasties and the people which should insure to each of the three a proper share in government. It must not be forgotten that the new German constitution emerged from two decades of sharp reaction against liberalism in government, nor that universal suffrage, upon which the choice of the popular federal assembly rests, was not won through revolutionary agitation on the part of the representatives of the people, but came as a free gift from the feudalistic monarch of Prussia through his autocratic minister at a time when monarch and minister had by a violent interpretation of the Prussian bill of rights demonstrated the power of autocracy to rule in Prussia in defiance of an over- whelming popular majority. William I and Bismarck reorganized the army and prepared for the victory over Austria in spite of the opposition of a Liberal majority in the Prussian Diet : while riding on the crest of the wave of victory over the Habsburg monarchy the I02 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Prussian dynasty then in 1867 presented to the peoples of the North German Confederation, some of which had just been brought under Prussian rule without their consent, a federal constitution which guaranteed to every male over twenty-five years of age a share in the government through the right to vote for represen- tatives in the new federal assembly. Bismarck once called universal suffrage "the most powerful ingredient known to Uberty mongers." That the adoption of the principle into the German federal constitution was one of his cleverest strokes, no one can deny. His action did not proceed from any sympathy with popular government, but was, as he called it, "a weapon in the war for German unity." The chief opposition to this unity had always lain in the mutual jealousies of the various German dynasties, some of whom, like the ruling families of Hanover and Hesse- Cassel, had enjoyed only a very apathetic allegiance and no affection whatever from their subjects. The allegiance to the ideal of German unity was, however, exceedingly strong, and it was the passionate devotion to this ideal which Bismarck used to balance off dynastic jealousies. To insure union, he gave liberty ; as against the bickerings of petty princes he called into being an untrammelled electorate of all Germans, eager for sacrifice for German unity, many of them burning with patriotism for the Prussian house, which henceforth was to personify this ideal. And when after the war with France the South German peoples, accustomed for more than half a century to more liberal constitutions, entered the new empire, the guarantee of universal suffrage with a secret ballot became more than ever necessary as a weapon against centrifugal tendencies. Bismarck had too many of the prejudices of a Prus- sian rural aristocrat to feel any sympathy with popular government, and he was as careful to preserve the rights of the dynasties as to curb their selfishness. The GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 103 Bundesrat of sixty-one members, representing the dynasties of the various states, prepares legislation under the guidance of a ministry appointed by the Emperor, shapes its measures in secret session and pre- sents the result to the Reichstag for acceptance or re- jection. Theoretically the lower house can and occa- sionally does, originate legislation but it is not the sort of legislation that makes up government policy. The Prussian aristocracy which made the German constitu- tion did not intend to establish parliamentary govern- ment in the empire. All measures relating to the national defenses, all questions of international policy, all matters of taxation and administration issue full grown from the Bundesrat. The Reichstag may accept or reject them, it may criticise or amend them in com- mittee, or it may force upon the government a change of policy by refusing to accept in any form the proposed measure. Or the government may dissolve the popular house and appeal to the country, presenting to the new Diet, which must be elected and take its seat within three months, such a program as seems Hkely to find passage. Any legislation originating in the Reichstag may be brought before the Bundesrat, but there is no means of compelling the ministry to do this, and there is of course no possibility that the popular assembly will take anything Hke unanimous action on any subject. When, however, the government's measures emerge from behind the locked doors of the dynastic chamber, they are presented as the collective and unanimous policy of Germany's rulers. As compared with the American system of parliamentary government with an executive veto, the German government is a dynastic government with a parhamentary veto ; as compared with the British system of parliamentary rule through a responsible ministry, the German system provides for parliamentary acquiescence in legislation prepared by ministers responsible to the sovereign alone. I04 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS The federal ministry is at once federal-imperial and Prussian, the imperial chancellor being always the Prussian prime minister, hence doubly responsible to the Emperor, who is, under the terms of the federal constitution, likewise the king of Prussia. The 397 representatives of the people in the Reichstag cannot therefore bring the ministry to a fall. They may put an end to their own legislative careers by obdurate opposition to the will of the crown, but they cannot force the sovereign to choose a new ministry in line with the wishes of the Reichstag, still less can they compel the Bundesrat to accept measures agreeable to the popular assembly, except indirectly through such a series of refusals to cooperate in government as seriously to hamper legislation. Although one or two events of this kind in the history of the German constitution will appear below, it may be noted here that through the clever management of parties and the astute balancing off of interests in the Reichstag there has never yet come about a serious crisis where a popular revolt against the dynastic will has resulted in a dangerous deadlock. That the Germans have never yet had to force to a definite conclusion the question as to which of the powers of government, the dynastic or the popular, is superior, has been due, along with the cleverness of the ministry in working the levers of class and economic rivalry, to the personality of the sovereigns who have ruled over the new empire. In the early sixties Bismarck administered a despotic government in Prussia in the name of the sovereign notwithstanding bitter opposition from the Liberal Diet, claiming that in the deadlock which had resulted between the two powers of govern- ment, monarch and people, the monarch was justified in governing until the deadlock should end. English liberalism was still an ideal among the Prussian people, and the attitude of the middle classes at that time tow- ard King William was one of indifference, if not of GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 105 hostility. But history justified Bismarck's somewhat cynical remark: "Germany does not look for its salvation to Prussia's liberalism but to Prussia's power!" With the success of Prussia's military policy in the wars with Austria and France, the new-made Emperor William rode upon a wave of popularity which gained force and spread as the old sovereign advanced to the venerable age which made him the dean of all European monarchs and the most distinguished rep- resentative of the monarchical principle. Among the great mass of Germans, with their romantic tendency to hero-worship, the monarchical idea was tremendously strengthened in those years, a movement which was furthered by the attractive personality and the tragic sufferings of Emperor William's son, Emperor Frede- rick. When after the hundred days' reign of his father William II ascended the throne in 1888, the nation was still in the main pulsing with the enthusiasm of 1871 and still ready for hero-worship. He appealed to the patriotic instincts of his people without being able to satisfy the affection which had been given so fully to his grandfather and father. This is not the place to attempt an analysis of the character of William II ex- cept in so far as it relates to his attitude toward govern- ment. This much must be said, however, that both as Emperor and as king of Prussia he did from the begin- ning of his reign what he could to hold the scales against the advance of parliamentary government, and that it was due in part to him that Germany's progress in this direction was far slower than it otherwise would have been, so slow in fact as to produce a serious dislocation in administration. In his political views the Emperor showed himself an anachronism, sharing to the full those ideas of the divine right of kings which in Eng- land departed with the age of the Restoration. In a nation which was rushing breathlessly ahead with io6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS industrialism and commercialism and other levelling forces, he stood forth as the representative of the militaristic-feudalistic spirit, upon which for two can- ^ turies the greatness of Prussia had been built up. Joined with this mediaeval view of his position, which connects' him with his grandfather and still more with his great- uncle, Frederick William IV, that "romanticist on the throne of the Caesars," he has displayed an impetuous temper, a many-sided and tireless energy and a gift for forcible and epigrammatic expression. Endowed with these vigorous traits, he was unfortunately hampered in his development by an education and by surroundings of a military and feudalistic sort, without the temper- ing influence of trouble or misfortune, and he naturally enough developed an egotism which often collided violently with the growing self-assertion of German citizens. This royal egotism found expression early in his reign in the oft-quoted autograph of the Emperor written in the Golden Book of Senators in Munich in 1892 : Suprema lex regis voluntas esto, "Let the sover- eign's will be the highest law" ; it showed itself twenty years later in his famous remark to the Burgomaster of Strasburg, when, irritated by the anti-national agita- tion which followed the adoption of the constitution in Alsace-Lorraine, the Emperor declared: "I will break your constitution into fragments and incorporate you as a province of Prussia!" It is evident that a man of such strong personality, who by his very restlessness and versatility thrust himself constantly into the forefront of public questions, might become a danger to the royal prerogative. In many ways William II has undoubtedly stretched to the utmost the power of the crown. His uncompro- mising support of the church and the military establish- ment, his enthusiasm for the fleet and his bitter opposi- tion to the progress of socialism made themselves felt as powerful creative forces in interior policy. The GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 107 Emperor wields a control over appointments in the army and navy and diplomatic corps, in the judiciary and civil administration both in Prussia and the empire little short of absolute, whether exercised directly through the ministry which he appoints or indirectly through the lesser members of the official hierarchy. "No monarch in states not absolute monarchies has ever possessed such an actual influence as belongs to the Emperor to-day," wrote Friedrich Naumann in 1905. That this enormous influence was strengthened rather than lessened in the decades which followed on the Emperor's succession is due to the fact that it was nearly always exerted in accordance with the ideas and prejudices of the class upon which Prussian and German power was built up in the first place, the vigorous landed aris- tocracy and other feudalistic elements in the empire. Separated from these elements or thrown against this powerful conservative group, the personal government of the imperial office would soon shrivel in the face of parliamentary opposition, for it must be remembered that it is not so much personal and individual power which the Emperor represents, as opposed to the popular will expressed in the Reichstag, as it is the will of the conservative aristocracy and sovereign princes centred in his person. The imperial prerogative is too closely in- terwoven with all of the forces of conservatism in church and state to be seriously impaired except through a revolution. Nevertheless, there is evidence to show that as com- pared with his grandfather the character of William II has done much damage to the "divinity which doth hedge about a king." A monarch who takes himself very seriously, who brings his personality into every question from that of international politics to art criticism, must expose himself to vigorous and often bitter criticism from so modern and individualistic a people as the Germans. Especially the Social Demo- io8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS cratic speakers and editors, to whom a crowned head is of course fair game, found in the acts and works of Wil- liam II abundant opportunity for thinly veiled sneers. A long list of prosecutions for Use majeste, many of them ridiculously trivial, marked the first decade of his reign, and showed the inquisitorial methods of the police and the sycophancy of the courts in a very unattractive hght. After the beginning of the new century, however, there was a constant improvement in this regard. The Emperor profited by one or two humiliating experi- ences and grew more reserved in his public utterances ; and the German people learned to take the outbursts of an impulsive and imaginative character less seriously. In 1908 the law covering lese majeste was revised so as to do away with the prosecution of harmless and un- conscious offenders, reserving the pains of the law only for those who should "evilly and with malice afore- thought" insult the head of the state, thus dissolving the nimbus of comic opera sacro-sanctity which the courts and sycophants had woven around the person of the Emperor. Unfortunately, however, there was no diminution of the sycophancy which seems necessarily connected with semi-absolute rule. Already isolated from the streams of popular Ufe by his training and by the surroundings prescribed by his position, there is reason to beUeve, apart from the revelations of Maxi- milian Harden in the Zukunft in 1908, that Emperor William has always been more or less closely surrounded by a group of men thoroughly out of sympathy with modern or liberal ideas in government, who have sought in every way to insulate him from all currents of popular feeling and sympathy. In spite of the strong and many- sided personality of William II; in spite of his wide interests in the affairs of the world and the absolutely unparalleled opportunities which he made for himself of almost daily intercourse with philosophers, artists, GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 109 inventors and captains of industry from every part of the world, bringing him into touch with the latest movements in every field of progress; in spite of his travels and his thoroughly modern spirit, he seems to have made Kttle progress in the appreciation of de- mocracy. The reactionary influences of a military and feudal aristocracy and the pliant flattery of a sycophantic and ilKberal cHque confirmed the romantic and abso- lutistic tendencies of his character and education. He who might have been a great popular sovereign, keeping step with the march of the German people toward a really popular government, has, with all of his abiUties, his earnest patriotism and his appreciation of Germany's national destiny, never been able to comprehend the poUtical aspirations of his people and has steadily opposed its progress towards self-government. The autocratic power which makes of the German government a constitutional but not a parliamentary system rests upon a still more autocratic power wielded by the Emperor as king of Prussia. "Germany does not look to Prussia's liberalism, but to Prussia's power," declared Bismarck in 1861, and this power was founded by the sword. The unity of Germany was brought about in the last instance not by liberal statesmen nor ideahstic enthusiasts but through the rude centraliza- tion of power in the hands of a succession of virile Prussian monarchs. As king of Prussia the Emperor stands at the head of the imperial navy, of the entire army in war and of a great part of it in peace, and has a powerful influence in the Bundesrat. In asserting auto- cratic power he is not only carrying out the traditions of his own royal house but also those traditions on which German unity was founded, upon the principle of force and the ruthless suppression of constitutional guaran- tees. This is a point which is most difficult for Americans and Englishmen to see, looking back as they do upon a history of the steady development of parliamentary in- no THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS stitutions free and unhindered by foreign pressure. The blood and iron which Bismarck prescribed as necessary for German unity was no mere rhetorical flourish. It is idle now to speculate as to what might have happened had liberalism been permitted to develop in Prussia as it had begun to develop after the reactionary fifties. In the revolution of 1848 it showed itself impotent to unite the German peoples, and the only other alterna- tive was a bloody struggle, from which the new empire emerged as a constitutional but not a parliamentary monarchy. There are signs, however, that even under William II the development toward parliamentary government and particularly toward ministerial responsibility to the Reichstag has gone forward, with infinite slowness, it is true, but with real progress nevertheless. One of these signs is to be found in the growing popular im- patience with the autocratic speeches which have been a characteristic of the reign of William II. In 1893 the Emperor, addressing a gathering of higher military officers, threatened to dash to pieces the parliamentary opposition to the new Army Bill. The speech naturally aroused sharp criticism, carefully veiled, in parliamen- tary circles. Contrast with that, however, the out- burst of indignation which followed the threat of the Emperor against the new constitution in Alsace-Lor- raine in May 191 2, referred to above (cf. page 106). Again the crisis was one which might well call for the union of all German patriots behind the sovereign; and as a matter of fact no one really believed that the Emperor meant his threat to be taken literally ; it was nevertheless made the occasion for a tremendous outburst against "personal government." Not merely Socialist and Radical journals and those Bavarian and Wiirtem- berg periodicals which are especially sensitive to Prus- sian preponderance, showed their resentment at the Emperor's words, but many Liberal papers and not a GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE iii few organs of the Centre and Conservative parties took the opportunity of giving a serious warning to the sovereign not to overstep constitutional bounds. In the Reichstag the incident led to one of those bitter debates which became more and more frequent after the beginning of the new century, where the dignity of the parliamentary issue was lost in the incoherent violence of Socialist attacks on the crown. The net result of the incident was not so much a call to order of the monarch for his violent words as a nation-wide declaration that the constitution was above attack. Once more the Philistine narrowness of the Social Demo- crats prevented a working union of all liberal elements. On an earUer occasion there had been in another field signs of a growing impatience with autocratic govern- ment, this time with somewhat more positive results. As the new century advanced, pubUc opinion became more and more sensitive with respect to the Emperor's attitude toward foreign affairs, where the sovereign exercised a more direct influence than is usual in states where constitutional government has thrust its roots deeper into the soil of national Ufe, and showed the un- conscious lack of feeling for popular prejudice which seems to be inseparable from the autocratic attitude of mind. During the Boer War in 1900 the Emperor visited England, where his relations with Queen Vic- toria and the royal house had long been a source of irritation to German patriots. Again in 1906, when the Germ^an press was smarting with a sense of unfulfilled ambitions in Morocco, there were many bitter criticisms passed on personal government and a manifest tendency to make a scapegoat for the failure at the Algeciras Conference not merely of Prince Biilow, the Chancellor, but of the monarch himself. The most remarkable instance of this growing sensitiveness was found in the celebrated Daily Telegraph interview of October 28, 1908. From this interview between the correspondent 112 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS of the London daily and the Emperor, the account of which was published with the latter's consent, the German nation was astonished to learn that during the Boer War, when every German heart was overflowing with enthusiasm for the South African republics battUng against England's world power, the Emperor had pre- pared a plan of campaign for the British army, had it criticised by his general staff and forwarded to England, a plan which closely resembled the one. later followed by Roberts and Kitchener in destrojdng the power of the Boers. Nothing could have aroused greater resent- ment than this discovery, and the embitterment tow- ard the Emperor was in no wise modified by the fact that the interview had by some curious act of stupidity received the approval of the Berlin ministry before it was published. The blunder of publication, great as it was, sank into insignificance before the feeHng of anger at the sovereign's absolute independence of national feeling. The personality of the ruler acting indepen- dently of the will of the nation was felt to call for the bitterest resentment, and brought about the nearest thing to an anti-dynastic wave since the flickering out of the last embers of the revolution of 1848. The discussion of the incident in the Reichstag in November 1908 brought to expression the ardent long- ing of a great many Germans for real parHamentary government. Even the tactful and adroit management of Billow could not save the sovereign from humilia- tion; all the tactlessness and violence of the Social Democrats could not break the solidarity of the Liberal parties in their demand for parliamentary control of foreign affairs. The Chancellor issued on behalf of the Emperor a statement, very carefully worded but clear, nevertheless, in which the monarch obUged himself "to retain constitutional forms," an unmistakable recession before the power of public opinion. Out of the discussion between Conservatives and Liberals GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY RULE 113 came the clear and sharp enunciation of two ideals: that of "personal government," backed by all of the conservative forces of the nation, and that of parlia- mentary government in the British sense, with the crown as a mere figurehead. It showed also that while the compromise which the German constitution makes between the two views of government is as yet un- shaken, liberal forces are nevertheless busily at work undermining it. CHAPTER VI The Government and the Parties Admirers of the German constitution have often called attention to the permanency of German minis- tries as compared with those of France and other Con- tinental powers. It is true that a system which makes the Chancellor and his associates independent of the whims of parliaments and the fickleness of the electors is assured of greater stability than one which has to reckon with the possibility of overthrow through the dissatis- faction of legislators. And it is also true that the German empire with its girdle of unsjrtnpathetic if not actually hostile neighbors could ill afford to risk a governmental crisis at a moment when perhaps the international situation called for the greatest alertness. France gave, both during the Dreyfus and Morocco affairs, an awful example of the ills attendant on swapping horses while crossing a stream. Bismarck in a noteworthy chapter in the second volume of his memoirs holds it to be an absolute necessity that a ministry should be permitted to remain in power in the face of an occasional lack-of-confidence vote or even of persistent opposition on the part of an adverse majority. But in the zeal of comparing systems one is apt to forget how large a part national characteristics play. The defenders of the German constitution are obliged to confess that in spite of the pop-in-pop-out method in vogue in France, since the beginning of the twentieth century French foreign policy has moved forward with an adroitness and a breadth of view that have been in 114 THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 115 no wise diminished by changes in the ministry. The success that crowned the efforts of men Hke Delcasse and Pichon and Poincare in their dealings with Eng- land and Germany and the Balkan states in this period 'was won in the face of the certainty that failure would re- sult in their being driven from power and perhaps public hfe. The settling of accounts in the French Chamber following on the crises of 1905 and 1911, while conducted with the GalHc violence which is so hard for a Teuton to understand, was, Hke the British parliamentary "post- mortems" of May 191 5 concerning the failures of the Asquith government at the beginning of the war, a very healthy operation. It is a fair statement that if such a calling to account of the ministry could have taken place in the German Reichstag in 1906 after the Algeciras Conference, the crisis of 191 1 and some of the con- sequent shocks and humihations to German pride would never have occurred. We have seen that in the main the German citizen has been satisfied with a system which has found five federal ministries sufficient in forty-odd years. Bis- marck, Capri vi, Hohenlohe, Biilow and Bethmann- Hollweg gave the empire a fairly consistent foreign poKcy and secured for the Fatherland fairly good results both in bartering with foreign ministries and in the conduct of home affairs. With one exception, — • Hohenlohe, a son of the Bavarian Palatinate, — all have been Prussians of that feudal aristocracy which won unity for the German people under the leadership of the Hohenzollern kings. While no man from the industrial, commercial or strictly intellectual classes has attained or could attain to leadership under the semi-absolutist system, still no man, whatever his prestige, could hold the position of Federal Chancellor without a deep knowledge of German character and a certain sympathy with the demands of all classes. The first three chancellors, indeed, had all played an impor- ii6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS tant part in the foundation of the empire ; Biilow was a trained and adroit diplomat of long experience; Bethmann-HoUweg, who took the rudder in 1909, a lawyer and administrator, a man who had come up through all the grades of promotion by force of business ability and parliamentary tact. Indeed, it may be said that the leader of no ministry in modern Europe must satisfy so many and such varied demands as the Imperial Chancellor, who is at the same time Prussian prime minister. Besides the adminis- tration of the empire, he must have the tact to satisfy a monarch who is intent on preserving all the traditions of Prussian autocracy and he must be a parliamentarian adroit enough to hold the balance between the forces of conservatism and the rising demands of democracy. The parliamentary situation in Germany has offered special difficulties. Bismarck once compared the ten- dency of latter-day Germans to break up into parties with the old separatism of the Middle Ages, when cities, villages, abbeys and knights all held directly from the empire, with resulting feebleness and defenselessness. "I know of no other country," he exclaimed, "where national feeling and love for the whole fatherland offer so little resistance to the excess of party passion as with us." These words, spoken before Bismarck's retirement, have been strikingly true in Germany's inner political life ever since. There has been a tremendous growth in national unity, it is true. The strongest testimony to that was given by the unanimity with which the increases in the army and navy were voted in May 191 2 by all parties in the Reichstag except the Socialists, such increases as would have cost Bismarck a dissolu- tion of the Diet and a bitter electoral fight. With the call to arms in 19 14 even the perfunctory opposi- tion of the Social Democrats ceased, and the popular assembly supported the government with practical unanimity in the war measures. But in spite of their THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 117 oneness in response to the national call, the jealousy of the parties in the Reichstag elected in 191 2 was no less and the bitterness between the various groups as in- tense as in the days of Eugene Richter and Windthorst. An American or Englishman, accustomed to two great parties of conservative and Hberal thought, with various more or less short-Hved third parties representing various phases of industrial unrest, finds it very diffi- cult to understand the reason for many of the divisions and subdivisions in German politics. We are accus- tomed to see all matters that cannot come within the wide program of constitutional interpretation settled more or less independently of party; in Germany the tendency has been to form a new party to further each new economic or social theory, and in not a few cases new parties have been called into being simply as an expression of the opinion of some individual, so that, as Bismarck says, "The whole matter is one of Cephas and Paul and not of principles." To the division between the Liberal and Conservative parties was added in the early seventies a Clerical or Centre party, intent on advancing policies favored by the Roman CathoKc Church. The incorporation of Schleswig-Holstein into Prussia brought into the popular assembly a small but aggressive Danish group from those duchies; the absorption of Hanover by Prussia in 1866 added a Guelph party, representing the hopes of a revival of the ancient kingdom of Hanover. The growth of the Polish question brought in a Polish group, recruited mainly from the electors of the Prussian provinces of Posen, West Prussia and Silesia, and representing the national aspirations of the Poles. These "national" groups, whose concern was first of all with inner Prus- sian questions, found their way into the Reichstag as well as the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, and together with the representatives of Alsace-Lorraine for forty years formed within the federal popular assembly a small ii8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS but irreconcilable body, particularistic in the extreme and hostile to national unity. The situation was further complicated by the economic advance of the eighties and nineties, not merely through the growth of the Social Democrats, the representatives of the proletariat, but by the splitting of the old Liberal group on the tariff and other economic issues. Disagreement, splitting and reorganization have formed the history of party progress in modern Germany. Thus by his movement toward protection in the late seventies Bismarck drove a wedge deep into the old Liberal party, dividing it henceforth into two parties — the National Liberals, who gravitated toward conserv- atism, and the German Radicals (Deutschfreisinnigen) , containing the low tariff and more radical group. The latter fraction split again in 1893 on the question of supporting the mihtary establishment, and there arose two Radical groups, — the Freisinnige Vereinigung and the Freisinnige Volkspartei, — which later (1907-10) coalesced into the Progressive People's Party (Fort- schrittliche Volkspartei). Amidst this confusion of per- sonahties and cross-issues there was a tendency to lose sight of constitutional questions, and the parties in the Reichstag, as well as in the popular assemblies of the various states, became more and more the represen- tatives of narrow economic and religious or social in- terests, splitting the political life of the nation into innumerable selfish cliques and seriously impeding progress toward real parliamentary government. Thus the conservative parties tended more and more to rep- resent agrarian interests ; the National Liberals, greatly reduced in numbers and after the beginning of the cen- tury threatened with another split into progressive and reactionary elements, came to stand for those industrial interests which demanded a strengthening of the national power, the open door for trade and the furtherance and cheapening of the means of communication; while THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 119 the commercial classes, the large and small traders, advanced more and more in a radical direction. The Radical group, on the other hand, suffered a loss of numbers through the growth of the Social Democrats, who, beginning their party Hf e with two members in the Reichstag of 1871, grew in forty years to a membership of no, having attracted to their support many voters who did not sympathize with sociahst theories. The influence of the party on legislation became great, but was exercised indirectly rather than directly. By its growth it forced Bismarck to undertake the socialistic compulsory insurance laws of the eighties, and it kept the eyes of the voters constantly fixed on the necessity for advancing sociahstic legislation to keep pace with the growth of industry. The presence of the party in the Reichstag and in the Prussian Diet was, however, a serious handicap in the nation's progress toward parlia- mentary, government, since repeatedly through the violence of Social Democratic speeches and newspaper attacks on the person of the sovereign and nationalist ideas the other parties were driven in the direction of reaction. Rather than achieve progress fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Social Democrats, Liberals and Radicals again and again failed to use the favorable moment to strike for more Hberal institutions. Rather than combine forces. Liberals, Radicals and Socialists were content to see the affairs of the nation administered by a reactionary and feudalistic minority. Splitting and reorganization, narrow particularism and selfish economic interest, therefore, produced a number of parties in the Imperial Diet, some of them so small that the word "fraction" seems a very adequate description. In the Reichstag of 191 2, the 397 members were divided into fourteen clearly defined parties, each having a "program" and each claiming to represent more or less important interests. Some of these frac- tions had only one or two members ; and there were in I20 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS addition four members who found no party program to satisfy them and were elected on no platform except their own individual theories as to the promotion of the public welfare. These varied interests and personal ambitions, however, fell into five more or less well- defined groups. The shades of difference between the various fractions making up these larger groups are often scarcely distinguishable, the old breaches which in some cases split the fractions having long since healed, and occasionally the existence of the "party" is simply due to the personal following of certain ambitious men. As between the five party groups, however, the differ- ences are so marked that they are plain to every one. Representing as they have come to do economic in- terests as well as constitutional theories, they go widely asunder in their demands. By a custom generally followed on the Continent, the more conservative groups are seated on the right of the chamber, as one faces it from the speaker's tribune, the Clerical party in the centre, and the liberal groups to the left, the delegates becoming more and more radical in the seats to the extreme left of the presiding officer. Following this arrangement, the groups in the Reichstag may be defined as Conservative-Agrarian, Catholic, Liberal-Industrial, Radical-Commercial and Socialist-Proletarian.^ •\-The Conservative Group is made up of the "German or Ultra-Conservatives" (Hochkonservativen) and the "Free Conservatives" or "Imperial Party" (Reichs- partei). The former is historically the old Prussian party of feudal landholders, the latter, while defending feudal interests, early accepted and approved the ab- *The grouping of parties in the Reichstag is by no means easy, es- pecially for the earlier years of the empire, when the lines between Liberal and Radical were not clearly drawn and the anti-national parties (Guelphs, Alsatians, Poles and Danes) frequently united with the Catholic Centre for tactical purposes. The following arrangement foUows in the main the Radical publicist Friedrich Naumann and gives a fairly complete picture of the political complexion of the Imperial THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 121 sorption of Prussia into the German Empire and has been marked throughout its history by strongly nationalistic tendencies. It has been distinctly less reactionary and more inclined to submerge narrowly Prussian interests into the interests of the empire. These two powerful wings represent the landed inter- ests of the Prussian Northeast : Pomerania, East Prus- sia and the Old Mark, — the backbone and ribs of the Prussian monarchy to-day as in the days of Frederick the Great and Stein and Bliicher, — with occasional districts in West Prussia, Silesia and Bavaria. Rep- resenting the landed interests, the Conservative group after the early nineties adopted an anti-semitic policy, such as would appeal to the prejudices of money- borrowing landlord and peasant, and has for tactical political purposes absorbed the small Anti-Semitic faction and other groups representing feudal and agrarian interests in the Reichstag. It champions of course a sturdy resistance to all liberalizing tendencies in government administration, and is the sworn defender Diet since the formation of the empire, according to the classification made above : Conserv- Anti-na- tional Liberal- Radical- Socialist- Unat- tached ative- Agrarian Catholic Indus- trial Commer- cial Proleta- rian I87I 92 58 21 150 47 I 28 1874 54 91 33 152 SO 9 8 1877 78 93 28 127 48 12 II 1878 "S 93 35 98 34 9 13 I88I 78 98 43 45 114 12 7 1884 106 99 42 SO 74 24 2 1887 122 98 32 99 32 II 3 1890 98 106 37 42 76 35 3 1893 116 96 37 53 48 44 3 1898 103 102 33 47 SO S6 6 1903 90 100 31 5° 36 83 9 1907 112 104 28 S6 SO 43 4 1912 74 90 33 45 44 no 4 122 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS of autocratic and military power. Being largely Prus- sian in constituency, it has always defended Prussia's prestige in federal affairs. In matters of religion it is strongly Lutheran and ultra-orthodox. The Clerical or Centre party began its existence as the representative of Roman Catholic interests with the formation of the new empire, and it won solidarity and parKmentary skill during the seventies in the so-called KuUurkampf, when both in Prussia and the empire Bismarck directed an aggressive legislative program against the Church. To the efforts of the Iron Chan- cellor to secularize marriage and education and to subordinate all church interests to those of the state, the Centre party under the expert leadership of Windt- horst opposed year after year all the obstacles which religious conservatism has at its command. After the KuUurkampf ended in a compromise in which the Cathohc church gained its chief points, the Centre party continued to exist with about the same strength, representing a conservative attitude in reUgious and educational matters and occasionally an anti-national direction in military and colonial affairs. It has drawn its support chiefly from the Rhine, from Catholic dis- tricts of eastern and southeastern Prussia and from the strongly Catholic south, having retained its hold on these sections with slight changes during forty years. In rivalry with the Social Democratic party for working- men's votes, the Centre party early framed an aggres- sive social program and sought energetically to further the interests of the laboring classes (cf. below, chap. X). Seated next towards the left in the great Reichstag hall on the Konigsplatz in Berlin come the small ''anti- national" fractions referred to above. They include first the few ''unreconstructed" Guelph patriots of Hanover and Brunswick, representatives of constitu- encies whom forty years of prosperity under Prussian government have not sufl&ced to reconcile to the incor- THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 123 poration of Hanover into Prussia. The marriage of the son of the Duke of Cumberland, heir of the Guelph dynasty, to the daughter of the Emperor in May 1913, and the installation of this descendant of the kings of Hanover as reigning Duke of Brunswick, brought about a reconcihation between Guelph and Hohenzollern and a renunciation of Guelphic claims to the Hanoverian throne. It did not, however, reconcile the old dyed- in-the-wool Hanoverian patriots, who had for forty- seven years cursed the Hohenzollern and all his works, and the Guelphic fire continued to burn fiercely in the bosoms of a part of the Hanoverian aristocracy and landed middle class. To the Guelphs should be added the other anti-Prussian fractions, the Danes from Schleswig-Holstein and the aggressive Poles from Germany's Ireland, — West Prussia, Posen and Silesia, No less intransigeant than these have been the represen- tatives of Alsace-Lorraine, who for forty years refused to be digested into Germany's political system, their opposition growing if anything more acute after the granting of the constitution to the "Imperial Land" in 191 1. As an expression of their anti-national feehngs all of these fractions have voted regularly against national measures, most frequently with the Centre party and occasionally with the Social Democrats. The Liberal group is the successor of the old Liberal party, which fifty years ago sought to repeat on German soil the Enghsh struggle for parliamentary government. Having unsuccessfully fought Bismarck's unconstitu- tional poKcy in Prussia, it accepted with enthusiasm the results of this policy in the foundation of the new German empire ; and in the early sessions of the Reich- stag formed a fraction exceeding all other parties com- bined, working with the Iron Chancellor on a give- and-take basis toward upholding the national program and toward a more Hberal construction of the con- stitution. It was the fate of German liberalism that 124 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS its progress had to be sacrificed on the altar of German unity, and that when it again began its work in the em- pire, it must again be checked, this time by iron economic forces which rent it asunder. Bismarck forced the tariff question to the front; the old German trend towards separatism, always stronger in Hberal than in conservative ranks, asserted itself, the more radical half of the Liberals adhering to free trade and ardently striving for a Hberalizing of the constitution. The residue, the rump of the old National Liberal party, saw itself robbed one by one of the more distinctive tags of liberalism, and the rise of the Social Democrats forced it more and more in the direction of conservatism. Economically it has represented the industrial system, which favors a strong national policy, with Hberal but by no means radical tendencies. Its personnel has been distinguished, embracing some of the ablest captains of industry and a large percentage of the professional classes, but it has unfortunately been too dignified, in its majority at least, and too much afraid of making common cause with the Social Democrats to further liberal policies aggressively. The Radical group is, as has been shown, the result of many splits and reorganizations and has suffered much through many and selfish leaders. Having fallen heir to the more emphatically Hberal poHcies after the economic split in the National Liberal ranks in 1878, it was handicapped all through the eighties by its nega- tive attitude toward colonial, naval and military expan- sion. The military bill of 1893 ^^^ to another spHt, which was finally healed fifteen years later. At last the national-imperial idea took possession even of the successors of Eugene Richter, the great Radical leader of the eighties who was so constantly a thorn in Bis- marck's side; and in the Reichstag of 191 2 the Radical group trailed in behind the government's " imperialistic " legislation with something very close to enthusiasm. It THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 125 had come to represent more and more the great commer- cial class, with its sensitiveness to international trade conditions and its yearning for sound finance and a fair system of direct taxation. Its electoral votes, like those of the National Liberals, have not been con- fined to any section of Germany. It is, as is natural, the only party which has not hesitated to combine with the Social Democrats in the second ballotings. Its steady "front against the Right" in matters of taxation and inner administration made it to a certain extent the nucleus of progressivism in parliamentary struggles. The Social Democrats will receive consideration in a later chapter. Here it is sufficient to say that while the party represents, of course, the working and un- propertied classes, many of its leaders have been re- cruited from among those intellectual knights-errant who were drawn into the ranks of socialism through enthusiasm for its economic theories or from a senti- mental sympathy with the uplift of the poor. The representatives of the party in the Reichstag and in the various chambers of the individual German states are the editors of the Socialist papers, secretaries of the labor unions, master bakers, cigar makers, small merchants and innkeepers, with here and there an author or a poet. Their growing membership in the Reichstag has come mainly from the industrial centres, where they have captured such citadels of clericalism as Cologne. Theoretically at least they are pledged to a program which includes the overthrow of the capitalistic state, consequently their position in all matters relating to the national development has been negative. In times of patriotic enthusiasm, as in the appeal to the country by the government for support of the colonial policy in 1907, the party loses votes; following a period of reaction and national depression, as in 191 2, they attract to themselves electors from all Hberal ranks, who thus register their violent pro- 126 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS test against the existing system. That their opposi- tion to national ideals is largely academic was proved by the practical unanimity with which the party leaders followed the national call on the outbreak of the great war in August 1914 and the hearty support which the party, with remarkably few exceptions, gave the war measures in the Reichstag. This then is the complicated system of German parties in the present day. It is significant that no one of these groups constituted even as much as thirty-three per cent of the membership of the Reichstag of 191 2, and indeed, not once since the formation of the empire has one of the five groups mentioned controlled a major- ity of the Imperial Diet. The difficulties of govern- ment under such a system are enormous. They re- solve themselves into the formation and maintenance of a "block" for the passage of government measures, and in doing this the Chancellor must drive the best bargain he can with the individual groups making up the "block." It would be out of place here to discuss the comparative merits of the two-party and fractional systems. The latter prevails in nearly all of the Continental legislatures. The real trouble in the Ger- man Reichstag has lain less in the fact that no one party could take control than in the lack of a responsible ministry. As it is, the block must do the bidding of the ministry or refuse to do it, because the ministry represents the Bundesrat, which in the last instance makes and breaks legislation. Added to this has been the negative attitude of the Social Democrats and the "national" fractions, who have as a matter of principle opposed all policies looking toward a strengthening of national imperial power. Their irre- sponsibility and unmanageableness of the different frac- tions are thus increased. After his break with the Liberals in 1877, Bismarck formed a Conservative alhance, not merely because THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 127 the landed gentry fell in with his economic views, especially regarding the tariff, but also because they were more congenial with the sovereign and with the monarchically incHned ministry. Conservatives and Clericals, landed interest and church interest, formed the backbone of government through the eighties. With their help Bismarck put through his compulsory insurance bills and other sociahstic legislation, by which he hoped to pull the teeth of the whole Socialist move- ment. Through this conservative alliance the whole prin- ciple of authority was vastly strengthened : it was the natural union between the representative of the auto- cratic principle of government in the sovereign, backed by the feudal Junker, and the organized and conservative forces of the church. When anti-imperial elements threatened his policies, as in 1887, Bismarck had but to beat the long roll of national defense and point to the restlessness of France, and the nation responded to his call, returning a con- servative-national majority. When in 1890 additional army reforms were needed, and it seemed that the electors might not again respond, Bismarck seriously considered a stroke against the constitution which should sweep away universal suffrage and put the Reichstag, like the Prussian Chamber, safely and permanently imder Conservative control. The young emperor, however, temporized with the Liberals ; and the Iron Chancellor's successors, Caprivi and Hohenlohe, found it possible to govern with Liberal help, winning thereby the hatred of the Conservatives. Occasionally the Kaiser's min- isters would veer about and pass a measure with Con- servative votes over the heads of the Liberals. Gradu- ally the Clerical party, standing as it has always stood for conservatism and yet for social progress, holding its forces under control down to the last man, brought itself into a position where it controlled the balance of power between the struggling forces of Conservatism 128 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS and Liberalism. From 1895 to 1906 the presidency of the Reichstag was held by a member of the Centre party; and in the same period the government found its way to great national ends completely blocked by Conservative opposition. In the Prussian Diet the landed gentry held the whip hand and shattered again and again carefully prepared plans for the development of internal commerce by canals; in the Reichstag, the Conservative forces with the help of the Centre resisted direct taxation and brought the finances of the empire to the verge of bankruptcy. After the turn of the century the difiiculties of the legislative system were tremendously increased by the rapid growth of economic contrasts. German industry went forward by leaps and bounds in this period : it is estimated that in the decade 1 896-1 906 taxable values in the Empire increased forty per cent, a ratio which, was probably exceeded between 1906 and 1914. This increase was almost entirely in the industrial and com- mercial districts, the great agricultural tracts of Mecklen- burg and Prussia to the northeast of Elbe showing a depreciation in values and an increase in debt. The landed gentry of the Northeast, however, are the Con- servative party of Germany ; and through the organiza- tion of the Agrarian League {Bund der Landwirte) in 1893 and the political pressure which this aggressive association was able to exert, the agrarian interests crowded to the front each year with ever increasing demands. Stung by depreciating values and increasing debt, the party of the landed aristocracy, which through its very social weight exercises a strong influence on the ministry, forced the government to raise the pro- tective duties on agricultural products in 1902, putting through the measure with the help of the Centre party. Despite the strategic cleverness by which the Clerical party thus assured itself a deciding voice in all questions of national policy, a time finally came when the govern- THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 129 merit would no longer be coerced. The Clerical phalanx which had carried its way by sheer power of discipKne on so many a legislative field met defeat when it collided with the growing enthusiasm for Germany overseas. In 1906 the Centre, in common with the Social Demo- crats, refused to grant the government's demand for a sufficient appropriation to crush thoroughly the Herero revolt in Southwest Africa. At once Biilow brought Bismarck's old formula into action. The Reichstag was dissolved, and the government appealed to the voters of the nation to say whether Germany should continue on the path of world power or not. Bismarck had known how to play on the popular chord of love of German unity and fear of France : it was flattering testimony to the advance of the national idea that Biilow could successfully appeal to the desire of the nation for overseas dominion and meet with enthusiastic support from the same Radicals who had fought the increase in the army in 1887. The country responded with alac- rity. The powerful phalanx of the Centre remained unbroken in the general election of 1907 ; but the Social Democratic vote in the Reichstag was almost cut in half, and the night of the election the Schlossplatz in Berlin rang with the huzzas of thousands of patriotic Germans, celebrating the national idea in the person of the Emperor. The government went immediately to work with a new majority based on this idea, a majority made up of Conservatives, Liberals and Radicals against the Centre and the parties of protest. But no sooner was the national crisis passed and the supplies voted for pacification and development in Southwest Africa than the new "block" spHt on the economic reef. In the necessary reform of national finances, the Liberal-Radical groups backed the govern- ment in its demand for direct taxes, among which was included the inheritance tax; the Conservative rep- resentatives, the owners of entailed and family estates, I30 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS refused to accept the inheritance tax, and the Centre availed themselves of the opportunity of revenge on the ministry. Chancellor Biilow was placed once more before the alternative of governing with the old Conservative-Clerical majority or resigning. He re- signed, proving that the imperial ministry is respon- sible — not to the majority in the Reichstag, but to the Conservative minority ! His successor, Bethmann-Holl- weg, accepted the "blue-black" block, as the Liberal newspapers picturesquely described the union of feudal and clerical interests, and for two and one-half years, 1909-12, Germany went through an era of reaction. In the elections of 191 2 the natural result came. The electors, dissatisfied with the subservience of the government to agrarian interests, restless of clerical domination and smarting from the Morocco disappoint- ment, registered their protest in the manner which had become traditional, by voting for the Social Democratic candidates. As a result, when the Chancellor faced the new Reichstag, he found that it would be impossible for him to construct a block without the aid of Liberal elements. The Conservative parties, with all of their alKes, mustered fewer votes than at any time since the formation of the empire, the Centre fewer than at any time since it was launched as a party. Conservatives, Clericals and allies but slightly outnumbered the com- bined Radicals and Socialists ; the 45 National Liberals held the balance of power. Under the circumstances a Conservative-Clerical block was impossible, and the government was re- Heved of the necessity of governing with the help of the Centre, a burden which had been felt by every Chancellor since 1895. A Liberal block could have been formed only with the help of the Social Democrats, something which no ministry dependent on the monarchy could think of accepting. Bethmann-HoUweg took the only course possible for a minister responsible only THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 131 to the crown : he strove for a policy which should unite all groups representing the propertied classes, relying on the antagonism of the National Liberals to the Social Democrats to hold the Liberal forces in Hne for conservative legislation. In 191 2 with striking una- nimity all the groups except the Social Democrats and the "national" parties voted for the increases in the army and navy; when it came to covering the in- creased expenditures, the government bill laid a heavy burden on wine and spirits, putting off once more the troublesome problem of direct taxation. Although it was certain that the Chancellor could count on a majority for the inheritance tax, the measure could have been passed only with Social Democratic help in the face of Conservative opposition, and the Chancellor frankly confessed himself as unwilling to accept success at this price. The emergencies of the foreign situation in 1913 brought a compromise, which was, however, in effect a Liberal-Sociahst victory. The enormous one- time expenditure, as well as the annual deficit caused by the provisions of the Defense Bill of that year (cf. page 11) forced the ministry to incorporate the principle of direct taxation into its fiscal policy, and under the stress of the national danger the Conservative-Clerical groups were forced to accept it. They succeeded, however, for the present in standing off the hated in- heritance tax, and the increased annual expenditures were provided for by property-increment and sugar taxes. The immense sacrifices which the emergency called for from all classes drew the sting from party defeats and disappointments in this crisis. This rather lengthy review of recent political forma- tions in the Reichstag makes clear the difficulties which have attended the fractional system in Germany's na- tional affairs. Had the various political groups, represent- ing as they do to a considerable extent economic groups, all been filled with a patriotic spirit of give-and-take, the 132 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS government could have traced a path toward political and economic welfare with far better results. As it was, however, financial interests and class prejudices have at times brought the ministry well nigh to the end of its resources and rendered the Reichstag almost impo- tent for the transaction of business. Especially has the government found the matter of taxation difl&cult of adjustment. The danger to the ministerial program lay always in the two extremes. The extreme agrarian party, from causes partly obvious and partly to be dis- cussed below, has wielded a poHtical power that is vastly out of proportion to its numbers, and as a matter of course has employed this power to defeat a readjust- ment of taxation or any fiscal changes in line with the growth of population and industry. On the other hand, the Social Democrats, in spite of a growing ten- dency to participate in government and to push aside their hard and fast economic theories, have been ag- gressively, even belligerently, out of sympathy with the monarchy. Their ardent radicalism has made it difi&cult for the government to use them or for the Liberal groups to combine with them in legislation and has compelled the nation to submit under universal suffrage to govern- ment by a minority. It was certain that in spite of the failure of Billow's national block the "block system" had come into im- perial politics to stay and that all important questions of inner administration in the future would have to be settled with the aid of a liberal block. It is not think- able that the government will be able to rule again en- tirely with a powerful Conservative-Clerical majority, still less that it can get along, as it once did, simply with conservative support. While no one believed that the Social Democratic vote of four and one-quarter millions in the Reichstag election of 191 2 represented simply Socialist strength, a sharp veering of popular sentiment in the direction of radicalism was observable. THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 133 Germany is not America or England or France, and there will always be a number of parties, as much to represent the vigorous individuality of political leaders as to champion the various economic and social interests, which are often selfishly narrow. The hope of liberal- ism and progress hes in the working together of Hberal elements, which means that the Social Democrats must in the end modify their sharp class sentiments, and that the National Liberals must show their readiness to cooperate in legislation with the more radical groups. Such a hberal group must first command the confidence of the middle classes in its enthusiasm for the national idea, and then it may hope to make the ministry re- sponsible to it, in fact if not in law. That Germany's entire poUtical system and administration has remained in a state of arrested development has been due more than anything else to the jealousies of the Hberal fractions themselves. Bickerings between National Liberals and Radicals have lamed all united action by these groups, while the former have preferred anything to an even distant affihation with the Social Democrats and the Social Democrats have been willing to sacrifice every practical advantage in legislation to tlie pleasure of a quixotic lance breaking for far-off theories. The result has been that all have been ruled by a Conservative minority. The stimulating example which Germany gave to the world of a united nation at the outbreak of the war may well be of lasting value to German po- litical Hfe, if, when Mars no longer rules the hour, the inspiration of this memory shall take away something of party rancor and show the way to a union of hberal elements. Any reforms which find their way into the German imperial constitution must first make themselves felt in the methods and usages of the Reichstag. Apparently one of the most active of popular assembhes, it is in practice one of the most impotent. Theoretically, as 134 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS we have seen, bills may be introduced by any member ; practically, they are introduced by the government and modified by the Reichstag, either in committee or on the floor of the house. In the committees, which represent the larger fractions of the house, it is usually made pretty clear by the representatives of the dynasties just what will be acceptable to the Bundesrat; and in view of the iron discipline of the various fractions, the house usually votes what the committee agrees upon. Measures originating in the Reichstag itself have small chance of acceptance by the government in the form presented, although they may be made later a part of the govern- ment program. It is therefore in effect government by the Emperor and the dynasties with the consent of the Reichstag. The result has been a more or less hostile attitude on the part of the representatives of the popular parties toward the government. The ministry and such members of the Bundesrat as choose to be present occupy elevated seats facing the assembly, and their attitude toward the popular house is to all intents and purposes that of the diplomatic representatives of some foreign treaty power. The imperial chancellors have all been men of force enough to command a hearing and to com- pel cooperation : other less able members of the ministry have sometimes resented the imputation that the pre- siding Officers of the Reichstag could exercise parliamen- tary control over their actions. That there is a general uncertainty as to the exact status of the ministry in the house has been illustrated on many occasions. A striking example of this occurred in connection with the Emperor's threat in May 191 2 to destroy the constitu- tion of Alsace-Lorraine (cf. page 106). One of the Social Democrats took occasion to attack the Prussian constitution on the floor of the house, and the Chan- cellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, accompanied by such mem- bers of the Bundesrat as were present, arose and left the chamber, followed by the jeers of the Social Demo- THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 135 crats. The Kaiser's chief minister claimed that the presiding officer should have called the offending speaker to order, and as soon as this was done, the Chancellor returned, accompanied by his entourage. Some Con- servatives asserted that in the absence of the govern- ment's representatives the Reichstag could not legally transact business. Another illustration of the superior and independent attitude of the government toward the popular assembly occurred in the early days of the Liberal-Radical- Sociahst Reichstag of 191 2. The Diet was much agi- tated and its business greatly impeded by the excite- ment attending the election of its presiding officers. According to traditions, the Social Democrats as the most numerous party in the Diet should have furnished the President. It is, however, the duty of the President and two Vice-Presidents after the organization of the Reichstag to visit the imperial palace and announce to the Emperor the opening of the house. This had been regarded as a court function of some importance and was accompanied by the somewhat stilted ceremonies usual on such occasions. Now the Social Democrats, whose program is frankly anti-monarchical, have al- ways protested against court ceremony in every form; and it was only after a long and acrid debate within the fraction that Socialists finally agreed that their rep- resentative might fulfil "the necessary functions of representation." A Social Democratic president was, however, unthinkable, not merely to the entire Right and Centre but to the National Liberals as well; and the Conservatives in the chamber, taking advantage of the general uncertainty as to the behavior of the Socialist at court, elected as President the leader of the Clerical party, Dr. Spahn. Of the National Liberals, however, enough went over to the Left to secure the election of Herr Scheidemann, a printer, the Social Democratic leader, as first Vice-President and a Radi- 136 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS cal as Second Vice-President. Dr. Spahn declined to sit in the presidency with a Social Democrat, and Herr Scheidemann actually presided over the Diet to the glee of his fraction, until another Radical leader, Herr Kaempf , was elected President. Then, however, a fresh diflSculty arose. Acting on the instructions of his party, Scheide- mann refused to go to theScMoss for presentation, alleging that while as President he might fulfil the necessary court functions, as Vice-President he found it unneces- sary. The Chancellor then announced that acting on his advice, the Emperor would not receive an incomplete presidential group. The net result of this curious collision of caste feeling with political bitterness and proletarian narrow-mindedness was that the National Liberals, with scattering votes from the Right and Centre, finally voted out the Socialist and voted in a Radical-Liberal presidency. In its attitude of superiority toward the popular assembly the government has been supported through thick and thin by the Conservative fraction. In the Reichstag of 191 2 a successful attempt was made to introduce the British custom of addressing minor ques- tions to the ministry. Formal question and response in set speeches had been a regular part of the relation- ship between ministry and Diet, but this Liberal- Radical Reichstag provided for brief questions, an- nounced the day before, such as are constantly levelled at the ministerial benches at Westminster. This practice, however, presupposes a sort of reponsibihty to the house, the very appearance of which the govern- ment was anxious to avoid; and the ministers, among them the minister for foreign affairs, the late Kiderlen- Waechter, evaded Social Democratic questions with the superior manner of the Junker, amid thunders of ap- plause from the Conservative benches. A somewhat similar incident occurred in December 1913 in connection with the Zabern affair, which for some THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PARTIES 137 weeks held Germany breathless with excitement and sent thrills across the Vosges into France. Smarting under the insults of the Francophile population of the Alsatian town, the mihtary stationed there, acting under the orders of their officers, had attacked citizens and practically taken over the administration of order, even imprisoning some members of the municipal govern- ment. Facing a stormy Reichstag, the Chancellor, Beth- mann-Hollweg, in a rather lame speech of explanation, in which an investigation was promised, was understood to say that in any colKsion of authority between the mihtary and the civil power, the former must be supreme. After a session in which for once the outraged feelings of the National Liberals drove them into cooperation with the Social Democrats, a vote of censure was passed with the help of practically the entire Left and Centre, the Conservatives voting with feudal solidarity in sup- port of the Chancellor. The incident would have brought the ministry to instant fall in any country with really parhamentary government. In Germany it had no further effect than to register the feehngs of the nation and to lead to a rather halting explanation from the Chancellor on the following day. While acknowl- edging the supremacy of the law, the Kaiser's chief minister disclaimed even the slightest responsibility to any one save his "imperial master." It is plain that the Reichstag, checked and hampered 3,5 it is in, its full cooperation in government, is not yet a parhament, but that it is tending to become one. It does enjoy the opportunity of free speech and full criticism, and it avails itself of this opportunity to the fullest extent. Indeed, it is safe to say that there is no dehberative body in the world where discussion is so untrammelled and goes so far afield. In discussing the various budgets the opportunity is given for almost unhmited speechmaking, and a lenient presidency permits almost any subject to be illuminated, from the 138 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS theological views of some university professor to the latest case of mistreatment of recruits or the last army duel. Under a Conservative presidency the discussion of the monarch was forbidden, but Radical presiding officers have shown extreme latitude in that regard. To this freedom of debate is added a freedom of interrup- tion, which is a still worse delay to business. Zwischen- rufe, interruptions, by which one expresses his approval or disapproval of the speaker's ideas, are characteristic of German dehberative assemblies, and are tolerated in the Reichstag to a degree which often seriously delays business, especially when joined, as they often are, with colloquies between the speaker and the member in- terrupting. The debates in the Reichstag are given wide publicity in the newspapers : and it may be said that with all of their wordiness they have been an invaluable means of educating the German people in parliamentary methods and in the direction of more Uberal ideas. Especially the Clerical and Social Democratic members through their J effective party organizations are kept informed of cases of maladministration of justice, of the mistreatment of recruits, of duels, of unconstitu- tional acts or persecution on the part of government officials, and they give to such cases a publicity in the national assembly which cannot fail to have a wholesome effect. If they cannot reach the offenders, they can occasionally sting the government into action ; and in any event the fear of publicity is a powerful deterrent in preventing future cases. The attitude of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag, as elsewhere in public, has been one of marked insurgency, and especially in the Liberal- Radical Diet of 1 91 2 they have shown themselves unre- strained. CHAPTER VII Feudalism and Agriculture " Germany does not look for her salvation to Prussia's liberalism but to Prussia's power." This statement of Bismarck, made in an oft-quoted letter to the Freiherr von Billow in 1861, marks the corner-stone of the founda- tion of German unity. Not only does the empire rest upon Prussia, but Prussia has become to a certain ex- tent the empire. Prussia's monarch is its emperor and the commander of its army and navy, Prussia's minister- president is its chancellor, the Prussian capital is its capital. Prussia includes nearly 65 per cent of the empire's area, more than 61 per cent of its population and 60 per cent of its taxable values. Prussia's methods in official administration have become the model for the smaller states. The mihtary forces of the greater part of the smaller duchies and principalities are attached to Prussian commands, and the railways of all the central states are at Prussia's mercy and therefore completely subordinate to the Prussian administration. And this with justice. It is hardly necessary to refer again to the part which Prussia played in forging German unity. The mihtary organization and aggressive diplo- macy of her earlier sovereigns raised the kingdom be- tween the Thirty Years' War and the Napoleonic wars to be one of the five great powers of the West, and bound about the ancient electoral lands of Brandenburg Pom- erania and the semi-Slavic duchies to the east and the Westphalian and Rhenish country to the west, welding the whole together with the iron bands of the 139 I40 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Prussian military administration and the Prussian bureaucracy. When in 1866 Bismarck and the Prussian armies put an end to Austria's rivalry for the hegemony among the German states, Prussia planted the black and white standard permanently on the Danish border, swept away the Guelph and Hessian dynasties and created by the power of her army and diplomacy the North German Confederation, in which the smaller states were only her satellites. And when at Versailles in 187 1 after a long debate the South German kingdoms, Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, who themselves looked back upon a long history of brilliant national achievement, finally agreed to subordinate certain features of their ancient independence to the longed-for German unity, they entered an alliance in which Prussia was to control, if not a majority, at least a commanding voice in the Federal Council, under a constitution which could be altered only with Prussia's consent. This submission to the leadership of Prussia was not looked upon from the beginning with anything like enthusiasm by most South Germans. Badener and Wiirtemberger and Bavarian had each a glowing love for his own fatherland and each would have been untrue to his national characteristics and to the traditions of more than one century if he had not felt a deep aversion to the drill-stick methods of the Prussian military sys- tem and the galling arrogance of Prussian officialdom. But while they disliked Prussia and hated Bismarck, the South Germans loved German unity still more, and the power and prosperity which came to the union under Prussia's lead soon began to reconcile them to the self- sufficiency even of Prussian drill-master and bureaucrat. The local pride of the South German states still burned brightly, but there came with the passing years such a levelling away of local peculiarities and an effacing of state boundaries as must come with the growth of in- dustry and the improvement of the means of communica- FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 141 tion. The imperial idea and the enthusiasm for Ger- many's high place among the nations in the end mastered the South German democrat and the Prussian radical aHke, just as the enthusiasm for German unity had mastered their fathers. Furthermore, the class call of the Social Democrats brought the working classes of all Germany under one standard, where they became to a certain extent moulded into one political type. Even deep-seated ethnic characteristics yielded to the age of movement, and it grew more and more difficult to recog- nize the Prussian by his reserve of manner and energy, the Saxon by his genial pettiness, the Swabian by his blundering good nature and pathos and the Bavarian by his sturdy straightforwardness. Into all of them there came in the quick-time march of new Germany something of Prussian self-assertiveness and hustle. It has been necessary to recite these well-known facts in the genesis of the empire in order to explain the importance to Germany of Prussia's political system and the influence of the Prussian ruling class on German institutions. In constitutional development, to be sure, nearly all of the smaller states have outstripped Prussia, for, with two exceptions, all have come to enjoy liberal constitutions, or constitutions tending strongly toward liberalism. In most cases the limitations on the suffrage in the choice of representatives are very slight. In Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, a tiny Thuringian principality, in 191 2 a Social Democratic majority in the chamber elected a thoroughgoing Social Democratic presidency. In three of the small states of this region Social Demo- cratic chambers have assisted the ruler in administering government. Baden, Bavaria and Wiirtemberg have practically universal suffrage ; and in the last-named state, which more than a century ago absorbed demo- cratic ideas from France, the king's ministry has often worked with the Social Democrats in passing measures through the chambers. German historians are fond of 142 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS referring to the development of the South German con- stitutions as "inorganic," meaning thereby that these instruments have accorded to the popular electorate a greater share in government than it was prepared to exercise. That these states have had their own problems is certainly true ; but there are those who believe that self-government is best learned by practice, even at the cost of mistakes, and that the administration of the affairs of their own state is the best school for a people who would be free. In any event, if the too rapid development of popular government in the South German states was inorganic, the lack of development in the Mecklenburg duchies and in Prussia is certainly anachronistic. Mecklenburg- Schwerin and Mecklenburg- Strelitz are still under feudal rule. In these states, lying in the great alluvial plain between the Elbe and the Baltic, a land of few towns and many great estates, the great landlords con- stitute an oligarchy which has thus far resisted all efforts to impose a modern constitution. It can naturally only be a question of time when this citadel of feudahsm will yield and peasant and townsman obtain a share in the government of their state; but thus far the efforts of the grand dukes, who desire above all to regulate the financial situation through constitutional means, have failed to break down the opposition of the country gentry. In Prussia also the opposition to constitutional revision proceeds from the same class. After the revolution of 1848-49 had spent its force and the weak and romantic Frederick William IV, backed by the landed aristocracy, had withdrawn the constitution which the popular up- heaval had wrested from him, he finally in 1850 presented to his people an instrument which might be called the last word in reaction. The arbitrary will of the monarch, with a ministry responsible to him alone, was fenced in by an upper chamber representing only the crown and FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 143 the aristocracy and a lower chamber elected according to the "three class system," indirectly, with viva voce balloting. Under the three-class arrangement the total amount of taxes paid in the electoral district is divided into three equal parts. The names of the electors having been arranged in a Hst according to the amount of taxes which each pays, the list is then divided into three parts, so that each group pays one-third of the total taxes. Each one of these groups or "classes" has an equal voice in selecting the primary electors, who then choose the representative in the national Diet, the Landtag. As a result of this division the electors in Prussia in 1908 were classified as follows : fijst class, 4 per cent ; second class, 14 per cent ; third class, 82 per cent. The injus- tice of a system which rests entirely upon a property basis, where the vote of one man may sometimes have a weight four hundred times greater than that of another, has long been recognized even in Conservative circles, but beyond the redistricting of certain populous parts of Prussia no change has been made since 1850. The government has repeatedly promised reforms in the electorate, and in 1910 the ministry did bring in a reform measure, conservative enough but representing a distinct advance in giving increased influence to the middle classes. After a long debate in committee, the bill was rejected through Conservative manoeuvres. The control which the great landholders have exer- cised over the elections through the greater weight of their votes under the "three class system" is, however, less important than that wielded through the silent ter- rorism of the " open ballot." The voting for the Reichstag is secret ; that for the Prussian Landtag is public. Ter- rorizing the electors is of course forbidden by law, and may, if proved, invahdate an election ; but tenants and employees on the estates of the eastern provinces of Prussia are not protected by any organization, and even if they were, the administration of justice in these dis- 144 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS tricts is entirely in the hands of the landholding class. It is easy to see how quickly a vote against the candi- date of the local gentry might lead to loss of home and hving for the tenant-employee and his family and how difficult it would be to obtain redress from the courts. Similarly in the small towns a vote for a Social Demo- cratic or even a Radical or National Liberal candidate might provoke a boycott which would quickly ruin the small shopkeeper. Under this constitution, born as it was of the spirit of reaction and held in effect through the fear of the rising industrial democracy, power in Prussia has remained in the hands of the landholders in the districts east of the Elbe and to a less degree in those of the upper middle class in the industrial West. The tremendous shifts in population which have accompanied the growth of the cities in Germany since i860 have created some rotten boroughs and left nearly all of the larger cities in Prussia with inadequate representation in the Landtag. Some progress has been made toward increasing the number of representatives allowed certain cities : but it still remains true that the agricultural districts in Prussia are greatly over-represented as compared with the indus- trial districts and that the kingdom is to a certain extent governed in a feudalistic manner. In the Landtag of 1908 there were to be found 139 landholders, 23 manu- facturers, six small industrialists and two workingmen. The results of such a state of affairs, which resembles that existing in England before the passage of the Re- form Bill of 1832, are manifest in the rigid attitude of the entire administration toward anything that savors of Hberalism. The control of the schools allows no com- promise in the matter of rehgious instruction. Not until 191 1 did the Landtag authorize the building of crematories in Prussia, although at that time thirteen existed in less reactionary German states. The measure finally passed by a majority of one over the votes of the Clerical party FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 145 and certain ultra-orthodox Lutheran Conservatives. When the erection of crematories and the cremation of corpses was finally permitted, the authorization was accompanied by restrictions which made evident the hostile spirit of the government toward such innovations. The formula which the government physician must fill out before permission was given for incineration was a masterpiece of bureaucratic arrogance, with its heart- less, not to say indecent, inspection of the corpse and record of its condition. Nevertheless, by 191 3 there were said to be 29 crematories in operation in Prussia, nearly all owned by the municipalities. In some cities under clerical control, notably Cologne, the municipal authorities made use of the local option allowed by the statute and refused to permit the erection of a crematory. There can of course be no liberalizing of the national administration in Prussia without a liberalizing of the constitution, and as we have seen, the forces of reaction have thus far been strong enough to prevent that. The chief opposition has lain with the landed aristocrat, the so-called Junker, the backbone of the Conservative party. To the bonds of caste and feudal interest which hold this class together has been added the economic necessity of defending legislatively the agrarian interest.^ ^ The political complexion of the Landtag in recent years has been as follows : 1898 1903 1908 1913 Ultra-Conservatives Free Conservatives {Reichspartei) . National Liberals Radicals Centre 144 58 75 36 100 13 7 143 59 79 32 97 13 10 152 60 65 36 104 7 15 4 148 53 73 40 103 10 12 Social Democrats Poles Unattached 4 146 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Whatever may be its attitude towards political prog- ress, the Prussian landed aristocracy has a right to claim a major part of the credit for the creation of united Germany. "Every Kleist a soldier!" was said of one distinguished Brandenburg family, famed both in arms and letters ; and the same thing might be said of many another Prussian family, whose members have served the Hohenzollern for two hundred and fifty years against Austrians, Swedes and French, as their ancestors served the German cause against the heathen Slavs in the North- east. A strong military and poUtical instinct runs through these families, a profound devotion to the Prussian name, an abiding faith in the monarchy as a God-founded and God-protected institution, an inborn capacity for discipline and a commanding sense of duty. The sons of these families still constitute the backbone of the army and navy, and they are found enjoying the highest offices in the diplomacy and inner administration both of Prussia and the empire. They are the only class in Germany with a well-developed "political sense." They are the bulwark of the monarchy and the social anchor of the state in all storms of industrial upheaval. To the foreigner who sees the baron and his family visiting in Berlin during a few weeks of the winter or early spring, he is a striking and original personality. Filled to the brim with class prejudices, in many cases im- poverished by the economic changes which have drawn wealth from the agricultural into the industrial districts, indifferent to literature and ignorant of art, untravelled in the sense in which the American and Englishman understands travel, insulated by his training and prej- udices from the streams of modern political and economic thought, — the Prussian country gentleman is neverthe- less possessed of a simplicity in his view of life and a virility and force of character that mark him out any- where as a noteworthy social and political force. He is what the English landed aristocrat might have been had / FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 147 there been no Cromwell and no Revolution of 1688. It is extremely fortunate for Germany that along with her tremendous industrial growth she has not yet seriously weakened this class, which depends for its very existence on the maintenance of satisfactory agricultural conditions. How difficult it has been for the Junker to maintain his prestige with the advancing cost of living and demands of life, one may easily understand. The two great diffi- culties which confronted the East Prussian landholder in his effort to hold his position economically were the increasing cost of production and the growing competi- tion with foreign countries in the sale of food products. Up to half a century ago it was comparatively easy for him to maintain the economic and social conditions which his father and grandfather had enjoyed. His labor was stationary, having dwelt for generations in the villages on or near his estate, his products found a steady market at prices which rose with the cost of living, keeping step with the general increase in population. But with the rapid industrial growth that followed the extension of the railway Unes and the development of the early days of the empire, the East Elbian Junker's troubles began. Agricultural labor began to become more mobile, and as the North German towns grew by leaps and bounds, it became harder and harder to keep the young men and women on the land. The laborers' cottages on most of the great estates of the East are owned by the great landholders, and the condition of these dwellings is often deplorably dismal and unsani- tary. The hours of labor are long and the schools are deficient. The absolute dependence on the "bread- giver," as the landlord-employer is called, enforced by the harsh special laws, which ever since the end of serfdom, more than a century ago, have given special protection to the employers of rural labor, has grown ever more galling as the spirit of independence has spread through the agricultural districts. The resulting 148 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS withdrawal of labor from the land went on increasingly for more than a generation until it became an acute problem for the landlords, who strove to meet it in part at least by trying to get from the Prussian Landtag severer laws controlling rural labor, in part also by the importation of Polish men and women, chiefly from Galicia. (Cf. Chapter XII.) The other alternative by which the emergency might have been met — lowering the cost of production by the introduction of labor-saving machinery — was out of the question, both because of the Junker's conservatism and his poverty. Farm machinery, most of it of American manufacture, did find its way into the Northeast, but both the initiative and the capital were lacking to make use of it on any- thing like the scale in which it is employed on the farms west of the Mississippi. That the landowner was not going to let himself be forced to the wall became, however, perfectly plain after the early nineties and grew plainer with each succeeding year. He showed himself as ready to fight that Prussia might continue to be an agricultural state in which the landholding class should enjoy the highest power as his ancestors were to fight to drive the Swedes and French from Prussian soil. The Junker was ready, if need be, to turn his arms against any ministry that betrayed Hberal or anti-agrarian tendencies. The bitter- est attacks ever made on Bismarck were not from the Liberal or Radical side, but appeared in 1873-76 in the Berlin Kreuzzeitung, the organ of the ultra-Conserva- tives, while the Chancellor was governing with the aid of a Liberal majority. Bismarck during this period found himself constantly faced by a steel ring composed of his own Junker class, whose points were not lowered until the Chancellor came over to their way of thinking. Similarly the Conservative Junker attacked Bismarck's successor, the liberal minded Caprivi, and brought about his fall ; and they leagued with the Clericals to over- FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 149 throw Billow in 1909, because he was resolved to lay- some of the burden of reform in the imperial finances on Conservative-feudal shoulders. Whence comes the political power by which the East Elbian aristocrats have been able to dominate not only Prussia, but in a measure modern industrial Germany as well? It lies first of all in the influence on the ad- ministration insured them through prestige of family and through their consequent proximity to the emperor- king. The Kaiser draws most of his advisers and dip- lomats from this class, some of whose families look back on a record of service to the Prussian state little less glorious than that of the Hohenzollern itself. Further- more, in spite of the redistricting that has taken place in Prussia from time to time, the weight of representation of the eastern agricultural provinces in the national legislature far surpasses that of the industrial West. And, as has already been seen, the Prussian constitu- tion further hedges in its restricted electorate by an open ballot, making of the suffrage what one of the defenders of the Prussian constitution once called "the privileged right of a chosen minority." The Prussian ministers have repeatedly promised a modification of the electoral law, and as has been shown, an unsuccessful effort in that direction was made in 1910; but the difficulties in the way of real reform are immense, since any liberahzing of the constitution must strengthen the Radicals and Social Democrats with a consequent weak- ening of the political power of the Junker class, the class which furnishes the most loyal and determined sup- porters of the monarchy. Through its political power the Conservative-agrarian class has successfully prevented the laws governing agricultural labor from being brought into line with modem ideas. In eastern Prussia serfage exists in fact if not in name. By the old law of 1810 laborers on the land are practically forbidden to cancel a contract or to I50 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS strike collectively. Most of the German states impose special restrictions on agricultural labor and domestic labor. Prussia by the law of 1854 penalizes farm laborers and domestics who leave their employer without com- pletion of their contract by a fine of $3.75 and imprison- ment up to three days. As contracts are made for the entire season or the year, it is easy to see what power is thrown into the hands of the employer, especially when the local legal machinery is under direct control of the squire, as is the case on the large estates. The condition of the farm laborer in the eastern provinces of Prussia is therefore scarcely better than that of his Russian neighbor. That this state of affairs calls for reform has been clearly recognized in enlightened political circles in Prussia ; but just as political reform has thus far been wrecked on the shoal of Conservative-agrarian power, so social reform in the eastern districts has thus far fallen short on account of the patriarchal view of life of the landholders. To the East Elbian squire the farm laborer is still to all intents and purposes a serf; the city with its factories is a den of destruction for the bone and sinew of German youth, and the soundness of the whole German fabric consists in the maintenance of the present rural labor conditions. That in spite of all efforts to the contrary, the movement of the laborers from the farms to the cities has been an ever-increasing problem, has inspired the Junker to no other feeling than that restrictions must be imposed upon the mobility of the individual laborer. That his end might be attained otherwise, and that the laborer who refused to stay as a serf might be retained as a freeman by granting him the right of organization and by the improvement of the farm workers' physical and material condition, is an idea which has found its way with difl&culty among the landholders. With agricultural land in Germany as a whole mortgaged for one-half of its sale value, the land owner has not been in a position to undertake anything FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 151 in the nature of benevolence; and his worship of the patriarchal system has been too strong for him to con- sent to put farm owner and laborer on the same basis legally as factory owner and employee. Only the slowly rolling years with their unhalting economic trend can bring a change in the social and economic condition of the eastern provinces. Aside from the feudal restrictions on labor by which they sought to hold down the cost of production, the agra- rian interests have tried in every way to hinder the ad- mission of food products from Russia, Austria and over- seas to feed the ever-increasing millions in Germany's industrial centres. The Agrarian League (cf. page 128), not satisfied with imposing excessive restrictions on the admission of live cattle into Germany on the plea that contagious diseases might be introduced, successfully fought to prevent the introduction of frozen meat from abroad, and battled unceasingly, although not with complete success, for a sweeping government interdict on the bringing in of any cured beef or mutton and for sharp restrictions on the importation of bacon or lard. It waged war on the Berhn Produce Exchange with injurious results to the agrarian interests themselves, and watched with sleepless eye to prevent any weakening of the laws governing stock exchanges. To this propa- ganda the agrarian forces added another which finally obtained from the imperial government tariff restrictions that put Germany in the front rank among protectionist nations and reacted sharply on the price of foodstuffs and the general welfare of the industrial wage earner. When in 1877-78 Bismarck after long fidgeting finally went over to a protectionist policy and broke with the Liberals, who had imported from England the Man- chester theory of laissez oiler, laissez faire in matters of international trade, the Chancellor turned, as we have seen, to build his majorities on a Conservative basis. The Conservative majority was in the main agrarian, 152 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS and the bounty money to seal the new contract had to be an import duty on wheat, rye and oats and minor agricultural products. The representatives of the in- dustrial interests — the Clericals and a rump of the National Liberals — accepted the protectionist policy, and the dickering so characteristic of all tariff legislation on two continents began. Bismarck's first thought in taking up customs reform had probably been revenue rather than protection, and there are reasons to doubt whether he ever became with soul and spirit a thorough- going protectionist ; but Pandora's box had been opened and the genii of protection refused to be conjured back into it again. In 1885 and again in 1887 duties on food products were forced up by a majority of which the Conservative phalanx formed the centre and strength. But the fall in the price of foodstuffs was not arrested in this period, and the landed interests, hampered by mortgages and by the economic reaction from the in- flated seventies, were forced into a more and more diffi- cult position. The tide had already turned, however, and the effect of protectionist legislation had begun to be felt when Caprivi succeeded Bismarck as Imperial Chancellor in 1890. The new minister immediately inaugurated a poKcy of commercial treaties, which by a system of reciprocity led at once to tariff concessions toward Austria and Russia and were of course immensely un- popular in agrarian circles. The Prussian Junker, who believed himself hard hit by this reciprocity with Ger- many's food-producing neighbors, turned on Caprivi and brought his ministry to a fall. In the meantime in 1893 the Agrarian League was formed and, as we have seen, immediately went into the firing line of the agrarian advance. The first summons to organization threatened the government with dire vengeance if the agrarian de- mands were not granted. The founder Ruprecht merely formulated the feelings of his aggressive class when he FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 153 summoned the landholders, supposedly "last ditchers" in defense of the monarchy, to join forces with the "enemies of society as at present established," with the Social Democrats, if the government refused to serve agrarian interests. After that time the League con- stantly forced the fighting for the landholders. The Conservatives, assisted usually by the Clericals and National Liberals, consistently pushed for agrarian pro- tection and the government consistently retreated be- fore the combination. Under the favoring influence of the reciprocity treaties Germany at last began to reap the full results of German industry, patience and tech- nical education, and swung rapidly to the forefront among nations in the exportation of manufactured prod- ucts. This prosperity of industry and commerce while the rural interests stood still or retrograded, roused the landowners to a very fury of agitation. Regarding themselves still as the representatives of royal authority, the Junker agitation showed plainly that there was truth in the maxim, Der Konig ahsolut, Wenn er unseren Willen tut 1 ^ Most of the commercial treaties ran out in 1901,- and the agrarians prepared themselves for the crisis by lectures, pamphlets and every other form of propa- ganda. More and more the Conservative party had become a feudal-agrarian combination, — joined with the Clericals their influence in drawing up the tariff bill of 1902 was absolute. The representatives of other interests were divided, as the National Liberals have been in almost every economic crisis ; the Radicals and Social Democrats stormed and obstructed in vain, and the most that the government could do was to modify somewhat the demands of the Agrarian League and ^ "Let the King be absolute, If he only does our will." 154 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS save some shreds of reciprocity. The bill as finally passed increased the duties on grain and meat to a point beyond even agrarian dreams of nine years before. The effect of this legislation was seen immediately in the increased price of meat, and by 1906 and 1907 grain had risen to hitherto unheard-of figures. In the mean- time, the Agrarian League was by no means satisfied with what it had accomplished and began to formulate still more aggressive demands, while watching with argus eye over every bit of legislation involving the landed interests. It claimed in 1913 that 90 per cent of its membership were small landholders. If this was true, not the least of its accomplishments was the bringing together of small and large landholders for a common program, in spite of the class prejudices which play so large a role in rural circles; but of course its most in- fluential elements are to be found in the Conservative party. The league also claims that it prevented the complete industrialization of Germany, saving German agriculture from destruction and preserving the national granary, long since destroyed in England. This, if true, was an immense service ; and the ability of the empire to defy England's starvation program during the war must undoubtedly be credited in great part to the ag- gressive agrarian efforts of the preceding twenty years. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the landholding interests sought their own welfare with what often seemed like a reckless disregard of the welfare of the nation. In 1906 and 1907 grain was exported from Germany and sold at a lower rate than that which the tariff enabled the landholders to extort from the Ger- man consumer. The physical welfare of the wage earner and the small commercial class weighed as nothing with those energetic agrarians who after 1895 swung the lash with unrelenting vigor over the head of the government. It was not indeed merely with respect to the tariff on foodstuffs that the conservative-agrarian classes in a FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 155 measure terrorized the government in the empire and in Prussia. In 1899 the Prussian ministry brought before the Landtag a well-matured, far-seeing plan of canal building for the northwestern part of the kingdom, a system which was to connect the large industrial dis- tricts with the Rhine, Weser and Elbe. The combina- tion of Agrarians and Clericals rejected it. In 1901 another bill, which provided in addition for canaKzing the waterways leading into the Spree, Oder and Vistula, — in other words, for the development of the water routes throughout all of northern and eastern Prussia, — was voted down by the same combination. At last in 1905 a similar bill was accepted only after the government had bound itself to a system of towing charges and river tolls which in Conservative eyes would minimize the danger of the easy introduction of foreign products. This proposition, to erect toll bars on the formerly free rivers of Prussia, required the assent of the other German states ; but agrarian agreement to the canal plan hinged on this arrangement being made, and bitter opposition to any development of the waterways was promised un- less some compensation were given the landed interests. Germany, then, to a considerable extent, and Prussia to a great extent, still stand under the control of a con- servative combination. One can reckon up a whole list of conservative elements which have all worked to- gether to retain the present establishment in church, state and society. There are first the more aggressive feudal reactionaries with the Berlin Kreuzzeitung as their mouthpiece, the same men who fought Bismarck until the Iron Chancellor forswore all liberal afl&liations. These men stand for the monarchy as long as the monarchy stands for them, but like their forbears, the ancient knights of the Marks of Brandenburg, whose defiance Frederick of Hohenzollern broke in the fifteenth century only after weary years of struggle, are ready to defend their claims if need be against the throne itself. It may 156 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS be repeated that it was this class which made modern Prussia possible, and their devotion to Prussia knows no bounds. In the summer of 191 1, when the Imperial Diet admitted to the sisterhood of federated states the conquered provinces Alsace-Lorraine, the proviso was made that the three votes in the Bundesrat assigned to the new state should be valid only when cast against Prussia. This concession to the fear which Bavaria and the South German states entertain of Prussia's great power was bitterly opposed by the ultra-Conservatives. They stand as the representatives of that indomitable military and feudal spirit, steel girt and defiant as in the days when their ancestors won the North German plain from the Slavic tribes and built up the Prussian state amid the lance thrusts of hostile neighbors. Untouched in their feudal nature by the passage of time and un- tamed by the growth of radical elements in their midst, they are the most vigorous representatives of aristocracy to be found in Europe. Slightly less Prussian, but to the same general class belong the members of the some- what smaller party of so-called "Free Conservatives" (Reichspartei), a wing that is somewhat more ready to set devotion to the empire above feudal and particular- istic feeling. Like the ultra-wing, this party has grown smaller in the Reichstag, but still retains its influence in the Prussian Diet. Like the more intransigeant group, it too represents aristocratic prejudice and agrarian interest. Upon these conservative groups the government must depend, for they represent the backbone of the class upon which the monarchy relies for its existence and imperial Germany for its present government. Under the present constitution both in Prussia and the em- pire no government majority is long durable which does not contain these groups, because any other combina- tion would soon force the government to concessions which would be incompatible either with the basis on FEUDALISM AND AGRICULTURE 157 which Prussian Germany rests or with the autocratic principle. The Clericals by their opposition to various ideas of national expansion and by the nature of the party itself could not be depended on to do the govern- ment's bidding without concessions such as the evan- gelical spirit of northern Germany would not tolerate. The National Liberals, who once formed the backbone of Bismarck's majorities, met the fate of all parties that try to follow a middle course : they dwindled through splits and defections until their representatives became too few for building a majority, though numerous enough to hold the balance of power as in the Reichstag of 191 2. The Radical party demands a responsible ministry as a condition for its continued support in internal affairs. The Social Democrats represent opposition to the mo- narchical principle itself. The growth of Germany's trade and population and the progress of its internal development point to the fact that the conservative alKance upon which the government rested for thirty years did not inflict serious injury upon the nation. The class itself has lofty ideals of national growth and power. It represents the military spirit, to be sure, but it represents also ideals of personal honor, which, freakish and anachronistic as they some- times are, are nevertheless refreshingly virile. The landed aristocracy in Germany is by no means decayed or decaying. It is fond of the soil; it has borne its various responsibilities both in government and in private life with a deep sense of duty. With its strong feeling of personal dignity, its deep-grained loyalty to Prussia's and Germany's feudal past, its physical vigor and passion for arms, it has formed a healthy and important balance to Germany's rapid industrial growth, with its accom- panying complexity of life. An American cannot come personally into contact with this class of the landed aristocracy without being re- minded of the planter class of the South, as it existed 158 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS before the war between the states. Both are marked by the high sense of personal dignity which Edmund Burke ascribed to constant association with inferiors. Both rejoice in country Kfe and in the profession of arms : both bore heavy responsibiHties manfully. To both fell far greater political influence than the numbers of their constituents would properly entitle them to, and both used this influence with blind egotism to further agrarian interests. But there the parallel ceases. The Prusso-German aristocrat does not hold sway through any great unbroken territory. His political preserves even in East Prussia and Pomerania are interspersed with democratic and socialist strongholds. And he has learned to give way before advancing liberalism. The Reichstag of 191 2, in which the Conservative and Clerical forces were counterbalanced by Radicals and Socialists, fur- nished a sign that Conservative-agrarian influences in the empire were slowly losing ground ; and while there might be many ebbs and floods, any combination of more than momentary importance for imperial legislation must be built up with Liberal aid. It became evident that the sure growth of industry was weakening the lines of the feudal-agrarian combination and that government aid to the agrarians had for the present reached a limit. The march of liberalism into the Northeast appears cer- tain. It is becoming more and more apparent that any permanent help to the landed classes must come through the improvement of labor conditions and the increased adoption of mechanical means of production and not by making a crutch of legislation. CHAPTER VIII Liberalism and Industry The German Liberals resent the influence which the feudal classes along with the Clericals have exercised in hindering the development of parHamentary govern- ment. In the same way the commercial and industrial classes resent the tribute which they have been obliged to pay to the protected agrarians through the increased cost of hving. The feudal East has, however, not pro- duced the only autocrats with whom the German ministry has had to deal. The industrial districts of the West have brought forth a class of men whose attitude towards government is no less arrogant than that of the land- owners. In the manufacturing districts of the Rhine- land, Westphalia, Saxony and Silesia, there is practically the same spirit of domination in their own interest on the part of the captains of industry as has been shown to exist in the eastern provinces of Prussia, the only differ- ence being that the political influence of the industrialist has been negative rather than positive. Both East Elbian Junker and Westphalian industriahst have looked to the government to protect their interests by a tariff wall. Each has expected more or less direct help and much indirect help from the government in controlling his labor. In the East it has been social and dynastic influences and the rotten borough system that the landholder has relied upon; in the West it is wealth and the government's fear of the rising tide of socialism upon which the captain of industry has based his claims to recognition. 159 i6o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS There is one difference, however. The influence of the feudal agrarian has steadily diminished through the industrial growth of the empire, which since the eighties has been slowly shifting the weight of Germany's popu- lation toward the west, and in spite of agrarian aggres- siveness it is plain that the feudal-conservative power must become less and less important in the nation. On the other hand the great manufacturers, with their rapidly mounting wealth and the growing power of their syndicate organization, cannot fail to have an increasing voice in public affairs until a new balance is reached. The traveller riding from Metz to Mannheim through the busy districts of Lorraine or from Dresden to Chem- nitz across the Saxon hills is never out of sight of factory chimneys. In the southwest, steel mills and engine factories, tile works and potteries thrust their blackened stacks across the landscape in every village ; in Saxony, spinning and weaving mills, chemical works and glass foundries stretch like a vast net north, south, east and west. In every city of North and South Germany, in the remotest valleys of Thuringia and the Riesengebirge of Silesia, the glazed brick factory walls and streams of laborers testify to the tremendous industrial progress of the country. If the Saarbriicken district of Lorraine reminds the American of one of our Lake cities and the Chemnitz region recalls the textile centres of eastern Massachusetts, the country lying to the northeast of Cologne seems like a multiphed Pittsburg. For a hundred miles the traveller from the Belgian border to Hanover passing through the northern arch of the Rhine province and the province of WestphaHa rides between almost unbroken Hues of foundries and factories. Here in the Westphalian hills the two great natural resources, coal and iron, lie side by side, and here the German genius for organization has celebrated its greatest triumphs. Great cities like Crefeld, Diisseldorf, Elber- feld. Barmen, Essen and Dortmund lie so close together LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY i6i that an automobile will cover the entire circle of them in a day's easy ride, and they are linked together by a chain of busy municipalities which bid fair them- selves soon to become important cities. The growth of this region has been almost appalHng. The day is blackened by smoke pouring from a hundred stacks, the night is agleam with the angry light of thousands of coke ovens and blast furnaces, the earth trembles under the whizzing of cars laden with coal and iron. New fac- tories have constantly sprung up, equipped with the latest technical contrivances, and whole new streets of workingmen's dwellings lead out from every suburb far into the open country. In the early morning miles of becapped workingmen fill the walkways or bicycle through the streets, in the evening the earth fairly quakes under the tread of the army of labor taking its way home- ward. The tremendous industrial expansion of which these are the outward and visible sign began with a mild impetus in the early sixties, when the ideal of German unity under Prussian leadership seemed very far short of realization. With the foundation of the North Ger- man Federation the iron and steel industry began to give signs of really exploiting the vast resources which lay buried in Westphalia along the banks of the Ruhr, and the textile mills of Saxony entered on a stage of de- velopment independent of their former slavish imitation of the English. With the impetus which came after the war of 1870 and the turning into German coffers of the billion dollars war indemnity, German manufacturers began the triumphal march which continued until the war alarm of 1914. Setbacks there were, as in the panic year 1875, following the great speculation of the early days of the empire, and again in 190 1 and 1902, when the markets of the world were glutted with German products, but the sweep was ever forward. Fired by the enthusi- asm of the imperial idea, accustomed to great things in 1 62 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS political life, the German mine owner and manufacturer arose from small undertakings, with limited capital and a servile imitation of English methods, to a point where in capital and initiative he could hold his own against the greatest magnates of British and American industry, while he had among his operatives resources in technical edu- cation which his English and American rival could not command. Some phases of the industrial expansion of Germany will form the subject matter of a later chapter ; for the present it is of interest to see the political effect which the concentration and organization of capital has had upon the nation. German captains of industry did not build up trusts in the American sense, but by a system of "cartels" and syndicates nearly the whole of Ger- man industry was organized for the purpose of fixing prices, limiting production, dividing the field of sale and distributing goods, so that the results were prac- tically the same as if the capital of the various concerns were pooled. Especially in coal and iron mining and in the steel industry the process of syndicating went to the point where the trade was absolutely controlled and the middle-man practically ehminated. The great genera- tion of organizers who built up this system of cartels and sjoidicates is still in the saddle. The history of German industry is as yet too brief for the first group of creative spirits to have passed away, — the men who to a considerable extent resemble in energy and will power and executive ability the generation of Americans who after the war between the states laid the foundation of our steel and iron industries and built the railways from coast to coast. More and more industrial power became centred in the hands of a small group of men. At the beginning of the new century three banks had become practically supreme in German financial affairs. It was estimated in 1906 by conservative economists that the threads of the big business of the entire empire LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 163 passed through the fingers of not more than fifty men. The whole Rhine-Westphalian system of collieries by 1907 was under the control of six capitalists. It is perfectly patent that even a government in which the monarchical principle plays so large a part could not escape the influence of business men like these. Business and politics find themselves as necessarily allied in Ger- many as in other lands. We have seen how great the influence of the Conservative-agrarian element was in bringing about fiscal legislation. The influence of the industrial aristocracy on the government was less noisily exerted perhaps, but just as effectively. This aristocracy is a creation of the age of large capital, many of the families, like the Krupps, having come up in two or three generations from the humblest beginnings to a point where they have become allied in marriage with the most exclusive feudal circles. Not a few of these families have been ennobled, several of them enjoying the quite especial favor of the sovereign. Indeed, it is not too much to say that none of the military caste in Prussia, not even the Conservative Von Heydebrand, whose ruthless leadership of the feudal forces won for him the title of "imcrowned king of Prussia," has had a more forceful influence on the ministry than self-made capitalists like August Thyssen, the iron king, or Arthur von Gwinner, the head of the Deutsche Bank, or Karl Helfferich, the clever banker who was entrusted with the financial organization of the war, or Ballin, the Jewish manager of the Hamburg-American Line. It was not merely the possession of great wealth and business power which insured them the personal patronage of the crown and the supporting hand of government, but the quite correct feeling on the part of the imperial and Prussian ministry that these industrial and commercial barons have the future of Germany in their hands, and the ad- ditional fact that they, as much as the feudal nobility, are the sworn enemies of the Social Democracy. With 1 64 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the imperiousness of self-made men, the barons of in- dustry and commerce have been nearly all foes of or- ganized labor and bitterly determined to remain "masters in their own house" as far as the conduct of their own business is concerned. The influence of such men on politics has been exerted independently of party. Large capitalists organize po- litical influence, not political parties ; and big business in Germany as in America has found it possible to remain on good terms with nearly all of the political factions. Indeed its direct influence on government has made it to a certain extent independent of the political game. Its restraining hand has not been used with the brutal openness with which the feudal agrarian interests are accustomed to exert pressure, but it has made itself felt sharply enough. The results of this restraint on govern- ment have shown themselves in many ways : in the repeated refusal of the Prussian ministry to bring in a measure fixing a ten-hour day of labor on government work, although on certain kinds of public works an eight-hour day was already in operation ; in the refusal of the imperial ministry to lower the age Hmit for inva- lidity in the revision of the old age pension bill in 191 1, and a similar refusal to extend the period of enforced rest for l5dng-in women. In these and similar cases the ministers recognized the justice of the demands of labor, but as Count Posadowsky, the able Prussian Minister of the Interior, declared in 1906, they were "unwilling to add to the burdens of industry." There is no doubt that the gifted Silesian aristocrat spoke in perfectly good faith, for he more fully perhaps than any of his colleagues understood the demands of labor ; nevertheless, it may safely be said that the need which the government felt of the full support of the great industrialists in the struggle against the Social Democracy was the chief reason why it did not find it expedient to grant these reasonable demands. LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 165 Far less important is the influence of large business interests on the Reichstag and the various state parlia- ments.^ Indeed, were the Reichstag a really parhamen- tary body, instead of being merely a consulting com- mittee in matters of legislation, there is no doubt that since 1907 a majority could have been found for some radical restraint of the syndicating process, which made such progress in Germany after the beginning of the century. ' This system, by which the territory of dis- tribution and sale is divided out among the various members of the manufacturers' syndicates, production restrained and prices fixed and maintained in times of over-production by selling the overplus abroad at prices lower than those obtaining at home, was viewed with suspicion by all poKtical parties, even by the National Liberals, who stand perhaps closer to the industrial interests than any other fraction. Such remedies as lowering the tariff were rejected, for with the exception of the radical groups, German economists and politicians have become thoroughly committed to the protectionist ideal, and it is doubtful even if the Radicals and Social Democrats, had responsibihty fallen upon them for lowering duties on manufactured products, would have shown any enthusiasm for this part of their official party ^ It is growing, however. The German Manufacturers' Alliance {Zentralverhand deutscher Industrielle) has taken a more and more active part in legislative campaigns. At the annual gathering of the Alliance in 19 1 2 it was reported that at the Reichstag election in January of that year, 1 20 candidates — in the main probably members of the National Liberal and "Imperial" parties — were supported by the electoral funds of the organization, 41 of them being elected. In return for this financial assistance the candidates were obliged to pledge themselves to vote according to the policies of the Alliance. It is worth noting that as in the case of the Agrarian League, no secret was made of the determination to protect business interests by influencing the election. A promise of still further commercialization of political life was the union in the summer of 19 13 of the Association just named with the Alliance of the Middle Classes {Reichsdeiitscher Mittelstandsverhand) and the Agrarian League into a League of the Producing Classes {Bund der schaffenden Stande), with the avowed object of fighting further socialistic legislation. 1 66 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS programs. The two remedies for the restraint of trade that the syndicate system brings with it which have been most zealously pushed forward are a temporary sus- pension of tariff duties, in the case of unjustifiably high prices or a shortage, and the acquisition of industrial undertakings by the government. Both of these policies met the approval of Liberal and Radical fractions in the Reichstag and naturally of course of the Social Democrats. A suspension of tariff duties is, however, a blade that cuts both ways; for such a suspension might easily lead to a demand, already frequently made, for a sus- pension of duties on meat and grain. It is very difl&cult to say when the moment for such action has arrived. In 1907 and again in 191 2 a tremendous agitation was carried on in Germany over the lack of meat, and the government was besieged to bring in a bill admitting Danish and Austrian meat free. Violent articles in the Radical and Social Democratic press, and even in the Liberal papers, and violent speeches in the Reichstag and Prussian Landtag led to investigations, undertaken rather reluctantly by the government. In 1907 the net result was a declaration that no lack of meat existed; in 191 2 some concessions were made admitting frozen meat from abroad. The other alternative, government purchase of industries, is a part of the Social Democratic program, but the German government has never shown itself averse to socialistic undertakings when it seemed practicable to carry them out. The purchase of the Hercynia potash mine by the Prussian government in 1908 was greeted with enthusiasm by almost all political parties as an important experiment. In matters of business organization the Germans are very clear sighted and they have shown a determination not to part with their birthright to the syndicates. The field in which the syndicating process has been carried to the furthest point of development is in the coal mining industry. Here in the Rhine Westphalian LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 167 district it has been said that six men control the entire production. Naturally the wealth and power centred in a few hands has been used to defend politically the interests of the mine owners : it was alleged in the Reichstag in connection with the coal miners' strike of 1907 that the head of the coal syndicate possessed greater poUtical power than the minister of commerce. This strike of 1907 for higher wages and better working con- ditions was vigorously waged not only by the Socialist labor unions but by the CathoKc unions as well. Popu- lar prejudice against industrial coercion flamed to fever heat. Collections for the strikers netted considerable funds. The government showed itself favorable to the workingmen in many ways, and the radical wing of the Prussian Diet urged the nationalization of all the coal mines. The strike ended with a victory for the unions. That a similar strike in the spring of 191 2 did not end in a similar way was due to the political situation and illustrates in a rare way the power of conservative in- terests in Prussia-Germany. The strike of 1907 came at a time when the government was seeking to carry out a great national program of colonial development and fleet-building and found it necessary to placate the Clerical champions of labor; the strike of 191 2 followed closely on an election in which Radicals and Social Democrats, working frequently together, had defeated the forces of the National Liberals and Clericals and Conservatives. In many respects this strike of 191 2 was a typical political movement, and the attitude of the government and the various parties towards it was illuminating for social and political conditions. It was called by the Social Democratic unions, who were assisted by the smaller groups of organized labor, the so-called Hirsch-Duncker, or non-political, unions and the Polish unions. It was estimated that in all two hundred thousand men laid down their tools in the Rhine-Westphalian district, to which the strike was 1 68 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS mainly confined. Following, as we have seen, a general election in which the SociaKst forces had made great gains at the expense of the Clericals and Conservatives, it was impossible to keep the strike from having a political complexion. In addition, the great English coal strike was just at its culmination and the charge that the German Socialists had ordered their strike as a part of an international attack on the propertied classes found ready belief in all middle class circles. "The German coal industry, which could otherwise absorb a part of the English market and win a vantage ground perhaps for all time, is being sacrificed to Socialist inter- nationalism ! " There was not much doubt of the justice of the economic claims of the miners, which included a 15 per cent increase in wages, shorter working hours and other concessions, such as the establishment of intelligence offices on the part of the workingmen themselves and a month's notice to workingmen tenants in mine cottages before eviction. While much sympathy was expressed for the grievances of the men, the national dislike of the autocratic coal barons was qualified by a fear of further Social Democratic successes. By a hard struggle the Clerical leaders succeeded in preventing the "Christian" or Catholic unions from joining the strike, and had them sign a manifesto declaring their willingness to go to work in case they were protected from violence. The Prus- sian government, which was in 1907 distinctly hostile to the operators, in 191 2 refused to offer its mediation to the contestants and showed itself willing to use every weapon to crush disorder. Of course with a large element of strike breakers from the rival Christian unions the opportunities for cracking heads among the restless mining population of centres like Essen, Barmen and Bochum lay right at hand, and there is no denying the fact that the Socialist strikers were guilty of many in- stances of brutality. The police, which in the larger LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 169 places are directly under the orders of the Ministry of the Interior, acted with the energy and thoroughness for which the Prussian police are well known. Popular meetings were forbidden in many places, taverns where the strikers held their gatherings were closed or threat- ened with loss of Kcense, strikers were ruthlessly sabred on slight provocation. Despite the protests of the Prussian Minister of the Interior that the government was acting merely to protect property and with entire impartiality, the Radical and Socialist members of the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag fairly boiled with rage. When the government decKned to offer arbitra- tion to the contending parties, the Prussian Minister of the Interior was denounced in parliament as an "attor- ney for the striking operators." The head of the coal syndicate was called the "uncrowned king of Prussia," and it was declared that he had threatened to "drown the strike in blood." When it became evident that the strike could not be won in the face of the government and of the Catholic unions, the Socialist leaders called their well-drilled adherents back to work. In this struggle of conservative against radical forces it is of interest to see how the National Liberal party stood. As the successors of the old Liberal party, which had hoped to reform Prussia on the lines of British parKamentary government, one would expect that they would have sought to intermediate between a feudal- clerical conservatism and an ail-too rapid progress tow- ard socialism : as the representatives of a constitutional and limited monarchy on the one side and a strongly patriotic national spirit on the other, it was to them that friends of constitutional progress would naturally look. But in the parliamentary struggles that took place in connection with the coal strike, National Liberal sympathy went to the coal operators. This is typical. The party which fell heir to the enthusiasm of 1848 and which should have been the best arbitrator between I70 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS capital and labor, had not been able to resist the dis- solving power of economic forces, any more than any other party. After the split on the tariff question in 1879 and further losses in 1880, the party became emas- culated. Its more progressive members had gone into the ranks of the Radicals (Freisinnigen, cf. page 118), and while those who remained behind still claimed to be the representatives of a strongly national party, the lack of a definite social program drove them more and more into a position of dignified reaction. No party in Germany can claim so great a number from the intellec- tual classes : in the National Liberal ranks are to be found distinguished industrialists, university professors, eminent professional men and scientists. There are no better speakers in the Reichstag than the National Liberals, and in times of national crisis, they always distinguish themselves by their defense of the national honor. In spite of their enthusiasm for a greater Germany, the various elements in liberalism have lacked the cementing force of some economic interest, and all of the brilKance of orators and statesmen like Bassermann and Paasche has not been able to replace this lack. Manufacturers and merchants, professors and scientists have not the common financial interest which has lent such vigor to the advance of agrarian and socialist. The heterogeneous nature of the party has forced it to take a middle course and given to its attitude on all ques- tions not connected directly with imperial policies an air of uncertainty. In general, its economic poUcy is that of the large industriahsts, who compose an in- fluential part of its membership : it stands for a protec- tive tariff on German industries, opposes additions to the duties on foodstuffs, and advocates the regulation of imperial finances through income and inheritance taxes. It has on most occasions opposed feudal privileges in the army and the bureaucracy and fought for a revision of LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 171 the Prussian constitution. Representing the new aris- tocracy of industriahsm, it has opposed to the Junker the Hberal ideas of a constitutional monarchy, and has in the main striven to impose on the will of the monarch the bonds of a responsible ministry. All of these things, however, have been a matter rather of program and of forensic display than of actual parHa- mentary tactics. The reason for this Hes right at hand, and is to be found in the fear of the Social Democrats, a feeling which has driven the National Liberals and the upper middle classes in general into a reactionary posi- tion. The hostihty is not merely that of the monarchist and the defender of the constitutional state to the party of social revolution, but it has in it much of the class feeHng of the capitahst. It is not only that the Social Democrats have been in middle class eyes international- ists, enemies of that Fatherland whose greatness and prosperity the National Liberals have regarded as their own peculiar work, they have represented also the serried ranks of organized labor, which are always drawn up in line of battle against the captains and lieutenants of industry. Thus the old Liberals have been forced more and more towards the Right. In second ballotings the National Liberal electors, so far as they could be con- trolled by their leaders, have regularly voted for the Conservative and even the Clerical candidate in prefer- ence to the Social Democrat ; in the imperial and national parHaments these representatives of the middle class have more than once been manoeuvred into a position where they were obliged to oppose policies to which they were deeply committed in order to avoid carrying them through with Social Democratic votes. Thus, while in 1909 the party supported the inheritance tax and retired from the coalition with the Conservatives on this account, yet when an opportunity came in 191 2 to force the government to introduce a bill providing for such a tax to cover the new mihtary and naval budget. 172 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the National Liberal leaders declined to take advantage of the majority for such a measure which actually existed in the Reichstag and voted with the Conservatives and Clericals rather than ally themselves with the enemies of the capitalistic state. It Hes in the nature of liberal parties to resist discipline. Reform and the struggle against privilege bring strong individualities to the front and tend to produce theories and programs that will not harmonize. There have been many signs that in spite of the conciliatory clever- ness of their leader, Bassermann, the old National Liberal party is once more in process of losing its radical wing. Half Hberal, half democratic, the party teetered between progress and reaction until two distinct factions formed which submitted themselves with growing ill grace to the discipline of the party convention. The tendency to reaction, which manifested itself in opposition to the Social Democrats and was ready to go to the limit in the repression of labor manifestations, resulted in the forma- tion of the Old Liberal AlKance, which favored coopera- tion with the Conservatives in matters of social legisla- tion; the democratic wing, standing for an aggressive program in cooperation with Radical and Socialist, or- ganized in 1 90 1 a "Young Liberal Association," out of which has come a strengthening of advanced liberalism. The dream of 1909 and the years immediately follow- ing of a grand coalition of all liberal and radical forces "from Bassermann to Bebel" proved only a dream. The Reichstag of 191 2, in which the National Liberals held the balance of power between Clericals and Con- servatives on the one side and Radicals and Socialists on the other, showed that a liberal-socialist alliance was still impossible. It did, however, show the possibility of the working together of democratic-socialist forces. In almost all the major questions, both in house and committee, the representatives of the Radicals {Fort- schrittliche Volkspartei) and the Social Democrats found LIBERALISM AND INDUSTRY 173 themselves aligned together, except in the question of the national defenses, on which, until the breaking out of war, the Socialists maintained their traditional atti- tude of negation. The Radical Party is a good illustration of the de- ficiency in organizing power inherent in reform parties, and also of Bismarck's assertion that the question in German politics is not so much one of the theories as of Paul and Cephas. Composed at first mostly of South Germans, who brought into the new empire the repub- lican enthusiasm of 1848, it was an unimportant fraction in German political life until after the economic split in the Hberal ranks. It emerged from the reorganization of liberalism as the German Radical Party {Deutsche Freisinnige Partei), and became after 1884 distinctly a party of protest, forming under the clever tactician Eugene Richter, a constant stumbKng block in the path of Bismarck. As old liberalism went to pieces on the tariff, so the Radical party split on the question of na- tional growth. In 1893 it divided on the question of national defenses, both wings still advocating a poKcy of free trade and parliamentary government. After a long and weary campaign all of the radical-democratic elements were finally united in 1910 into the Progressive People's Party {FortschriUliche Volkspartei), in which North German monarchists and not a few South Ger- man republicans agreed to bury minor differences in support of a national and democratic policy. Represent- ing as it does the commercial rather than the manufactur- ing classes, it has stood for freedom of trade, although it is doubtful whether the Radicals any more than the Social Democrats would on a pinch support any aban- donment of Germany's protective policy. With a con- siderable portion of the trading classes behind it, the party has many aims in common with the SociaKsts, and has not hesitated to support Social Democratic candidates in the bye-elections nor socialistic policies in parliament. 174 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS It is heartily opposed to feudal privileges in army and bureaucracy, and as it contains many men of anti- monarchical principles, it has been less inclined to take fright at the blustering attacks of the Socialists on royalty. While it does not count among its members so many brilliant intellectuals as the National Liberals, it has boasted of many first-class economists and statis- ticians, like George Gothein, and publicists, like Fried- rich Naumann ; and some of the best organized and most widely circulated daily papers, particularly certain journals under Jewish influences, like the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt, support either directly or indirectly the Radical program. With the growth of the national spirit among middle class Germans, the party lost something of its "Uttle German" spirit, and after 1907 became committed to a policy of increasing the national defenses through strengthening the army and navy and to a support of colonial interests. The recession from doctrinaire radicalism brought immedi- ately a gain in strength and prestige. The readiness of the Radical leaders in general and bye-elections to co- operate with the Social Democrats won further parlia- mentary seats and gave the party an important strategic position in German political life. Thus, as we have seen (page 136), in the Reichstag of 191 2 two members of the Progressive People's Party were chosen to the presidency of the Imperial Diet. PART III THE EMPIRE'S PROBLEMS CHAPTER IX The Proletarian in Politics If we were obliged to cover with one word the develop- ment of Germany in the four decades between the two great wars, that word would certainly be "socialism." It is not merely that in philosophy, literature and art the welfare of the masses is the leading motif running through the eighties and nineties until it became lost after 1900 in the swelling music of national ambition. In the field of political economy also socialistic ideas marked the age. They began by conquering the professorial chairs in the universities in the seventies, where such "socialists of the chair" as Adolf Wagner of the university of Berlin set their stamp on the genera- tion of poKtical economists which followed the war with France, and they found expression in the compulsory insurance measures and similar legislation of the follow- ing decade. Such ideas were indeed nothing new in Germany since the sixteenth century, when cities such as Augsburg and Strasburg were models of a hard and fast organization, in which capital played a small part and the workers formed the commonwealth on the principle of a closed shop, where communal undertakings largely supplanted private enterprise and every detail of hfe, including the details of food and dress, was fixed by law. The paternalism of the petty despotisms which preceded German unity had disciplined the Germans to Hve under efficient supervision, and the ideals of the Manchester school of British economists did not take lasting hold on German economic life. N 177 178 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Socialism then grew in Germany on well-prepared soil. State ownership of railroad and telegraph had come naturally soon after the coming of these utilities, and municipal control of many forms of enterprise de- scended as a tradition from the later middle ages. That the individual should look to the government to provide for his welfare and that state and communal funds should supplant private capital in many undertakings had long been the case when Bismarck undertook his compulsory insurance policy in the eighties. This program was, as we have seen, an effort to strike the ground from beneath the Social Democrats by removing some of the causes of proletarian dissatisfaction. Here and there Bismarck's successors went further on the road, with such measures as the purchase of the Hercynia potash mine (cf. page 166). That they did not go still further in this and other fields of state socialism was due in large measure to the existence of the Social Democratic party. This Ishmael in Ger- many's poHtical Hfe by its very advocacy of measures made them impossible for the government. What is it that has made the Socialist unfitted to be an ally and unwelcome as a coworker with nearly all other parties? What is there in the advocacy by the Social Democrats of any reform that has caused not only the East Elbian Junker and the Westphahan manufacturer, but even the National Liberal physician and shopkeeper to look askance at it? The answer is to be found both in the doctrinaire character of the party and in the violence of SociaKst editors and orators. Karl Lamprecht has shown that all German political parties are antiquated in that all cling to formulas and doctrines that have outlived their applicability to present-day affairs. In this sense the Social Democratic party is the most antiquated and the least opportunist. In this has lain its strength as a class party and its weakness in electoral and parHamentary strategy. THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 179 Beginning with the removal of the coercive laws in 1890, it cast at all national elections the largest vote of any party, and after 1903 held under its discipline nearly one-third of all the electors to the national parliament, more than all the other Liberal fractions combined. Nevertheless it exercised less influence on legislation than any other of the major groups in the empire. To understand the reason for this one must glance at the development of socialism as a poKtical force. When in 1867 Friedrich Liebknecht and August Bebel were elected to the first Reichstag of the new-born North German Confederation, they found ready at hand both the gospel of socialism in the works of Karl Marx and the needed fighting force in the German Workingmen's Party {Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiter- Verein), which had been founded four years earlier by Ferdinand Lassalle. Two years later at the famous Eisenach Convention Liebknecht and Bebel called the Social Democratic Workingmen's Party into existence, on a platform built of Marx' theory of the destructive rule of capital and his call to the workingmen of all lands to unite, and finally in 1875 the followers of Las- salle forsook their nationalistic ideals and were won over to the internationahsm of the Marxists. Immediately the triumphal march of the Social Democrats began, a march which has continued with few halts since. Aided by the hardships brought on by the financial crises of the seventies, the Marxian theories of the misery caused by the capitalistic state and the exploitation of the work- ing class through the capitahstic organization of society found eager acceptance in all quarters of industrial Germany. Already in 1876 there were twenty-four papers and journals published in the interest of the party with nearly one hundred thousand subscribers : by the next year the number of party periodicals had increased to forty-one, and that year the party cast nearly hah a million votes and elected twelve members i8o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS to the national legislature. From that time the Social Democracy kept pace closely with the forward move- ment of industrial Germany. Wherever factories sprang up and workmen came to live together, the theories of Marx took root. The workingmen were organized into Socialist unions, which became at once fighting units in the industries and the elections; with the capacity for organization so characteristic of an industrial age and of German society in particular, the Social Democ- racy was solidified by the establishment of central bureaus under the control of secretaries. These latter quickly developed into a class of experienced leaders, at once clever agitators in the industries and skillful strategists in political campaigns. Bismarck watched the rise of the party and its often unscrupulous means of agitation with growing distrust. He put no confidence in the alleged peaceful program of socialism : for him the party bore nothing but red revolution on its banners. In 1878 two attempts were made on the life of Emperor William which were un- justly ascribed to the effect of sociahst agitation; and the Chancellor took advantage of the popular outcry to dissolve the Liberal Reichstag and appeal to the elec- tors on an anti-socialist program. The result was the enactment of rigid laws forbidding Socialist propaganda. The following ten years, 1880 to 1890, were for the party a period of almost subterranean existence. Clubs were suppressed, newspapers and journals confiscated, many of the leaders, Liebknecht and Bebel among them, went to prison. In spite of prosecution and imprison- ment, however, the propaganda went straight ahead. Political clubs were reorganized as singing societies and bowling clubs and the party organization was perpet- uated by these and by the trade unions, which con- tinued to spread like a vast network throughout in- dustrial Germany. During the ten years of the anti- socialist laws the total vote of the party increased, a THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS i8i larger number of deputies was chosen to the Reichstag, and more important still, the inner organization and solidity of the party gained tremendously under per- secution. This was shown immediately on the expiration of the anti-socialist laws in 1890. In that year the party cast nearly one and one-half million votes in the national elections, and became thereby the strongest party in the empire. In 1898 the Social Democratic vote had risen to two milHons, in 1907 to three and one quarter millions, in 191 2 to more than four and one- quarter millions, more than one-third of all votes cast in the imperial elections of that year. The great Chancellor was, however, too far-seeing a statesman to think that the mere forbidding of socialist propaganda would stop the growth of socialism, which to his mind was only revolution in disguise. He set out, as we have seen, to cut the ground from beneath the feet of the proletarian agitators by a system of legis- lation which should ban from the empire the direst poverty by insuring to the working class compensation in case of injury and care in sickness and old age. These needs, which were outlined in an imperial message of 1 88 1, formed the basis of debate and experiment through the following eight years and were finally met in the various compulsory insurance measures which, so to speak, set their stamp upon Germany's internal politics in the eighties. In the Workingmen's Compensation or Accident Insurance Act of 1884, the burden of insur- ance was laid entirely upon the employer; the cost of the Sick Insurance Act of 1883 fell upon both employer and employee; for carrying out the provisions of the Old Age Pension Act of 1889, the empire joined with both capital and labor in providing for the veterans of labor. By this legislation, which though several times amended in minor parts, has remained essentially the same, Germany took a long step in the direction of state socialism and assumed the first place among 1 82 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS nations in the protection of its army of labor. Both Radical and Socialist have found much to criticise in the laws, and the amendments which reformers suggested should long ago have received attention at the hands of the government ; nevertheless, with all of their imperfec- tions, the compulsory insurance acts have been a guiding star for the social legislation of other lands and one of the brightest decorations on the bosom of modern Germania. They are no less a superb monument to the liberal view and modern spirit of Bismarck in social legislation. But they did not win over the Socialists. The rep- resentatives of the fourth estate accepted the socialistic laws of the eighties not as a gift from the hands of be- nevolent capital, but as a right conceded through the fear of the rising strength of the proletariat. There is evidence that the old Chancellor had wearied of the struggle to win the working classes to a national and patriotic spirit and that at the expiration of the anti- socialist laws in 1890 he was preparing a stroke against the constitution, which by the aboHtion of manhood suffrage should undo the work of 1866 and exclude the non-propertied classes from a share in government (cf. page 127). However, young Emperor William thought otherwise, and with the fall of Bismarck, legisla- tion against the Social Democracy was dropped and the Emperor sought to accomplish by concihation what suppressive laws had failed to do. He summoned an international congress in Berlin to consider measures for the further welfare of the working classes, and out- lined for adoption various propositions, such as a com- plete Sunday holiday, which had been advocated in the Socialist platform. But the effort to win the workingmen to fealty to monarch and Fatherland by kindness broke against the hard class consciousness of the fourth estate. No royal enticements could pre- vail against the teachings of Marx, ably and speciously interpreted by SociaUst speakers, no words of the sover- THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 183 eign could make progress against the class feeling which had been bred in the industrial proletariat for two de- cades in trade union, tavern debating club and Socialist journal. From that day on the crown and indeed all of the upper classes and a large part of the middle classes in Germany parted company with the proletariat. Henceforth every representative of the existing organiza- tion of society from the sovereign to the Rhenish crock- ery dealer denounced the Social Democrats as enemies of the Fatherland. But whether ridiculed as a "transi- tory phase" or threatened with a holy war of extermina- tion by "all lovers of God and Fatherland," the Social- ist forces marched on in ever increasing numbers, a soHd phalanx of industrial workers, soaked with the doctrines of Marx and Engel and ably led by labor secretary and editor. In his opposition to the monarchy and the entire capitalistic state, the Social Democrat included of course the army, under feudal and capitalistic leader- ship. Nowhere, however, has the German miHtary spirit found better expression than in the organization and discipline of the Social Democratic party. Who could watch the orderly, shoulder to shoulder march of tens of thousands of workingmen through the streets of Berlin on the occasion of the burial of a leader or on the anniversary of the "victims of March," the revolution- ists who fell in the street fighting of March 1848, with- out seeing in imagination these same men clad in the blue and red or khaki of active soldiers? And who could see the eyes-to-the-front, fingers-on-the-trouser- seam carriage with which the individual workman follows his leader in strike or electoral campaign with- out recalling the Prussian mihtary discipHne? In August 191 1 at Treptow, a suburb of BerUn, a mighty Sociahst demonstration was made against the threatened war with France and England over the Morocco affair. A vast crowd of men and women, estimated at eighty 1 84 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS thousand, gathered on a Sunday afternoon about a tribune to hear their leaders denounce war as a diabolical game at which the capitalist must win and the proleta- rian lose. Only a few of the mighty audience could hear a word of the orators, but all stood at respectful attention in the intense heat until the speeches were over and then at a given signal waved their arms in a mighty storm wave, voting affirmatively on a resolution which protested in the name of labor against the threatened war. And throughout the day not one case of disorder, scarcely even a chance hard word at an over-officious policeman, among the tens of thou- sands of workingmen and workingwomen who spent the hot Sunday journeying back and forth from their homes in almost all parts of Greater Berlin ! The same iron discipline that has taught moulder and stoker and street paver that he owes it to his class to suppress even a natural outburst of resentment, be- cause it may give the representatives of feudalism and capitalism an advantage, holds sway over leader and editor. The annual party convention, the Parteitag, is the court of last resort, before which even those high- est in the councils of the party must appear and justify their actions. Prominent Socialists, including some of the leading parliamentarians of the party and the editors of such journals as Vorwarts and the Sozialistische Monatshefte, have been called upon to defend the orthodoxy of their faith, and prominent leaders have been unceremoniously thrust out of the party. It became an accepted canon that when a man found that his position, reached after scientific inquiry, was no longer that of the party, and when he could not persuade the party to accept his position, he was by that very fact no longer a Social Democrat. This tyranny of the majority was due not merely to a democratic intoler- ance of strong individualities, it proceeded also from the extreme doctrinarianism of the party. THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 185 This doctrinariamsm is the very bone of the Social Democracy. No orthodox theologian of years agone ever clung to the verbal inspiration of Holy Writ with greater zeal than Socialist orator and editor and pri- vate soldier have held to every jot and tittle of the Erfurt Platform. This declaration of faith was adopted in 1 891, soon after the expiration of the anti-sociahst laws, and has had no official revision since. It could not be expected, however, that the Marxian theories, as enunciated in that instrument, would stand un- impaired by the experience of the passing years, and even the most devout Socialist must acknowledge that some planks in the Erfurt Platform have been shown to be fallacies by the industrial history of the past few decades in Germany. Of none is this more strik- ingly true than of the so-called "iron law of wages," according to which the condition of the workingman under the capitahstic system must constantly grow worse. This dogma has been absolutely contradicted by the facts. The general condition of industrial labor in Germany has constantly grown better, and as the years have passed not a few of the proletariat have be- come themselves members of the capitalistic class. These conditions were recognized quite early by Social Democrats of more liberal training. The first bold reformer to attempt to bring sociafism down from the domain of dreams to economic reality was Edward Bernstein in a memorable brochure published in 1899 {Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie) } The author, who had suffered in his own person for his adherence to the Marxian faith in the days of the anti-Socialist laws, proposed a revi- sion of the old Marxian theories in the light of present- day economic and social life, "the development of the theory and practice of the Social Democracy in an evolu- tionistic sense." The first point of his attack was the ^ The Basis of Socialism and the Task of the Social Democracy. 1 86 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS time-honored premise of the "iron law of wages." The condition of the working classes, he contended, is not growing worse but better. Furthermore, not all means of production are to be socialized, as is demanded in the Erfurt Platform, but only land and the larger means of production, and as a very important reservation, one must avoid anything which would injure the nation in its competition for trade with foreign countries. This attack on the major premise of the Erfurt Platform and this modification of its first article instantly called into the ring a host of defenders of socialistic orthodoxy. August Bebel, the parliamentary generalissimo, Karl Kautsky, the learned dogmatist, and others rushed to arms in defense of the Marxian theories and the battle was on between "Radicals" and "Revisionists," the former ably led by Kautsky in the Neue Zeit, the latter by Bernstein in the Sozialistische Monatshefte. The struggle reached its culmination in the Dresden conven- tion of 1903, a convention which will long be remembered in German political annals as the highwater mark of violence and "rough-house" tactics. The result was a defeat for the "Revisionists," less on scientific than on tactical grounds, the "Radicals" claiming that any con- cession to the "middle-class parties," whether in theory or practice, would result in weakening the feeling of class consciousness upon which the Social Democracy is built. In the meantime, however, practice ran away with theory. The exigencies of electoral and parliamentary struggles drew the party more and more into coopera- tion with the Liberal Left, and tended more and more to transform the revolutionary Socialists, despite themselves, into pohtical democrats. Liebknecht, the founder, with truly doctrinaire consistency, had held that the party existed as a protest against the capitalistic organization of society and should therefore take no part in parliamentary affairs, except in protest. In the THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 187 days of the anti-socialist laws, the Social Democratic members of the Reichstag refused to accept membership on committees. The first break in this poHcy of simple negation came from South Germany, where as a result of more democratic constitutions, the working classes had been accustomed to a share in governmental re- sponsibihties. A Bavarian deputy, Vollmar, as early as 1891, came out strongly against the attitude of sulk- ing, and demanded that the party, deferring its ultimate aim, the socialization of industry, should cooperate with the middle- class parties in winning immediate advantages for the working class. In spite of the bitter opposition of the Prussian irreconcilables, a revision of the party's program in this respect actually took place. With the growth of Socialist representation in the Reichstag, their work on the committees became more and more important, and at the beginning of the session of 191 2 a Socialist presided for a time over the national parlia- ment. While the fraction continued to vote steadily against all military and naval suppHes and against the prosecution of colonial development, signs multiplied that the opposition to these national undertakings had lost its ferocity, and Socialist votes in committee repeat- edly brought about modifications in military and naval bills. When finally under the shadow of a great national danger in May 191 3 the Social Democrats accepted the national Defense Bill, which in its system of direct prop- erty taxation coincided with their theories, it was plain that a considerable breach had at last been made in the doctrinarian internationalism of the party and that it had at last begun to catch the national spirit. That this was true found complete confirmation at the outbreak of the war, when disappointment came to those who had counted upon socialism as a weakness in Germany's hour of trial. The Social Democratic work- man threw down his tools and rushed to obey the order 1 88 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS of mobilization with the same patriotic enthusiasm as inspired shopkeeper and reserve officer. The party leaders, speaking through their papers, reaffirmed the faith of the SociaKsts in the ideals of peace and inter- national brotherhood among workers, but put the de- fense of German culture from Russian barbarism as a first life- consideration ; and the SociaHst members of the Reichstag followed the direction of the party councils in voting with practical unanimity for the government war measures. The same hall which had resounded so often with attacks on the spirit of mihtarism, and Prus- sian mihtarism in particular, now heard from the Social Democratic leaders words of patriotic devotion scarcely less ardent than those which came from Conservative and Liberal benches. That there were still elements of dissent and that the hatred of feudalism and capitahsm still burned brightly could not be doubted, but for the present these were lost to view in the national enthu- siasm which made many Sociahst leaders answer the first call for volunteers. In South Germany, indeed, even before the "revi- sion" crusade the Socialists had become to all intents and purposes a national party. In Wiirtemberg, Baden and Bavaria they repeatedly voted for the bud- get, including the supplies for the royal family, a pro- ceeding which stirred the radical SociaUsts to the bitterest attacks. In Baden in 1906 the leader of the party in the Chamber paid a visit of respect to the Grand Duke on the birth of a prince; in the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1907 the fraction voted an address to the sovereign. In the diminutive principality of Schwarz- burg-Rudolstadt the Sociahsts had in 191 2 a majority of the Chamber and elected one of their number presi- dent. In the same year in nineteen states of the em- pire one hundred and eighty-eight Socialist deputies sat in the legislative chambers. The increasing par- ticipation in government which such a large number of THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 189 representatives must bring with it on more than one occasion excited the Prussian radicals to the boihng point and more than one national party convention re- sounded with wild scenes of disorder over the struggle as to how far a Social Democrat might participate in government. Under the sting of the radical lash the South German delegates revolted at the Nuremberg Convention of 1908 and announced their intention of proceeding independently of the party in state affairs, submitting themselves to the national convention only in matters of national issue. That the process of Mauserung of the Social Demo- crats, that is, a gradual conversion to the practical coworking with other Kberal groups, did not go further and faster was chiefly due to conditions in Prussia. It is not an accident that most of the radicals among the Social Democratic leaders have been Prussians and that the worship of an idea among the serried thousands of followers has gone further and the collisions between the proletarian and propertied classes have been more numerous in Prussia than elsewhere in the empire. It is true that the Prussian, whether capitalist or proleta- rian, has a real gift for discipline, whether it be the discipline of the drill sergeant, of the manufacturers' association, or the Social Democratic party leader. But the existence of a sharp and obdurate class feeling in Prussia is to be explained most of all by the constitution of the kingdom. Under the provisions of this consti- tution, as we have seen, a property qualification for the vote exists, and the working classes are almost entirely excluded from participation in government, whether it be the government of parish, province or kingdom. Of the three classes (cf . page 143) which by indirect means choose the representatives in local and municipal coun- cil, in provincial assembly and national Landtag, the first class has included in the elections since 1903 from three to five per cent of the total vote, the second class 190 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS from ten to fourteen per cent, the third class from eighty- one to eighty-seven per cent. Since the Socialists from the nature of things fall almost entirely in the third class, it will be seen what a small chance they have of secur- ing adequate representation in any elective body. The industrial workers are placed at a further disadvantage in elections to the Landtag by a system of electoral dis- tricts which has remained, with minor alterations, that of sixty years ago. Thus while in the agrarian dis- tricts of East Prussia in 1908, 63,000 persons elected a deputy, in BerHn the average was one deputy to 170,000. It is not surprising that the Conservative agrarians, who are most bitterly opposed to the interests of the industrial workers, have a far greater number of seats than their vote entitles them to. In 1903 the Conserva- tives, polling 19.4 per cent of the vote, elected t,^ per cent of the deputies in the Landtag. It is not to be wondered at that when in 1908 for the first time Social Democrats, seven in number, found their way into the lower house of the Prussian parliament, they were received with scant courtesy. The Con- servative Kreuzzeitung protested against their being assigned to any committees, and in fact something very like a boycott was exercised against them. The elec- tion of 1 91 3 brought only a slight increase in numbers; but the Socialist deputies made up in noise what they lacked in voting strength, and in spite of the iron rod of Conservative presiding officers, they made them- selves as obnoxious as ever did the Irish Nationalists at Westminster in the palmy days of Parnell and Healy. Thus in the spring of 191 2 a scandalous scene was precipitated on the floor of the Landtag, during which the presiding officer was obhged to send for the police. The minions of the law forcibly removed a refractory Herr Borchardt and played hide-and-seek a while with him in the corridors, a comical scene which found its epi- logue in the law courts, where the liberties of the house THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 191 were finally vindicated by Herr Borchardt paying a small fine. During the same session a Socialist was called to order for saying that "war is a mockery against God" on the ground that this was "an insult to the memory of Emperor WiUiam the Great, who waged three wars, and to the chivalrous and patriotic spirit of the German people." The Socialist members are obliged to hear from the ministerial benches that the government regards all SociaHsts as enemies of God and Fatherland, and that any official, civil or military, breaks his oath to the sovereign when he affiHates himself in any way with the anti-monarchical party. It was the same bitter impatience against the Prus- sian constitution that accounted for many of the violent outbreaks of representatives of the fourth estate in the Reichstag. Here, backed by crowded benches of applaud- ing colleagues, the fiery champions of the proletariat have reaped a harvest of calls to order in every session for their attacks on the sovereign, the ministry, the army, the Prussian constitution and the entire Prussian system. Some of the party manifestations have been even less excusable, and their childishness can only be explained by political immaturity or demagogery run mad, as the habit which the Socialist members have had of leaving the hall of parliament when the obligato Eoch ! is given in honor of the Kaiser at the close of the session. When with the Liberal-Radical-Socialist victory of 191 2 the Clerical party was obliged to re- sign to Radical hands the presidency of the Reichs- tag, attacks on the Emperor himself became less re- strained than ever. Each public speech of the monarch found its echo in some choice epigram from the Socialist benches. Thus in the debate on the Kaiser's threat against the constitution of Alsace-Lorraine the printer Scheidemann, erstwhile president of the assembly, aroused an uproar by characterizing the Emperor as a "crowned dilettante," and the intellectual free lance 192 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Ledebour earned a call to order by declaring that if the king of England had spoken as Kaiser Wilhehn did, he would be straightway shut up in Balmoral, hke the crazy king of Bavaria or Abdul Hamid of Turkey. It was not merely by their attacks on the monarch and by their unceasing diatribes against army and bureaucracy that Social Democratic editors and orators won applause in tavern and workshop or wherever their eager constit- uents gathered to read the party press. Were a stupid recruit in Jiiterbog or Gumbinnen overdrilled by a zealous sergeant until he fell from exhaustion, then one might be certain that the case would be illuminated down to its furthest cranny in the next issue of Vor- wdrts or by a vitriol-tongued Liebknecht or Ledebour in the Reichstag. Did a Conservative government official in some remote Silesian district snort at Social Demo- cratic voters at a bye-election, the party press and the Reichstag hall would ring with denunciation. Every case of judicial error had a merciless searchlight turned upon it, every instance of official discrimination against those suspected of being Socialists became the theme for attacks in which coarseness and brutahty of language often crossed the limits prescribed by the German Kbel law. Whatever political errors may be charged to the Socialists, the weakness of turning the other cheek to the smiter is something of which the party's represent- atives cannot be accused. While one must credit Social Democratic representatives in press and parliament with sincerity of motive in the defense of the politi- cally and socially weak and defenseless, it cannot be overlooked that it is mainly due to them that a spirit of undisciplined coarseness and vituperation has found its way into German public life. There is no denying that they have had provocation enough. The government from the sovereign down has always made no secret of its determination to fight the Socialists as a foreign enemy in the Fatherland. As THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 193 believers in "internationalism" and enemies of the existing state, they have been as a matter of course ineligible to any office in the government, whether in the army, navy or in the civil service, although they represent more than one-third of the voting strength of the nation. At the elections all government officials have been expected to exert every legitimate influence against the Social Democratic candidate. Recruits who attended Socialist gatherings or frequented taverns known to be Socialist rendezvous were Kable to severe punishment. Especially in Prussia, although the basic ideas of sociahsm had for years been freely taught in the universities, any teacher in an elementary school who was suspected of SociaHst sympathies exposed himself to loss of promotion or might even be removed from the service. The same fate awaited any postal or customs employee who identified himself in any way with the Socialist cause ; and it has often been charged by the Socialists and never disproved that the workmen on pub- He works have been practically forced to enroll their children in clubs where a sort of "hurra-patriotism" was taught and where the youngsters were trained to regard the Social Democrats as the most dangerous enemies of God and native land. Naturally a state of affairs Hke this leads to deceit, to cringing, tale-bearing and denunciation. Unfortunately also, while the Ger- man courts are usually models of fairness and inaccessible to poUtical, social or financial influences, the Social Democrat has not always had an impartial hearing. The Jena students demonstrated against the SodaHst convention held in that Httle Athens on the Saale in 191 1, and the Weimar Volkszeitung was fined for caUing one of the student leaders a Mistfink, a somewhat in- tensified equivalent of "mucker." A laborer in the Kiel district in 191 2 gave his daughter the euphonious name of Lassalline. When the registrar refused to record a name so full of danger to the Fatherland, the 194 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS magistrate's court finally ordered hiin to do so, but attached to this confirmation of the parent's right to denominate his offspring a long oration against so- cialism. The Socialist workman replied to this boycott by exercising in his way a terrorism which the govern- ment, aided by all the conservative forces in the state, has striven in vain to suppress. He has vented on the non-socialist worker his dissatisfaction with the govern- ment, and, as might be expected, often with brutality and violence. That during a political strike, such as the coal strike in the Ruhr district in 191 2 (cf. page 167), the Catholic labor unions should suffer bloody attacks from the striking miners is not surprising : even the non-political Hirsch-Duncker unionists have more than one tale to tell of similar mistreatment during labor troubles. But it is not merely the strike breakers in strike times who have suffered. Every non-Socialist brick mason or carpenter must look for a continuous haz- ing. If he were so unfortunate as to be obliged to work with a Socialist unionist, he might consider himself lucky if he got off with the occasional loss of tools or dinner bucket or an accidental fall into a horse-pond and did not have his hand permanently maimed by the slip of a chisel or his head cracked by the premature topple of a hod of bricks. Against such petty cases of tyranny of course both government and employer have been helpless. In past years the government has eagerly sought from the Reichstag sharper weapons for the sup- pression of strike violence and the protection of strike breakers; but in spite of the personal influence of the Emperor in their favor, no one of these special measures for the protection of the workers has been able to find a majority in parhament. The fear that they might be used as a weapon for further strengthening the great industrialists has always frightened off enough Clericals to cause their defeat. THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 195 It must not be supposed that the feeling against the Socialists has been confined to feudal squires and factory owners. It pervades the entire middle class in Germany, for except the extreme Radicals, all Germans, whether they thrive by land, trade or manufacture, have been taught to regard the Social Democrat as an enemy of the Fatherland. The Rhenish shopkeeper, the Black Forest clockmaker, the Pomeranian peasant farmer, — all have shuddered alike at the growing power and in- fluence of the Social Democracy and regarded almost any means as holy that would tend to defeat its ultimate success. It was only when the excessive demands of agrarian and clerical interests aroused the alarm of those who live by commerce and industry that these classes considered the possibility of a league, and the coworking of Radicals and Social Democrats at the polls in 191 2 broke ground in that direction. The So- cialist leaders, however, have been well aware that any modification of their extreme radical attitude tow- ard the middle classes would not only endanger their hold on the working class, with its sharp class feeling, but that a large number of the discontented from all classes would fall away from them. For the growth of socialism's vote in Germany has been due by no means merely to the rising demands of the industrial workers. It has been distinctly the party of discontent and pro- test. Every discontented and disappointed man is liable at any time to express his dissatisfaction with society in general by voting the Social Democratic ticket. Has the young medical student failed of an appointment, has the citizen soldier been given a verbal castigation by the officer during his drill with the re- serve, has a postal clerk been docked in his pay, has the grocer's wife had a snub from the factory owner's, — each sufferer can give vent to his private grievance against society by voting for the Social Democrat and thus making trouble for the powers that be. None of 196 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS these persons has the slightest sympathy with the ultimate socialist program, and none of them would think of overthrowing the present state of society, except in a moment of ill humor. This habit of "voting to the Left" has attacked large classes of democratically inclined persons of the lower middle class following such a period of reaction as that which ended with the elec- tion of the Reichstag of 191 2. It is indeed unfortunate that this is so, and the lovers of Germany have often asked themselves what the end would be, if so strangely constituted a party continued to grow in voting strength. Largely through its own choice the Social Democracy, although representing one- third of the voters in the empire, has been deprived of any considerable share in government and remained in an attitude of sullen hostility to the state. So well have the class organizers of past decades done their work that they have developed among the industrial workers who make up the Social Democratic party a class feeling that is nothing more nor less than an in- dependent class culture. It is not merely a political gulf which the Socialist leaders have fixed between the workman and every other class in Germany. Through constant teaching in young men's clubs, trade unions and political societies the industrial worker has become to a certain extent a different creature from his middle class neighbor, a member of a nation within the German nation. A striking characteristic of the German the world over is the love of Fatherland. The Socialist workman has claimed to be an international and to feel as one, and in program at least he has professed to be more strongly drawn to his fellow proletarian in France and England than to the shopkeepers and peas- ant proprietors of his native district. The North Ger- man is by tradition strongly monarchical; the Social- ist frankly detests monarchy and monarch. While the German, north and south, may not approve of all THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 197 the methods of the Evangelical and Roman Catholic churches, he is held by mighty roots to a deep rehgios- ity; the Socialist claims to regard rehgion as a private matter, nevertheless he cannot forget that the church has been the handmaid of reaction and oppression, and the attitude of intellectual leader and proletarian follower is frankly and openly anti-religious. Many of the most brilliant Social Democratic leaders with tongue and pen are Jews, it need hardly be said, unorthodox Jews, who have cut loose entirely from the religion of Moses and the prophets. Anyone who is at all famihar with the anti-Semitic feeling among the upper and middle classes in Germany can understand how much the prejudice against the Socialists is deepened by this Jewish alHance. Furthermore, in spite of the case- hardening of the modem struggle for existence, the average German has remained a romanticist, full of hero-worship and with a deep enthusiasm for the poetry of the nation's past; the Social Democrat has been taught to view the past under the hard Hght of Marx' theory as a battle-ground of economic forces, where without mercy the strong has preyed upon the weak. When the war came the attitude of the Social Democracy toward it showed at once that much of the so-called "internationalism" of the German industrial worker is purely academic. All the doctrinarianism of the tavern benches and the nobler enthusiasm of such demonstrations as that of Treptow could not affect the age-old roots which bind him to the Fatherland. It is improbable that the Socialists, were they to com- mand a majority in Germany's parliament and so succeed in changing Germany's constitution as to have a free hand in legislation, would do anything to weaken the nation's defenses, either by a change in the military system or a destruction of protective duties. It seemed, indeed, as if even old-line leaders, like the late August Bebel, had caught something of the enthusiasm for 198 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Germany's world-empire. After the so-called ''Hotten- tot election" of 1907, when Socialists and Clericals alike suffered severely at the hands of the voters for their opposition to colonial expansion, there began to show itself in the Social Democratic press a tendency toward increasing patriotic expression with regard to the national honor and defenses. Here again South Germany led the way, for here the "revisionists" were stronger. Among the first prominent men to fall in the invasion of France in August 1914 was Dr. Frank of Mannheim, a widely known Social Democratic leader; and indeed the blood of Socialist patriots has reddened every battle- field where German armies have fought. Under these circumstances the attitude of the party towards the nation's inner life cannot fail to undergo a change. In later years indeed the Social Democrats had already accomplished much that was positive. By their con- stant and searching criticisms they held a searchlight constantly fixed on the weak spots and the sore spots in the courts and the army. In the field of social legislation, such as the extension of compulsory insur- ance, the fixing of a shorter working day, and the pro- tection of women and children in the industries, they kept high ideals before the country. In their work for universal peace, in their opposition to immoderate military expenditures and to duels and other manifes- tations of the feudal spirit in the army, they offered a valuable counterbalance to the militarism-run-mad spirit. In their pleas for a judiciary free from influence of every kind, schools free from religious bigotry, for a system of taxation which should fall directly upon the propertied classes, for a strong central control of great industries and for woman's suffrage, they accomplished much toward the inner upbuilding of the state. These affirmative poHcies have been pushed by a class of leaders who are very different from those who led the serried thousands of the fourth estate in the nineties or even at the THE PROLETARIAN IN POLITICS 199 beginning of the present century. The really advanced men in the Social Democratic party are no longer the narrow Marxian enthusiasts or class fanatics who grew up under the anti-sociaHst laws or when the party was still in the fledgling period of political strategy. They are often men of the highest university training, occasionally with inherited wealth and culture, who know the his- tory of the party and are filled with the optimism of success. They have shown an increasing power to lead the party farther away from a sterile doctrinarianism toward a really practical democracy. CHAPTER X The Church in Politics One of the most difficult things for the American to understand is the religious hatred which seems inborn in many Germans. Other lands have their bigots who are only too willing to become persecutors : in southeastern Europe religious hatred, complicated with racial antag- onism, often breaks out into blood-red conflagration. But in Spain church claims were spared the full shock of the age of enlightenment, and the confessional fury of Russia and the Balkans rests largely on racial hatred. In Germany one wonders to find a people, fully en- lightened and leading the world in modern culture, divided by religious bitterness, centuries old, deep seated and ever ready for expression. With all of his indififerentism towards personal religion, the cultured German of to-day stiU wears the earmarks of the seven- teenth century in his attitude toward those who were born into another rehgious faith. The confessional struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries left a bitter heritage to the twentieth. The present German empire is nearly two-thirds Protestant and one- third Roman Catholic; and since religious prejudice, like racial antagonism, rests on mutual ignorance, it is very unfortunate that confessional differences follow to a certain extent provincial boundaries, and that while the northern and eastern provinces of Prussia, the kingdom of Saxony and the Thuringian duchies are overwhelmingly Lutheran, Bavaria, the Rhine country and a part of the Southwest is largely Catholic. Thus religious differences have been strengthened by local THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 20i antagonism and have given rise to problems very difficult of solution. The fact that the Roman Catholic church is in a minority in the German empire explains in the first instance its presence as a poHtical force. Ask the Roman CathoHc supporter of the Clerical party why the church is in politics and he will answer with the oft- quoted plank in the Centre platform: "To represent the interests of the Catholic Church in national life." He realizes that there is in Prussia and in the empire a two-thirds majority opposed to claims which the church has grown to regard as just, and he believes it his duty to stand always on guard in defense of these claims. The average voter of the Lutheran or Reformed faith, on the other hand, regards the Centre party as an enemy of the state, ready at any moment to obey the orders of foreign diplomats, who have interfered in the name of religion so often and with such disastrous results in Germany's interior politics. He feels that the very existence of an orderly and well-disciplined phalanx of Roman Catholic voters smells of Jesuit intrigue and the blood and flames of earlier centuries. And if he is re- minded that the German Clerical is as full of patriotism and as ready to make sacrifices for the empire as his evangelical fellow-patriot, he points to Belgium as a modern and enlightened state where all the evils of clerical control have been manifest. Religious strife and prejudice find their excuse in history, and one cannot understand the organization and spirit of the Centre party in Germany without at least a glance at its origin. This is not the place to do more than recall the romantic reaction which followed on the dogma-smashing days of the age of enlightenment, a reaction out of which the Roman Catholic church in Germany gradually arose as a modern and essentially democratic institution. The church had felt the throb of a vigorous political power even before the revolution 202 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS of 1848, and the events of that year placed the leaders of the Catholic masses in a singularly advantageous position. They could appeal to the liberal ideals of complete religious freedom, and at the same time they were courted by the various governments, who recognized in the church a stable and conservative force. Catholic societies with hundreds of thousands of members grew apace and thrust out their fingers into every parish in German lands, knitting anew the old bonds which bound parish clergy and laity to Rome. Long before Bismarck had ridden victorious Prussia to the head of the new empire, the Catholic masses were organized and ready for use as a political weapon in the hands of the demo- cratic lower clergy under the influence of the wide-eyed diplomacy of the Roman curia. This solidified spirit of the Catholic masses, ready to do and sacrifice in defense of a reinvigorated faith, had already drawn first blood in its contests with the govern- ments of various Protestant states before it was seized and forged into a political weapon by Ludwig Windt- horst. This North German aristocrat had been a Han- overian minister before 1866 : he resented the incor- poration of Hanover into Prussia and hated Bismarck with a Guelphic intensity which would have done credit to fourteenth century Florence. In 1870 this irreconcil- able, whose devious diplomacy and clever opportunism set their stamp upon the Centre party for all time, met with Bavarian CathoHc leaders and laid plans for the representation of Catholic interests in parliament, and in the following year their successful candidates made their entry into the Prussian Landtag with 48 members and into the national Reichstag with 67. These deputies chose their seats in the centre of the house, hence the designation "Centre" for the Clerical or Roman Catholic party in all German parHaments, a designation which marks also to a certain extent the opportunist poUcy of the fraction wherever found. THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 203 The first hallmark of the party was, as we have seen, particularistic and anti-national : one might perhaps say, anti-Prussian. The chief opposition in South Germany to the solidification and expansion of the North German Confederation into an empire came from the Catholic leaders of Bavaria, Wiirtemberg and Baden, who saw in the hegemony of Prussia a menace to the Catholic faith. Undoubtedly they found backing in Roman diplo- macy, and their fears were to some extent justifiable. Prussia, a predominantly Protestant state, had humbled the Austrian house, the faithful patron of the church, and had thrust His ApostoHc Majesty out from all participation in Germany's affairs. It had leagued itself with Victor Emmanuel, the arch-enemy of Pius IX, had crushed France, at that time the champion of the church in its efforts to maintain its temporal power in Italy, and had thus been the indirect cause of the fall of the Papal State before the arms of united Italy. It had set up in the centre of Europe a powerful empire 62.3 per cent Protestant. There was also another reason why the diplomats of the curia could not but look with favor upon the mobilization of German Catholics for a specific program. The promulgation of the dogma of the immaculate conception in 1854 and that of papal infallibility in 1870 had called forth great opposition among the faithful in Germany, the classic land of in- dividuality of thought, and finally resulted in a seces- sion. The seceders, "Old Catholics," never became im- portant numerically, but they included among them some of the most learned theologians and scientists in Roman Catholic universities, and the movement sent a shock through the entire church, the results of which could not at first be determined. No wonder then that the Roman diplomats should have welcomed the panacea of war against the heretic as a cure for what seemed to be impending rebellion. The particularistic and ultramontane element, which 204 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS saw its interests threatened by the foundation of new Germany, was soon solidified by the fire of battle. Bis- marck, who regarded the Centre party as a mobilization against the state, proceeded at once to make war. There is no space here to give in detail the history of the struggle between Bismarck and the Catholic party, the struggle to which Rudolph Virchow gave the striking name of KuUurkampf. It began with the genesis of the empire and found the conclusion of its first and bitterest period with the death of Pius IX and the rise of peremptory economic questions, which called off both antagonists. Its field was particularly Prussia, although Bavaria and Baden also shared in it, and the empire was likewise drawn in. It centred about the control of marriage, of the schools and the education of the clergy. It is now an idle question as to whether Bismarck really carried through his program or whether he was obliged to swallow the boast he made at the beginning of the struggle and, like Henry IV, another proud spirit foiled by the passive violence of the church, "go to Canossa." German Catholicism is far too virile, Germans, Catholic and Protestant, far too romantically attached to tradition, to make it possible to accomplish in the Fatherland what Combes and the radical-social- ist cabinet did in France thirty years later. The KuUurkampf ended in a compromise, because Bismarck saw that to prolong the conflict would irretrievably weaken the state, not merely in its attitude toward foreign foes, but also in its ability to deal with economic questions and meet the rising socialist danger. As a result of long negotiations with Leo XIII, which found their conclusion in 1887, the state retained control over marriage and the schools, leaving the church free to educate its clergy and govern its priests in its own way. But the Centre party had been baptized with fire and emerged from the conflict flushed with the conscious- THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 205 ness of victory. That Bismarck negotiated a truce and peace with the curia and not with the leaders of the Catholic party in Germany, these leaders repaid with a bitter hostility to his policies which continued long after peace with the church had finally been made. They fought tooth and nail against the Septennat, a bill pro- viding military suppHes for seven years, in 1887, long after the Pope had counselled surrender; and they consistently presented a solid front against anti- Polish and other national policies. With the passing of the Bismarck era, however, a change came. Time healed the wounds of the Kulturkampf, and WilHam II early showed himself desirous of winning the affection of his Roman Catholic subjects. Points of irritation were carefully removed, and such things as the founding of a Catholic theological faculty in the Strasburg university and personal gifts of the monarch to the church like the celebrated Dormitio MaricB, presented to the Catholics of Jerusalem on the occasion of the Emperor's visit to the holy city, showed a fair and tactful consideration of the rights and feelings of more than twenty millions of German Catholics. With the passing of Windthorst and the old leaders of the Centre, there came also a weakening of the particularism of the party. The Centre no less than the Radicals began to catch the spirit of a greater Germany. With this turning away from narrow aims toward a wider nationaHsm came a change in the attitude of the Centre toward the government. While Bismarck had spoken of the party as "a beleaguering army which stands drawn up against the government ever ready for attack," the Iron Chancellor's successors, Caprivi and Hohenlohe, the latter himself a Catholic of Hberal views, made alhances with the Clericals. In 1895 a delegate from the Centre was chosen President of the Reichstag, and for twelve years representatives of the party presided over the national parliament. In place 2o6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS of the aristocratic Windthorst, the leadership fell to the Kamberg tea merchant Lieber, and a thoroughgoing democratization of the party took place. The struggle against the Social Democracy in the industrial districts of Westphaha and Alsace-Lorraine led to the adoption of a social program and to the organization of Catholic trade unions. In the main the attitude of the leaders remained as before, federative-particularistic, support- ing as before the principle of federation as opposed to centralization and resisting any attempt to weaken the individual states by granting wider powers to the im- perial government. The party still clung to the prin- ciple of church control of education, but became more opportunist, supporting the government so long as the government was willing to make small concessions to the Catholic constituency, often advocating sound Hberal policies when they did not endanger the interests of the church. With the colonial crisis of 1906, how- ever, the Centre parted company with the government. The leaders had become increasingly peremptory in their demands on Chancellor Biilow, and finally refused to support the government in its colonial policy, which failed before the opposition of a Centre and Socialist majority. In the elections which followed, the Clericals, by their matchless organization, escaped the severe losses which the enthusiasm for a greater Germany overseas inflicted on the Socialists. The party was forced, however, into alliance with the Conservatives, whither its opposition to direct taxation and the re- organization of the imperial finances had been driving it, and with this rise of the so-called "blue-black" block came, as has been shown (cf. page 130), a sort of reaction in all national affairs, a reaction which lasted until the elections of 191 2. The Liberal-Socialist vic- tories of that year brought to the Clerical party the first considerable loss of candidates which it had suffered since its organization. Not merely in the Reichstag, THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 207 but in Bavaria, the citadel of Catholicism, many Centre candidates fell before Radical and Socialist opponents. One must be familiar with the history of Clericalism in Germany to understand the bitterly hostile attitude of many enlightened Germans toward anything that smacks of the rule of the cassock. The old fear of Roman influence, the old cry echoing since the days of Walther von der Vogelweide, " Das deutsche Silher fahri in einen welschen Schrein, — " * resounds still in circles which are by no means bigoted. It is not merely the Centre as a political party, sub- ordinating all other questions to those of church interest, that these patriots fear. It is not the return of the Jesuits as teachers or the extension of the influence of the Roman Catholic church on schools and bureaucracy. What they do fear and resent with a bitterness which has grown since national unity and greatness, is the control by Roman diplomats of German interior policies through German votes. This explains the bitterness in cultured circles over the so-called Motu proprio of 19 10, by which the curia demanded of every priest an oath pledging him to fight to the last against all so-called "modem tendencies," which whether under the name of higher criticism or scientific discovery were felt to be undermining Christian faith. Under the terms of the papal decree all university and gymnasial teachers, as officers of the state, were expressly excused from the anti-modernist oath, which thus became a matter of inner church policy, with which non-CathoHcs had of course nothing to do. Nevertheless the pubUcation of the Motu proprio led to bitter debates in the press and the Prussian Landtag, where the matter was brought up again and again by Conservative and Radical orators and discussed in the tone of violence and unfairness ^ "Germany's silver falls into a foreign chest, — " 2o8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS which marks all debates where religious questions are thrown into the political arena. The temper shown in the discussions of the "anti- modernist" oath, however, was as nothing compared with the bitterness which has been engendered by the constantly recurring Jesuit question. In 1872 at an early stage of the KuUurkampf a rigid law was passed, closing all Jesuit institutions, expelling foreign members of the Society and laying heavy restrictions upon German members. In 1904 the restrictions on German citizens were removed, but in spite of constant agitation on the part of the Centre, the Society is still forbidden within the black-white-red boundary posts. The result was the natural one : the Society became truly and widely popular in Catholic circles and came practically to control the press and church societies in Gerniany. At every fresh recurrence of the question as to whether the Society shall be readmitted, a debate has broken out which would do credit to the seventeenth century. A fresh and typical instance occurred in 191 2 when a former member of the Centre fraction in the Reichstag, Freiherr von Hertling, a professor of philosophy in the university of Munich, came to the head of the Bavarian ministry. His interpretation of the anti- Jesuit law was too liberal to suit non-Catholic Germany and led to bitter attacks in the press and the Reichstag, attacks which were given back with interest by the powerful Berlin Germania, the chief organ of the Centre party and by other less brilliant Catholic journals. Finally the Hertling interpretation was rejected by the Bundesrat, and the interdict rested on Jesuit conferences and assem- blies as before. The incident is of importance as illus- trating the feeling of the non-Catholic population of Germany toward the powerful organizations and far- reaching diplomacy of those who hold the threads of Roman Catholic church policy. Not always indeed has the Centre party taken its THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 209 orders blindly from Rome. In the early days of the party it found not a few supporters among those who considered Bismarck's policies as too strongly unitary and imperial, and Windthorst on more than one occa- sion disregarded the advice of the Vatican or kept it from the knowledge of his followers in order to carry out his own tactics undisturbed. Thus in 1887 the rank and file of the party gathered bHndly behind their leaders in opposition to the Septennat, completely ignorant of the fact that those leaders had been coun- selled by Pope Leo to yield to Bismarck, between whom and the curia peace had just been concluded. And again and again German individuaHsm and independence have asserted themselves in the statements of Centrist leaders that the infallibility of the Pope does not ex- tend to temporal affairs and that the poHtical tactics of the Centre party take no orders from Rome. Neverthe- less, the fact remains that in recent years scarcely any but CathoHcs have supported the Centre party and that seven-ninths of all Catholic voters stand behind it. Numberless Catholic societies, international, national and local, honeycomb Germany, so that in some parishes there is hardly a male communicant who is not artic- ulated in some way into the half-devotional, half- fraternal life of the church. In this mobiUzation of Catholic strength the clergy plays a decisive role, and the clergy have been the great vote-getters of the Centre party. In spite of all restrictive legislation against interference with the freedom of the voter, every election to the Reichstag or state parliaments has brought an appendix of complaints in the Liberal and Socialist papers against clerical terrorism. The Centrist delegate cannot help a feeling of dependence on this powerful organizer of his constituency, although this dependence is no longer brought home to him so forcibly as in the days of the Kulturkampf, when priests prayed publicly in the church for the conversion of a refractory 2IO THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Centre delegate who had put the national interests above party call. The discipline of the German clergy under Rome has become well-nigh perfect in the past two dec- ades, and it will readily be seen that the party leaders must bring their tactics into Hne with the ideas of the hierarchy. They have had need for all of the cleverness for which the party is famous in deaHng with questions where political expediency runs counter to the demands of higher church policy. Since the days of the councils of Constance and of Basel, however, there has always existed a spirit of sturdy independence among German Catholics, and in spite of disciplinary measures from Rome, this spirit has asserted itself steadily in the Centre party. Gradually after the beginning of the twentieth century two ten- dencies evolved themselves and took shape, resulting in the formation of two groups among the leaders and to a certain extent the subordinate officers of the Catholic world, the so-called "Cologne group" and the "Berlin group." The former, while acknowledging the author- ity of the church in religious matters, claimed to be politically non-confessional, supporting the Centre as a Christian rather than a church body. The latter emphasized the Catholic view of life in all questions, remaining in close touch with the church even in matters not concerning religion. The former believes in non- confessional trade-unions, and would treat the evangeli- cal church as a sister church ; the latter follows closely the direction of the bishops and the clergy. While professedly regarding church and state as coordinate, each sovereign in its own field, it conserves first of all the interests of the church, and is ever ready to beheve the holy faith in danger and to sound the long roll of alarm even on questions of party expediency. It cannot be for a moment doubtful with which of these wings the diplomats of Rome and the greater part of the influential clergy are to be found. The late THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 211 Cardinal Kopp, archbishop of Breslau, was long regarded as the head of this confessional direction; and the action of the curia in 191 2 in selecting a man of similar views as successor to the late Dr. Fischer, the liberal- minded archbishop of Cologne, was an instance of the steady pressure from Rome to which the German epis- copate has been obhged to yield. Most clearly has this pressure been made manifest in the matter of the Cathohc labor unions, the most delicate question with which the Centrist leaders have had to deal since the days of the Septennat. To no chapter in its history does the party look back with more justifiable pride than to the mobili- zation of labor in the cause of the church through the so-called "Christian" unions. This movement, which was a part of the drift of the party toward democracy, was directed especially against the Socialists, who had begun to organize CathoHc workmen in the industrial Rhine-Westphahan district into unions affiliated with the Social Democratic party. While not approaching the SociaHst unions in number, the Christian unions soon attained a very large membership in the West and in Silesia. Professedly non-confessional, they did not publish any statistics of the faith of their members, and they fought in more than one labor battle, like the coal strike of 1907, shoulder to shoulder with the Socialist workingmen. Throughout their history they have remained more or less under the control of the leaders of the Centre. The church hierarchy has, how- ever, never entirely trusted the Christian unions, and the followers of the more radical wing of the CathoHc party organized later the Catholic Workingmen's Union, a strictly confessional organization. This organization at its session in Berlin at Whitsuntide 191 2 received the especial papal blessing, the curia censuring at the same time the Christian unions "because they separated labor from rehgion." This came Uke a bolt from the blue, and the Centrist leaders sought and obtained a 212 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS respite until the Vatican could hear the other side of the matter, at the same time calling in the resources of Prussian diplomacy. It can readily be seen what tremendous difficulties have lain in the road of those Catholic leaders who would unite a national policy with the unbending universal ideas of the church. It belongs to the history of the Centre party that it has upheld the federative principle in the national con- stitution and opposed anything which would increase the powers of the empire at the expense of the individual states. It was called into being largely in opposition to Prussia, and it has steadily opposed anything that would augment Prussia's power. Thus in 191 1 it supported vigorously the proposition finally incorpo- rated in the constitution of Alsace-Lorraine, which as- signed to this state three votes in the Bundesrat only in case these votes were cast against Prussia's vote. The Poles being almost to a man CathoHc, the Centre has consistently opposed Prussia's attempts at the for- cible nationaHzation of this Slavic people. It has like- wise steadily opposed anything which would strengthen the imperial finances and make the nation less depen- dent on the proportional contributions from the in- dividual states which are necessary to wipe out the deficit in the empire's annual budget, and has extended this opposition to every federal income and inheritance tax. With respect to the national defenses, the party did, as we have seen, undergo something Kke a conver- sion to the idea of a greater Germany, and became almost as wilHng to vote supplies as the National Liberals themselves. In social matters the Centre has outstripped all other parties, with the exception of the SociaHsts, in its de- mands for the protection of labor. Ever since the in- crease of the industrially employed millions forced all parties in Germany to go forward with labor legislation the Centre has made the workingmen the especial THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 213 object of its care. The hundreds of thousands of Catholic workers in the industrial districts of the West and of Silesia have had their claims adroitly, if not al- ways consistently, presented by the Catholic press. Here •their leaders have been engaged in a bitter struggle with the Social Democrats, who have sought by means which varied from the most insidious argument to open vio- lence to break the solidarity of the CathoKc workers. In its able and powerful press, and in the halls of the national and provincial legislatures, the Centrist leaders are not far behind the Socialists in their demands for shorter hours for labor and for better wages and better working conditions, particularly in the mining districts of Westphalia, where a large percentage of the labor is Catholic. These leaders have been occasionally forced into a difficult position, as in the case of the coal strike of 191 2, when political expediency ran counter to the interests of labor; but their discipline has held firm, and the Christian unions followed the lead of the party generals even when interest would have led them to make common cause with the Socialists. While, with true trimmer poHcy, the party has occasionally worked together with the Socialists both in the empire and in Bavaria, it has in the main been driven into a reactionary position in its effort to hinder the advance of socialism. Thus, although in the Centre platform, which is the shortest of German political platforms, the party favors universal suffrage, it did everything possible to defeat this in the attempted revision of the Prussian constitution in 1910, because universal suffrage would mean the loss of seats in favor of the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats claim to represent the awakened class consciousness of the worker : the Clerical party writes the spirit of Christian humanity on its banners. This spirit of humanity has found expression in many efforts and accomplishments of the Centre. It regularly fought for a humane administration of the colonies, 214 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS regarding these vast stretches of Africa, peopled by un- taught savages, less as sources of material wealth than as opportunities for the spread of Christian civilization. Amid the many sordid demands of business interests for gain at any cost, the CathoHc leaders in press and parliament consistently advocated humane standards in the treatment of the natives, and they no less than the Socialists laid bare colonial scandals and faced un- popularity and defeat rather than sacrifice their ideals. The energy of Catholic societies on the Continent in combating the white slave traflic and in the protection of women and girls has been reflected in the poHcy of the Centre party. It has been always the sturdy opponent of vicious Hterature and the scandalous pro- ductions with which greedy publishers have in recent years flooded Germany under the cloak of art and science. The floods of suggestive books and pictures and the general lowering of the moral tone in the social life of the rapidly growing cities has excited the alarm of many public-spirited men and women in Germany, and much has been done on the part of church societies and other organizations to fight these tendencies. The Centre is the only political party which has made this fight a consistent part of its practice. Occasionally it has gone too far, and its opponents claim that it would put German Hterature and art in leading strings. Nevertheless, the wholesome tone which rings in the Catholic press and from CathoHc speakers on these subjects has had a markedly tonic effect. It is plain then that the nation reaps advantages as well as disadvantages from a poHtical organization which is so closely alHed with the church. In another direction the political influence of the church makes itself felt as a strong conservative force, in the attitude of the Clerical party towards the schools. Regarding no subject does the American student of European poHtics need to divest himself more completely of THE CHURCH IN POLITICS 215 occidental prejudices than the subject of confessional education in public schools. Whatever may be said of the necessity of divorcing church and state in matters of education, it must be admitted that the Germans, with their history and organization of society, have a very different problem from our own, and that such a clean sweep as the Combes ministry made of public rehgious instruction in France would not be possible in a land where unbroken traditions of rehgious teaching in the pubHc schools have come down from the time of Charlemagne. Except in a very few instances, rehgious instruction is obhgatory in all German schools, with due regard to confessional differences (cf. Chap. XVI). This practice is one which the Centre party as the mouth- piece of the CathoHc Church defends as vigorously and guards as jealously as any article of its faith. "We still hve in a Christian state," said one of the Clerical leaders, Dr. Dittrich, in the Prussian Landtag in 191 2. "If it is therefore one of the duties of the church to care for the rehgious foundation of national hfe, it is also a duty of the state. Education must above all proceed along the old approved hnes of Christian doc- trine. We wish the preservation of the elementary schools on the old basis of Christianity." Piety without bigotry, morahty without intolerance, Christian love and humanity wide enough to include all men, — how often this ideal appears as the founda- tion stone of the church and how soon it disappears in contact with the struggle for place and power. When the church enters poHtics, it exposes its sublime principles to degradation by the constant association with ex- pediency, and intolerance and selfishness soon rule in the place of the Christian virtues. There has been much in the trimming and deviousness of Clerical politics in Germany to make one wish that Catholic rights in the Fatherland might have been defended without the crys- tallization of confessional interests into party form, 2i6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS with the constant fanning into flame of the smouldering embers of religious hatred. Under the plea that the church is threatened it is all too easy to bring the voter into Hne against his interest and judgment, and despite the denial of enhghtened German Catholics, it is true that many thousand voters still go to the polls with the conviction that to refuse to support the Centre candi- date is denying obedience to the Holy Father in Rome. On the other hand the Centre party has made enormous progress in the idea of nationality. It has sturdily maintained its opposition to the unitary principle and has ever been the defender of the rights and privileges of the individual states, but with the passing of the old bitterness engendered by the Kulturkampf, it became essentially a national party, not less concerned with the defense of the new Fatherland and the growth of Germany both at home and overseas than the National Liberals themselves. For reasons which have been sufficiently indicated the German Catholic was much slower than his evangelical brother to accept the idea of the new empire, but his patriotism and readiness for sacrifice are no less. CHAPTER XI The Conquered Provinces "Handed over, in contempt of all justice and by an execrable abuse of power, to the domination of a foreign sovereign, we declare once more null and void the agree- ment which disposes of us without our consent. Your brothers of Alsace-Lorraine, separated in this manner from the common family, will preserve, though absent from the fireside, a faithful affection for France until the day comes when we shaU return once more to our places in. our home!" These pathetic words were the farewell address of the delegates from Alsace-Lorraine to the French national assembly at Bordeaux. On that day, March 4, 187 1, the peace negotiated by Thiers and Bismarck had already been approved by the earnest- faced men who had gathered to save France. The two provinces which had echoed for months under the tread of German soldiers had passed finally from Gallic to Germanic sovereignty. Nothing in the bitter cup of humiliation which France drained in the "terrible year" was equal to this, and French orators and poets bade many a sad farewell to the departing sister prov- inces. Their sympathy was aroused again when some- thing over a year after the conclusion of the peace of Frankfort the citizens of the conquered land were forced to make a bitter choice between the acceptance of their lot as subjects of the German empire and the abandonment of their homes. After October i, 1872, all persons remaining in the provinces were to be de- prived of any choice and henceforth regarded as German 217 2i8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS subjects. French historians aver that two hundred thousand sons and daughters of the provinces deserted the smiling Alsatian fields and the valley of the Moselle in the last days of September of that year. Of two hundred magistrates only five are said to have remained. While one cannot share the perfervid enthusiasm of the French writers of the time for those who preferred the name of Frenchmen to sharing the trials of their own narrower homeland, one must credit them with sincere devotion to an ideal. They were for the most part people of wealth and refinement, and many of them as residents in Paris have since that day formed the most irreconcilable group of Germany's foes. The recovery of Alsace was the popular rallying cry with the Germans who wore the helmets and carried the rifles in 1 8 70. Far more than revenge for the humilia- tions imposed by Napoleon I, the rewinning of German territory west of the Rhine was and is the popular slogan for German historian and story-teller in discussing the war with France, which was, as a matter of fact, less a war of aggression than an insurance for German unity. Alsace and Strasburg ! What memories these conjured up in the soul of the whole romance-loving nation east of the Rhine ! Memories of Erwin von Steinbach and the famous Gothic minster at Strasburg with its truncated tower; of Sebastian Brant and Fischart and the Meistersingers and all the rugged but sturdy and honest-hearted culture of the most German of all cen- turies, the sixteenth; most romantic of all, memories of the young student Goethe wooing the daughter of the village pastor in the grape arbor at Sesenheim, — all proofs sufficient that the strong German heart beat in Alsace, concealing itself but poorly under the shining gloss of French language and manners. No wonder that the Wacht am Rhein, written in 1841 as an early expres- sion of the German impulse towards the West that had been manifest ever since the fall of Napoleon, became THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 219 the popular song of the advancing armies in 1870. The veriest beginner in German history in the nineteenth century learns to reckon with the romantic impulses of the nation as a very real factor in shaping events : to the Rhine romanticism which the Wars of Liberation called into being, the war of 1870 added an Alsatian romanticism, which fired German hearts and helped to win German victories at Worth and Metz. >One needs indeed a considerable share of German romance if one is to indorse the theory of German historians that Germany was justified in annexing Alsace-Lorraine for historical reasons. Alsace has, it is true, a preponderatingly German population, which spoke in 1871 a German dialect. The same is, however, true of the German cantons of Switzerland. In its early history Alsace formed a part of the Roman and Frankish empires and of the West Frankish kingdom, and in the tenth century was incorporated into the Ger- manic empire. To the empire it then belonged for seven hundred years, until the Thirty Years' War brought the French invader. The major part of the provinces was conquered at that time and fell to France in the treaties of Westphalia in 1648. Other parts, with Strasburg, were stolen thirty years later by Louis XIV, on various pretexts and confirmed in French possession at the peace of Ryswick in 1697, and the remaining small dis- tricts were absorbed during the wars of the Revolution and by the treaties of 1814 became ofiicially French. If, however, reparation for these repeated acts of ag- gression was due, it was due to Austria, which was at that time the head of the crumbling Holy Roman Empire and to the several dynasties whose princes had lost their petty states. By the end of the seven- teenth century French manners and customs had taken possession of the intellectual classes, and the dialect-free French had supplanted the Alsatian patois as the language of culture; in fact, after the / /: 220 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS revolutionary and Napoleonic wars had brought French political life into such close touch with the west bank of the Rhine, French culture had thoroughly won over the upper landed gentry and the upper and middle classes of the Alsatian towns. The French claim to Alsace was as strong as is Prussia's claim to Posen, with its 62 per cent of Poles or to northern Schleswig, with its pre- dominantly Danish population. If this be true of Alsace, German historians can find still less historical justification for the annexation of Lorraine, where, as we have seen (cf. page 4), the German line was made to dip to the west to include Metz. The capital of the upper Moselle, like the part of Lorraine lying farther west and remaining in French possession and like the French provinces Picardy, Champagne and Bourgogne, originally had a Germanic population and language, and it is possible that the dialect of the early Prankish conquerors may have main- tained itself in and around Metz until the twelfth century. The city and neighboring districts, which, like Alsace, had since the tenth century belonged to the Germanic em- pire, were seized by France in 1552, and, like the major part of Alsace, definitely ceased to be a part of the em- pire at the peace of Westphalia in 1648. Other small sections to the east and southeast were conquered by the arms of Louis XIV in 1659, 1661 and 1680; but the greater part of Lorraine was not attached to the French monarchy until 1766. It is, however, certain that for many hundred years the upper Moselle had been French in language and culture. The German census of 1880 showed that out of 855 communes in Alsace only 44 spoke French, while out of 752 in Lorraine, in 341 French was the language of the peasantry. ^W^ / It is evident that the student of history would find it hard to justify the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine on any theory of romantic justice or racial or cultural attach- 'I ment. Their annexation was, however, justifiable in a / THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 221 very real way by the strategic requirements of Germany in 187 1 and after. The Vosges range which divides Alsace from France is as much a wall and defense against every aggressor in this age of twentieth century technique as when its steep sides turned back the Allemanian in- vader fourteen centuries ago. With Alsace in German possession and Strasburg and Colmar fortified, Metz became as never before the key to western Germany. Metz in German hands was a guarantee that the neu- trality of Luxemburg could be violated only from the German side and that no surprise attack could be launched into the vitals of the empire down the valley of the Moselle. Indeed, the mountain chains of the Vosges, far more than the Rhine is the strategic mihtary frontier between France and Germany, while farther north Metz and Diedenhofen are the keys to the Moselle valley, and their possession by Germany is a strategic necessity for defense — against possible French attack — of the age- old German district which contains Worms and Mayence, Treves and Coblenz, and even Cologne and Aix-la- Chapelle. If the instinct for self-preservation suspends less urgent laws for nations as well as individuals, Germany was certainly justified in retaining Alsace- Lorraine, and thus securing natural defenses, the lack of which had made the Fatherland for centuries a play- ground for foreign greed and ambition. With the annexation of the provinces, the necessity arose immediately for their articulation into the empire and their government. Not a few voices called urgently for the incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine into Prussia, as had been done with Schleswig-Holstein, and there is httle doubt that the empire would have saved itself much irritation if this had been done. However, the collision of the Prussian military and ofi&cial system, with its rigid discipline and many Verbotens, and the easy-going customs and traditions of the Southwest would have been terrific. The provinces had been won, 222 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS not by Prussia alone, but by the entire nation in arms ; and a consideration of South German feelings led Bis- marck to incorporate them into the empire as "imperial land," held and administered by the empire as a whole. The government of this "Imperial Land" began with a military dictatorship, and reached a final stage of development with the granting of a constitution forty years later, this gradual process in self-government being accompanied by the steady progress of even the peasantry of western Lorraine in Germanization. After two years of miHtary dictatorship, Alsace-Lorraine was admitted to the privileges granted by the imperial constitution, although the governor was still empowered to declare martial law and the troops were under his direct com- mand. The " Imperial Land " was represented by fifteen delegates in the Reichstag; and gradually as the dis- turbed condition of the country abated, the citizens were intrusted with some control of local affairs through a representative committee, which developed by degrees from a purely advisory body into one with the power of accepting or rejecting laws passed by the imperial parlia- ment for the government of the territory. In 1879 the governor or Statthalter was duly invested with all the attri- butes of a representative of the imperial power in the prov- ince and was surrounded by a ministry. Unfortunately the governors seem to have been chosen for the most part for no other reason than because they enjoyed the favor of the Emperor, and they filled the difficult office with only indifferent success. Chafing under the so-called "dictatorship paragraph," which permitted the governor to suspend constitutional rights in case of emergency, the people of Alsace-Lorraine manifested their resent- ment at German rule in many ways; and periods of repression, when French newspapers were confiscated, French clubs suppressed and students and others sus- pected of French sympathy given severe prison sentences or exiled, varied with periods when the governor and THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 223 ministers did everything they could to promote good feehng with the children of the land and to entice them into the service of the government. Finally in 1902 the Reichstag felt it safe to withdraw the dictatorial powers of the governor, thereby elevating the people of Alsace- Lorraine, according to their own picturesque statement, from "second-class Germans" to "first-class Germans"; and at last in 191 1, after long discussion and despite much opposition, a constitution was finally granted the "Imperial Land," by which it was given full self-govern- ment and representation in the Bundesrat along with its sister states. Under this constitution large powers are still guaranteed to the Emperor, who names the governor and one-half of the upper chamber of the Diet and retains a veto power on the laws. The other half of the upper chamber represents the church and learned institutions and the cities. The lower house of the Diet is elected by unrestricted suffrage, thereby giving the constitution the democratic stamp demanded by the French traditions of the country. The attitude of the population of Alsace-Lorraine tow- ard the empire has been aheady indicated. With the exception of Protestant circles (Alsace-Lorraine was in 187 1 four-fifths Roman CathoHc), the intelligent and representative part of the people accepted allegiance to Germany as a bitter necessity and bore it for many years as a grievous burden. Especially the wealthy classes, bound by so many ties to France and French culture, resented the change of Fatherland and struggled as best they could against the hard hand of Bismarck. And his hand was hard. Men who were justly proud of the part which their land had played in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were obHged to send their sons to serve their mihtary years under Prussian drill sergeants in Silesia or the more distant East, for the mihtary authorities during the first thirty years regarded a separation from the native soil as the best system for L 224 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS germanizing and nationalizing the young Alsatian and Lorrainer. Men who had prided themselves on the purity of their French were forced to see French dropped as a subject of instruction in the schools and a guerilla war waged on French newspapers and French-speak- ing clubs. Worse than all, the people of the "Imperial Land," who had been accustomed to the easy-going, indulgent methods of French administration, had to submit to be aggressively and energetically governed by a bureaucracy which took Prussian methods as its ideal. The bitter feeling which all of this engendered found expression in continuous protests on the part of the fifteen delegates in the Reichstag, who made common cause with Poles, Danes, Guelphs and Socialists in op- posing increases in the army and every other national measure. i But time heals all wounds, and even before the acces- ''sionT of William II, the population of Alsace-Lorraine had begun to show some appreciation of the vast material benefits which union with the other German states had brought them. The young Emperor attempted here as elsewhere to soften the hard contrasts which the founda- tion of the empire had left. The university of Stras- burg, which since its reopening in 1871 had enjoyed the especial favor of the imperial government as a centre for the re-germanization of Alsace, received new marks of imperial favor. Especial concessions were made to the Catholics of the "Imperial Land." The Emperor pur- chased for himself the beautiful estate Urville in Lor- raine, and made repeated visits to Strasburg, where in the imperial palace he sought to come into personal touch with the notables of the region. In short, nothing was left undone to win the affections of the conquered provinces without sacrifice of the national program of re- germanization. The chivalrous people of the provinces took pride in making presents to the Emperor and Empress, and seemed to have made such progress in THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 225 nationalism that in 1902 all dictatorial powers were taken away from the governor, and in the following year the recruits of Alsace-Lorraine received the long- desired permission to serve out their active military years within sight of their native mountains. When, however, in 191 1 the land seemed ripe for complete self-government under a constitution, the majority of the Alsace-Lorraine delegates in the Reichstag voted against this instrument on the ground that it gave too much power to the Emperor and did not accord to the citizens of the new state the full measure of independence for which they had longed. The constitution of Alsace-Lorraine was a compromise. The best testimony to its fairness is to be found in the dissatisfaction with which it was greeted both by the rabid Prussophiles, who would gladly have annexed the "Imperial Land" to the major monarchy of the empire, to be painfully but thoroughly digested, as were Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, and by the rabid Alsatian patriots who had fixed their eyes on nothing less than practical independence of the empire. The results of its adoption at once showed that the nationalization of the conquered lands was far from complete. In place of the old protest, there showed itself at once a spirit of "Alsace-Lorraine for the Alsace-Lorrainers." A national party was formed, which was defeated at the polls by the ultramontane Centre, it is true ; but the latter, and indeed all other parties, showed as sooin as the first Diet convened at Strasburg that nothing was further from their minds than a docile obedience to the demands of the Emperor's ministry. Men like the priest Emil Wetterle, almost as well known in France as in his native Alsace, soon found numerous points for rebellion. The supplies for certain government perquisites, such as the "imperial hunt," in which the Emperor had taken no part since 1896, were stricken from the budget. The household Q 226 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS expense account of the governor was reduced, and twenty-five thousand dollars which had been laid aside each year for private expenses of government was held up until the Diet should be guaranteed control over the items of its expenditure. Sympathy with France and hostility to the empire began to show themselves more boldly both in the press of the new state and in the speeches of various representative Alsatians. The imperial ministry did not hesitate to make re- prisals. The Grafenstaden locomotive works, which had for years furnished engines for the railways of Al- sace-Lorraine and neighboring provinces, suddenly had all of their orders cancelled and were told to look for no more until the director, a well-known pro-French en- thusiast, should have been dismissed. He finally had to go, in spite of frantic protests in the Diet and the press. The unpopular Minister of the Interior, Mandel, was decorated for his zeal by the Emperor; and the monarch himself on a visit to Strasburg in May 191 2 gave expression to impulsive threats against the con- stitution which aroused bitter resentment both within and without Alsace-Lorraine (cf. page no). In short, the introduction of self-government, safeguarded even as it was, showed plainly that the people of the con- quered provinces did not yet feel themselves a part of the German empire. The sober thought of Germany was puzzled and humiliated by the continual recurrence of the Alsace- Lorraine problem. The old difficulty which the Prus- sian-German administration has always had to face in its contact with subject peoples showed itself in renewed force after the granting of the constitution, the difficulty of making concessions to the spirit of local self-govern- ment and local traditions, generally. It may be ad- mitted that there is no system of administration so effective as the Prusso-German bureaucracy when deal- ing with Germans who have been trained in the schools THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 227 and discipline of the Fatherland. It is equally certain that when it comes into contact with other races and conditions it adapts itself to the new surroundings only with great dif&culty and produces a maximum of friction. Begotten as the Prussian system was under conditions where iron discipline was a requisite for success, thor- oughly convinced of its own efficiency, it knows no law but that of force and fails in those peaceful contests where victory must be won by conciliation. If the people of the conquered provinces are to be won over for the empire at all, it must be by granting them a full measure of self-government and wide play for the de- velopment of their own culture, and if need be, freedom to use the language which had been associated with that culture for two hundred years. History shows many instances where a conquered people, hke the Southern States after the American civil war or the Boers of South Africa, has been won over to hearty loyalty when ac- corded the right to govern itself after its own traditions. That this was denied to the people of Alsace-Lorraine in the early years after the annexation, was excusable through fear of France, although it is doubtful if the thoroughgoing German bureaucracy with its determina- tion to regermanize the provinces would have granted them self-government, even if the danger of French revenge had been farther away. With the adoption of the constitution in 191 1, however, an opportunity was offered the government to show the "Imperial Land" a really magnanimous spirit and to promote the working out of the problems of the new state with a minimum of administrative interference, even at the cost of con- siderable noisy fermentation on the part of uneasy spirits. That this was not to be done was apparent from the first. Not only the reprisals mentioned in connection with the strife with the Diet showed that, but the constantly growing irritation which followed. French / / 228 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS newspapers and French-speaking clubs were harassed, as in the days of Bismarck, and the army administration, doubtless alarmed by the international situation, which seemed in 1913 so full of danger, once more decreed that conscripts from Alsace-Lorraine should serve their terms of military service outside of their native state. In some of its acts the imperial government came very near making itself ridiculous, as in the prosecution for treason of the Alsatian poet-artist, Jacob Waltz, who under the name of "OncleHansi" had pubHshed satires against the German administration in the form of chil- dren's books. For the latest of these, Mon Village, he was tried in June 1914, by the Imperial Court at Leipsic on the charge of high treason and after a hearing which gave the French and British papers abundant opportunity for satirical comments, he was acquitted of this charge but was sentenced to a year's imprison- ment for insulting the gendarmes and inciting to dis- order, a sentence which he escaped by flight to France. The Berlin government was harassed by the fear of treasonable arrangements between Alsace-Lorraine and Paris. That this fear was well grounded was made more than probable by the fact that with the declaration of martial law in the "Imperial Land" after the war tocsin sounded at the beginning of August 1914, several prominent Alsatians, including Wetterle, fled across the border into France, and that others who were not so fortunate as to make their escape were arrested and found guilty of treasonable acts. That these doings could have caused any serious harm to Germany's relations to France seems, however, un- thinkable. Certainly any irritation of this kind would have been more than offset by the gain in confidence on the part of the people of the provinces toward the em- pire. As it was, however, the threats against the con- stitution and the various pin pricks which the government was able to inflict effectively destroyed any national / THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 229 patriotism which the granting of the constitution might have inspired. Popular irritation grew and showed it- self in many ways, culminating in the incidents at Za- bern in December 1913. In this busy Alsatian town of some ten thousand inhabitants a Prussian regiment of infantry was quartered. Soldiers on duty at the barracks and at Hberty in the town had been subjected to insults, and in several cases rough treatment on the part of rude fellows of the baser sort among the populace. Their officers, filled with the Prussian tradition of mili- tary supremacy, ordered the privates to make forcible resistance, employing at the same time the rugged language of the barracks, which being faithfully re- ported in the town, added still further to the excitement. A crisis was reached in an encounter between civilians and a squad of soldiers led by a young lieutenant, in which the latter fearing, as he claimed, that he would be assaulted by a civilian of the lower class, with the conse- quent irreparable loss of honor according to the peculiar Prussian military tradition, sabred a lame shoemaker. In the riot which resulted Colonel Reutter, in command at the barracks, took over the administration of public order, brusquely thrusting aside the civil officials and pacif3dng the city by the abrupt methods of the military. Instantly a shout of protest arose, not only from Alsace- Lorraine, but from all non-feudal circles in Germany as well. The rude supplanting of the civil power by the military was regarded as a recession to the most auto- cratic days of Prussian history, and in the Reichstag loud calls went up for an authoritative statement from the Kaiser. As we have seen (cf. page 137), the Im- perial Diet recorded a vote of censure upon the Chan- cellor for a speech in which the majesty of the law was not vindicated. The whole matter went to the Emperor as supreme military authority and the net result was the transferring of the regiment and the court-martialing of its officers. The latter were finally acquitted, and Colonel 230 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Reutter soon after was promoted by the Emperor. The feeling of the feudal classes was summed up in the words of the reactionary Police President of Berlin, Von Jagow : "Alsace-Lorraine is the enemy's country !" Non-feudal Germany accepted a technical statement from the ministry confirming the supremacy of the constitution over the military power, with a further promise from the government that a certain old Prussian cabinet order of 1820 which might be interpreted to the contrary would be amended. Radical and Socialist were the more ready to still their attacks and hush the matter up, because the French journals, always ready to foment discord in the lost provinces, had seized upon the situa- tion. Is it then a reunion with France that the people of Alsace-Lorraine desire? Such at least has always been the view of the French press. Many of the Paris journals maintained correspondents at Metz and Strasburg and elsewhere in Alsace-Lorraine; and if one could beheve the highly tinted reports which came from these sources, the people of the lost provinces were languishing in chains and awaiting with eagerness the moment of a return into the arms of Mother France. The annual demonstrations in Paris, with the depositing of wreaths before the Strasburg monument on the Place de la Concorde, grew with the reawakening of French patriot- ism after the Morocco affair. The writer, however, who had good opportunities of getting acquainted with the "Imperial Land" and its people in the decade preceding the European war, must share the opinion of those ob- servers who were not able to find much real enthusiasm for France there. That there was much sentimental sympathy for the brilliant nation to the westward, par- ticularly among the wealthier families, cannot be denied. But so far as could be judged, there were not many Alsatians or Lorrainers who would have liked to be French again. THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 231 Forty odd years of separation has not availed to make the inhabitants of the provinces Germans, but ; they have thoroughly unmade them Frenchmen. The industrious people of the Alsatian valleys and plain and the valleys of the Moselle and the Saar realize the enor- mous advantages which they have enjoyed for the prod- 9 ucts of their land and factories through the union with the German states, and had it been possible to hold a pleb- iscite, they would undoubtedly have voted to retain these rather than return divided up into departments of France. On the other hand, there has been absolutely no sympathy with the poHtical greatness of the German empire. Pan-Germanism has had no followers among the native people of Alsace-Lorraine, who are convinced of the greatness of their own fatherland and eager to ob- tain every advantage for it. This particularism, whose slogan is " Elsass-Lothringen fur die Elsass-Lothringer!'' is the natural result of the pecuUar history of the coun- try. It has found expression, explicitly or implicitly, in the program of all the parties represented in the Strasburg Diet and the Reichstag. It has echoed in every tone of the provincial press and in private con- versation. It is, if one likes, a selfish policy, but it is there. The attitude of the intelligent Alsatian has been simply this: "We value the union with the empire on account of the solid benefits which the empire brings us ; and so long as it continues to enrich us by trade in our commodities and by building up our cities and factories, we are willing to do for it not only what ne- cessity demands, but to the Hmit to which self-interest will permit us to go. But for Germany as the bearer of the Germanic idea, for Germany overseas, for Ger- many as the romantic heir of the mediaeval empire, — for all of that we have no sympathy. That for which we do stand ready to do and die is Alsace-Lorraine." As events early in the European war showed, the idea long entertained in certain French quarters that the 232 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS people of the provinces would raise a fire in the rear of a German army invading France was a dangerous illusion. The hope of treachery beside the hearthstone of an enemy or a rival is a dearly cherished dream among chauvinists and demagogues of every nation. Russian papers talked fondly of the rise of the Ruthenians in Bukowina and the Poles in Galicia in the event of a war with Austria-Hungary. Foreign enemies of Britain have counted in vain on the effective sympathy of the Irish ; and Spanish journals at the opening of the Cuban war asserted confidently that the firing of the first gun would bring the Southern states into rebellion in a renewed endeavor to realize the dream of secession ! The habits and discipline of forty years taught the people of Alsace-Lorraine to look upon the union with the German empire, in spite of rebellion at the ruthless "Prussian" system, as permanent and on the whole productive of great advantages. And while there is no denying that there are many families in which the traditions of French culture have been well preserved, much of the demand for the return of French instruction in the elementary schools which occurred in all the party programs (none mentioned the necessity for instruction in German !) and much of the club enthusiasm for the French language and French history was merely pose for effect on the " grand stand." A sentimental devotion to a lost cause is beautiful, but it is unfortunately all too ready for use as a weapon for demagogues. And of demagogues Alsace-Lorraine has had more than its share. Certain leaders were in the habit of making yearly pilgrimages to Paris, where they filled the ears of the Paris journalists with the kind of talk about the devotion of the lost provinces to France that delighted patriotic French readers and brought the advertising that was a political asset in Metz and Strasburg. In 191 2 the Reichstag leader, Wetterle, made a sort of triumphal tour through the eastern provinces of France, expressing himself to THE CONQUERED PROVINCES 233 delighted French reporters in a way that might have been regarded as highly treasonable. / As a matter of fact, the regermanization of Alsace is ( fairly complete. The two centuries of French influence had Uttie effect on the peasant fanner, who remained through it all much the same as his cousin of the Baden hills across the Rhine. The maid of Strasburg or Miilhausen is still proud to say her Mon Dieu ! or Ca va sans dire! when togged out in her Sunday afternoon finery, and the village shopkeeper, chattering his native Allemanian with his customers, will still address the stranger with Pardon, m'seu! All of this is nothing more than the faint echo of a tradition. The peasant and factory worker, so far as the latter is not a Socialist, have been politically under the control of the ultra- montane leaders : as a class they have been as prosperous as in Westphalia or the Palatinate and seemingly as con- tented with German rule. Even around Metz, where the population was never in recent centuries, at least, German, and where the boundary line, drawn in 1871, sundering parish from parish put members of the same family on opposite sides, there seems to have been little popular discontent among the lower classes, except with the red tape of tariff restrictions. Indeed, the traveller along the road which leads from Mars le Tour to Grave- lotte or from St. Privat to Metz seems to notice some- thing which has become Germanic in the very landscape itself, a trim and ordered beauty which is not apparent westward on the upland toward Conflans or higher up the Moselle toward Nancy. The white kilometre stones, the well-pruned fruit trees, something in the very air of the trim fields even above Thionville testifies to the disciplining and ordering hand of German administration and schooling. CHAPTER XII The Polish Question In the whole history of the struggle of modern na- tionalities there is probably no chapter more pathetic than that which deals with the Polish people. Cer- tainly none in modern times has been used so often to point a moral and adorn a tale. It tells of a state which was destroyed through its own incapacity for existence and of a people which has risen slowly through fiery trials out of the ruins of its past to become a nationality, fired with a strong sense of national unity, yet seemingly without the possibility of becoming again a state. Ever since the abrupt end of the Polish oligarchical republic, through the three divisions of 1772, 1793 and 1795, the tragic fate of the Poles has been a favorite theme for historical analysis and poetic lament. The jealousy of the aristocracy, the incompetence of oligarchical gov- ernment, the venahty of the Polish parliament, the lack of a middle class, the debasement of the peasantry by the great landholders, — all have been fruitful themes for those who would justify the ways of history to man and explain why the decades which brought enlighten- ment and social and political enfranchisement to so much of Europe should have sealed the fate of Poland and divided out among the predatory powers of Europe a people that had won so many victories for the defense of race and Christianity. No wonder that the sympathy of the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, when men were still not too blase to thrill over the rights of man, went out to this 234 THE POLISH QUESTION 235 race. The lost nation struggling nobly under the iron heel of Russia, Austria and Prussia stood only second to Greece in the hearts of the Hberty lovers of the age of Byron. Poets like Musset and Halleck sang of its wrongs. With the abortive revolt of the Russian Poles in 1 83 1, a swarm of refugees, some of them men of great personal charm and worth, fled to Switzerland, France and England; and the "noble Pole" made his entrance into literature as the representative of the highest per- sonal culture pursued by brute force, the patriotic son of a noble race, compelled by a despotic conqueror to "show his miseries in distant lands." Many of these wanderers brought with them, to be sure, a certain Ostro-European lack of social refinement that found its picture in Heinrich Heine's sarcastic fling at the " Zwei Polen aus der Polackei, — " But the "noble Pole" had possessed himself of the stage in the days of reaction that prepared the way for the revolution of 1848, and our grandfathers and grand- mothers wept over Jane Porter's Thaddeus of Warsaw with the enthusiasm of those to whom the preamble of the Declaration of Independence was still a religion. This enthusiasm for the rights of down-trodden peoples expressed itself nowhere more strongly than in Ger- many, and nowhere did the Poles in the first half of the last century enjoy greater sympathy. Graf von Platen's Songs of the Poles are the finest expression of feeling for a manacled people in the German language. The suppression of the Warsaw revolt in 1831 filled the German cities also with Polish refugees, and these found ready symipathy among a people who were themselves writhing under the iron heel of the Metternich reaction. A conspiracy among the Prussian Poles in Posen in 1846 and their part in the soon strangled but bloody revolu- tion two years later in Prussia brought to their cause renewed sympathy from liberal hearts. Forty years 236 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS later Bismarck recalled in the Reichstag how he had seen the Polish leader Mieroslawski, only recently pardoned for high treason, eclipse the Prussian sovereign as the real hero of the day in the famous procession which bore to their graves in the cemetery in Berlin the victims of the fight on the barricades. In popular assemblies, and in the abortive Frankfort Parliament, which sought to bring about German unity in those stormy days, the rights of the Poles, who had been attached to Prussia against their will, were the subject of warm sympathy and prolonged and agitated debate. The rights of the Poles were a part of the gospel of the rights of man, and in those days Prussian Hberalism had more sympathy for this and the other grand doctrines of the eighteenth century than it had for the brute force which must be employed toward the weak as well as the strong if Prussia was to fulfil her mission as the organizer of German unity. The old tradition of sympathy for Polish wrongs was still strong in liberal circles in 1863 when Bismarck, then ruling in despite of a Liberal majority, combined with Russia to crush another Polish revolt, which had broken out in Warsaw and threatened to extend to Posen. For months the Iron Chancellor was forced to wage not only a diplomatic contest with Austria, France and England over his anti-Polish con- vention with the Czar, but also a bitter parliamentary war. Hatred of the Junker minister and sympathy with the Poles was still too strong, and the political sense still too undeveloped among Prussian Liberals for them to see that German rule in the Polish provinces was a necessity of life to the Fatherland. This idea grew only slowly after the realization of German unity and did not take complete possession of the patriotic consciousness until the Greater Polish movement had thoroughly established itself in the eastern marches. In order to understand the full difficulty of the prob- lem which has confronted Germany on the eastern border THE POLISH QUESTION 237 it is necessary to look somewhat far afield. One must remember that nearly one-half of the Germans now living in Germany dwell on territory which one thousand years ago was not inhabited by Germans at all, and that the present struggle for predominance in the Polish provinces is but a chapter in the reflux of Germans tow- ards the east that has been going on since the time of Charlemagne. In the days of that monarch scarcely any Germans were to be found east of a Une drawn from Kiel on the southwest corner of the Baltic to Linz on the Danube and on down to the Puster Valley in Tyrol. Both capitals of the German-ruled empires, Berlin and Vienna, stand upon land which was at that time Slavic territory. Slavic still are the names of the rivers, cities and villages to the east of the Elbe and the Saale. The invasion by which the western Slavic tribes were conquered and absorbed was, in part at least, a peaceful one. Under the aggressive Saxon nobility the Germans won the lands immediately east of the Elbe and Saale from the Wends and Sorbs, and western German peas- ants were introduced as farmers and with the rise of the handicrafts, as artisans and merchants. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the height of this coloniza- tion : before the latter had come to an end the Germanic wave had gathered great impetus through the coming of the Teutonic Knights, who at the invitation of a PoHsh duke diverted their sacred and profane zeal, which no longer found outlet in the crusades to Palestine, into a conquest of the heathen Prussians in the Baltic lands between Danzig and Riga. German historians claim that the conquest by the Teutonic Knights was less one of the sword than of the plough ; in their train, and by no means merely to the region which they administered as an ecclesiastical state, came not only farmers but artisans and traders as well, who as representatives of a higher culture established markets in the Polish lands and filtered through them far to the eastward. German 238 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS energy founded the cities not only in Poland but in Lithuania and Livonia as well. In the fifteenth century German law prevailed and German trade flourished in every city between the Carpathians and the Baltic and German commerce extended its fingers far to the east into the heart of Russia. The bonds which held the Ordensland, as East Prussia was then called, to the German empire were moral rather than poHtical bonds; and the weakening of the mediaeval empire brought a corresponding strengthening of the Polish state, which had built itself up along the marches of Brandenburg and Pomerania. At Tarmen- berg in the East Prussian Hockerland in 141 o the black- white banner of the Teutonic Knights sank before the fiery onslaughts of Jagiello and his Slavic hordes, and the peace of Thorn half a century later brought all the lands watered by the Vistula and the Warthe under Polish overlordship. The Polish state at the time of its greatest extent stretched from the Silesian mountains to the Baltic, and marching with the present Prussian provinces of Silesia, Brandenburg and Pomerania, threw its boundaries far to the eastward over many Russian and Lithuanian provinces. Within its confines the Polish race was far from forming a majority, but with the aggressiveness of a lordly people ruled with severity over Russian, Lithuanian, German and Jew. The Germans as traders and artisans enjoyed a certain pro- tection, but the German-built cities had much to suffer from the greed of the Polish nobility. To these racial differences the Reformation brought a great religious contrast. The Germans of the North- east became for the most part Lutheran and Protestant under the influence of northern Germany; the Poles remained and remain overwhelmingly Roman CathoUc. The Counter-reformation under the leadership of the Society of Jesus fanned the rehgious hatred to white heat, and the lot of the Polish-ruled Germans through two cen- THE POLISH QUESTION 239 turies was a hard one, made worse by the growing anarchy which accompanied the disintegration of the PoHsh state. The end of it all came with the partition between Russia, Austria and Prussia, just at a time when the age of en- lightenment seemed about to bring a modern form of government to Poland. In the meantime East Prussia had fallen to the Hohenzollerns and with the corona- tion of the first Prussian king at Konigsberg in 1701 became the name-giver of the new Prussian monarchy, which came forth from the chrysalis of Brandenburg and its dependencies. Brandenburg-Prussia's rulers, from the Great Elector to Frederick the Great, recog- nized the value of the territory to the east of the Oder and the Vistula, and brought into it crowds of colonists from all parts of Germany and many sections of the Romance world as farmers and villagers, to reclaim waste land and strengthen the German element from the Baltic southward. Especially the builder-statesman Frederick the Great found much to do in the lands which fell to his share as booty from the first partition of Poland. In a memorable account of his first tour of inspection of the annexed provinces he finds the economic condition of the country deplorable, "the inhabitants as lacking in civilization as the Iroquois of Canada." For years he devoted a great part of his energy and strained the re- sources of his state in draining swamps and restraining rivers in the province of West Prussia, and in bringing in and settling thousands of German colonists in every section of the eastern marches. In the years which intervened between the end of the Polish state in 1795 and the Congress of Vienna in 181 5, Napoleon had infused new hope into the hearts of Polish patriots. By his erection of the Grand Duchy of War- saw and his clever appeals to the patriotism of the Poles, their leaders caught a new hope of Polish freedom and unity. This hope was stifled by the reactionary hands of the diplomats at Vienna. When the Congress arose 240 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS from its complicated labors, it had greatly reduced Prussia's share from the three divisions of Poland in favor of Russia, lea\'ing the German kingdom as a net result of the transaction the two provinces of Posen and West Prussia, including, roughly estimated, 350,000 Germans and 450,000 Poles. The PoHsh patriots who be- sieged the Congress with petitions for a resurrection of their nation were dismissed with the promise that the in- terests of their nationality would be safeguarded in the administration, a promise which was repeated in the mani- festo issued by Frederick William III on taking posses- sion of the two provinces. Such promises, which are made only to soothe the feelings of a party whose claims cannot be further considered, usually mean only so much as the magnanimity of the one is wilKng to give or the power and insistence of the other to enforce. In the case of the Poles in Prussia an effort seems to have been made to carry out in spirit what had been promised them. Since 181 5 Prussia's policy in these provinces has varied between the widest extremes of conciliation and repression. At first every effort was made to make of the Poles patriotic subjects of Prussia. Russia was the much-feared neighbor; and the Poles hated Russia at the time much more than they did either of the other predatory powers. It was thought that they might be won by kindness to become a strong bulwark against Muscovite aggressions on the eastern boundary. The administration of Posen was divided between the Ger- mans and the Poles, Polish was accorded full rights in the schools, and an effort was made to win the Polish aristocracy for the Prussian civil service. The years 1830-31 brought a sudden awakening. A revolt among the Russian Poles broke out in Warsaw, and imme- diately it became apparent that a widespread conspiracy existed and that a serious Polish problem threatened the three powers. An enthusiasm for the resurrection of THE POLISH QUESTION 241 Poland as it existed before 1772 had taken possession of wide circles of the nobility and clergy; and Prussia had reason to fear that the contagion had already crossed her borders. The Prussian statesmen abandoned the policy of conciliation and again took up the work of germanization through the colonizing of loyal subjects. The Poles were evicted from offices of administration in the provinces, the crown granted money for bringing in German settlers, and until the accession of Frederick William IV in 1840 the Polish national propaganda was closely watched and sternly repressed. With the ro- manticism belonging to his character this monarch took up again the work of conciliating the Poles. Why should not the race which furnished such good citizens in upper Silesia go through a similar development in West Prussia and Posen? Once more the government sought to win over the nobility, once more administrative offices in the provinces were open to ambitious young Poles. This time the answer was the Polish conspiracy of 1846 in Posen and the uprising two years later in the same province, when the Polish leaders joined hands with the radical leaders of Berlin. Even this did not lead the Prussian administration to any vigorous measures of repression. The growing hatred of the Poles for the Germans on the eastern marches was watched with fear ; but even Bismarck beheved PoHsh discontent con- fined to the nobility, and nobody foresaw the power of the popular movement which still lay buried in the Polish folk-soul. The revolt in Russian Poland in 1863 aroused Bis- marck to the most decisive action to prevent its spread- ing to the Prussian provinces ; but the mighty problems which then lay before him, — the army reorganization, the Schleswig-Holstein question with the elimination of Austria from the German confederacy, and finally the war with France, gave Prussia's statesman enough and more than enough to do without the relatively unim- 242 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS portant Polish question. The KuUurkampf began in the Polish provinces and was directed there as much against the nationalist propaganda of the Polish clergy as against the practices of the Roman Catholic church ; but it was not until the new empire had begun to see light through its greatest international difficulties and economic prob- lems that Bismarck seriously laid hand upon the Polish situation. In the meantime, however, the folk-soul of the Polish inhabitants of the eastern provinces had be- come thoroughly awakened, and opposed to the Prussian administration a spirit and an organization which not even the most aggressive measures were able to hold in check. Up to the time of the formation of the empire in 1 87 1 the poHtical opposition of the Poles was a matter of the large landholders, who with the clergy had main- tained the fight for the national cause. The peasantry were mere tools in the hands of their spiritual and tem- poral leaders. Germans and Jews held the trade and slow-budding industry of the provinces. After 1871, however, the Poles began the erection of a social and economic system which was in three decades to make them independent of their German neighbors and to mobilize every energy in defense of the national cause. Much earlier, indeed, gifted spirits among the Poles had recognized the necessity for a long advance in culture before their people could hope to make a successful fight against the Germans for control of the provinces. "Not until we Poles shall have become better, more cultured and richer than the Germans will the dominion be ours," declared Count Raczynski to his compatriots in Posen in 1842, and these words may be regarded as the slogan of the Polish advance since that time. Out of this spirit arose the Marcinkowski Association in 1842, the first and the greatest of the numerous organizations for the creation of a Polish culture. By the estabHshment of scholarships for the training of bright young men for the "free" professions, and later for the trades, and THE POLISH QUESTION 243 by the furtherance of a national press and of Polish literature, it took the lead in the building up of a trained middle class with a strongly nationaKst spirit. Every village with even a fair minority of Poles came to have its Polish doctor and lawyer and the lesser cities their Polish paper, and an independent middle class arose which quickly wrested political leadership from the landed gentry and shared with the clergy the duty of stirring the peasantry to vigorous national feeling. The movement soon jumped the confines of Posen and West Prussia. Societies similar to the Marcinkowski Associa- tion were formed in East Prussia, upper Silesia and even Pomerania, wherever pure Slavic blood flowed, assist- ing bright young men and girls to a higher education for the leadership of their people. Hand in hand with the intellectual rise of the German Poles went their rise in the economic field. Here the early development of the empire brought them golden opportunity in two ways. The industrial prosperity of the West had already begun its forward movement and now went ahead by leaps and bounds. As a result of the better conditions of Hfe prevaiHng in these districts, there began at first slowly, and then gathering momentum until it took on the form of a mighty natural phenomenon, the migration of German labor from the eastern marches to the western cities. Men who had been soldiers in the war with France or who had served their miHtary appren- ticeship in the West followed the call of greater oppor- tunity and a higher culture away from their native East, with its antiquated semi-feudal labor laws. The result was that the landholders of the eastern marches very soon began to feel the need of farm labor. They them- selves had in the sixties and early seventies, riding upon the wave of agricultural prosperity of that time, bought themselves land-poor from the bankrupt PoHsh aris- tocracy ; now besides growing competition from abroad and increasing difficulty in securing loans, they found 244 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS themselves facing a severe labor problem. It is cer- tainly no reflection on their German patriotism that they met the issue as best they might by the importation of seasonal workers on an ever-increasing scale from Russian Poland and Galida. Coming at first as harvest workers and returning each autumn to their homes, these sons and daughters of the poverty-stricken East crossed the borders each year in ever-growing numbers ; and before the new empire was a dozen years old, they had filled the labor sheds of the eastern marches of Prussia and had begun to make themselves fast as farm laborers and even as permanent residents in the cities, crowding unpleas- antly those workers of German birth who had clung to the soil. Sdchsengdnger they were called, and they began to be a familiar sight in the harvest fields west of the Oder and the Elbe and even penetrated into the agri- cultural districts of Westphalia and the Rhineland. It was plain that a genuine migration had begun, like the invasion of the early Christian centuries, when Slavic hordes occupied the lands left vacant by the Bur- gundians and Vandals, Bavarians and Swabians, who had followed the lure of the West. The Prussian government took alarm, and in 1885 Bismarck shipped back to their earher homes in Russia and Austria some thirty thousand of these unwelcome invaders. Stringent regulations were adopted governing the importation of labor from the east and fixing definitely the period of stay in Prussia, so that while they still came, several hundred thousand yearly, as seasonal workers, they were carefuUy watched to prevent their spending the winter in Germany or by any means acquiring a residence. In cultivation and harvest times one might see them working in the fields, from the farthest eastern border with diminishing numbers as far as Hanover and Westphalia, long picturesque lines of bowed figures among the wheat shocks or potato rows. On Sundays in colored, neckerchief and quaint garb they crowded THE POLISH QUESTION 245 the Roman Catholic churches in even the most solidly Protestant sections of Saxony and Mecklenburg, un- developed material of a great Slavic culture yet to come. To the patriotic German they have been a hard necessity for his agricultural prosperity, for even under the severe restrictions governing them, they have given considerable moral support to the Polish propaganda. One East Prussian rural chamber at the beginning of the new- century called on the government to import African natives as less dangerous to the German future ! The other stimulus to the Polish cause from the form- ing of the German empire was the rise of Pan-Slavism. This movement which sprang up in opposition to a united and all too prosperous Germanism, immediately caught the Poles and was transformed by them into a Greater Polish movement. Dreams of a renaissance of the ancient Polish state in its widest extent began to transfer themselves from the minds of the elite among the nobility and clergy and to become the common property of the entire people. The growth of this idea went hand in hand with the growth of PoHsh culture: its bearers were not merely the nobiUty and clergy but the newly created middle class as well. Under the stimulus of this movement the new PoUsh press grew up. In Thorn and Graudenz and Danzig and Stargard, as well as in the cities of the province of Posen, Polish newspapers arose and soon found wide circulation. After 1890 these became the leaders of the radical wing of the Greater Poland party, carrying on a restless propaganda not only by razor-edged articles of agitation, but also by the issuance of reading books on Polish history and literature and Polish song books, and by constant appeals to the national idea. The hatred which had been slowly growing up between Pole and German in the eastern marches for a hundred years was fanned into a bright flame by this propaganda. Every Pole who could read began to feel himself a warrior and if necessary a martyr 246 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS for the Greater Polish cause. A new feeKng of solidarity bound the long sundered fragments of the nation to- gether for an aggressive forward movement. The leadership of this movement remained, however, in the hands of the clergy. Ninety per cent of the German Poles are Roman Catholics. A remnant of the ancient Polish kingdom still exists in the fact that the Archbishop of Breslau includes within his diocese both German and Austrian territory. The Polish clergy enjoy a respect and obedience from their parish- ioners which gives them enormous powers of organization and control. The influence of the clergy in the Greater Polish cause was first observed in the denationalization of German Catholics living in Polish neighborhoods, a movement which went on unchecked for many years. Under the ministrations of the Polish priest and under the pressure of his Polish neighbors and coreligionists the German farmer had to wage a determined fight to retain his nationality, and in many cases gradually became Polish in manners and ideas and even in language and in name. In 1884 there were 759 children in the elementary schools of the province of Posen bearing German names in whose famihes only Polish was spoken. Thus the descendants of many a colonist of Frederick the Great speak only Polish and answer to a name in which the German vowels have given place to Slavic consonants. A general Polonizing of the eastern marches seemed on the way when in 1886 Bismarck went before the Landtag with propositions for strengthening the German element. How far the process had already gone in the province of Posen was shown by figures cited in that year. In the twenty-five years preceding the Poles had increased by two hundred thousand while the German growth was only four thousand. How much of this tremendous growth of the Polish element was due to an aggressive Polonizing of the Germans could not be THE POLISH QUESTION 247 determined. Once thoroughly convinced of the danger, the Prussian government went vigorously to work to meet it, employing the same method which had brought such effective results since the days of the Teutonic Knights, the settlement of peasant farmers into the dis- tricts where a massing of Poles seemed imminent. For this purpose the Royal Colonization Commission was formed, with an initial appropriation of twenty-five million dollars for the purchase of land in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, and the settlement of Ger- mans thereon. The work of the Commission, pushed vigorously in the earlier years, dragged during the Caprivi regime in the early nineties, when the govern- ment ogled with the Poles and traded conciliatory methods in the eastern provinces for parliamentary support of Caprivi's military bill. After that the Com- mission got new footing and went forward with its work with an energy which occasionally flagged in the face of Polish and Catholic protests, but was in the main con- sistent. Its work was most urgently furthered in the years 1902-08 under the administration of the Chan- cellor Biilow, an ardent supporter of the colonization policy. In spite of the frenzied opposition of the Polish fraction, which has counted on an average thirteen members in the Prussian Diet, and the stern disapproval of the Centre, which for purposes of Catholic solidarity has made common cause with the Catholic Poles, further appropriations were voted until at the end of 191 2 the Commission had disbursed over one hundred and fifty million dollars and settled nearly twenty thousand German families in the two provinces. The ultimate success of the colonization policy was variously judged. It is true that the greater part of the land purchased came from German owners, less than 30 per cent having been acquired by the Commis- sion from PoKsh owners; true also that much of this Polish land had to be bought at a high figure and that 248 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS at least a part of the purchase money was used by the sellers to buy still greater tracts of land for their com- patriots in the other eastern provinces. Certain it is also that in spite of the work of the Royal Commission, the Poles have in recent years acquired more land from the Germans in the two provinces than the Commission was able to purchase from Poles — statistics published for the years 1 896-1 908 put the net winnings of the Poles at 84,503 hectares.^ Later figures have not been published, — not an encouraging circumstance, — but in the course of a debate in the Landtag it was admitted by the government that the Polish net gain in the years 1896-1911 was over 100,000 hectares. What the Polish purchases amounted to in the other eastern provinces during the same period cannot be given with certainty ; such statistics as are available show that the Polish gain in land there was even more rapid. Thus in East Prussia the net gain from 1900 to 191 2 was 27,779 hectares; in Silesia the net winnings of the Poles 1 906-11 were 13,270 hectares, and in three "circles" of northeast Pomerania in the same period 1789 hectares. Natu- rally the Poles opposed to the work of the Commission every device which national solidarity and religious zeal could suggest. The Pole who sold his land to a German must be prepared to face the anathema of the village priest and the boycott of his Polish neighbors. The watchful correspondent of the nearest Polish paper reported his name to be published for general execration ; no neighbor would lend a hand or horse to move his ef- fects, curses and perhaps a broken head awaited his visit to the village tavern. On the other hand, many of those students best qualified to speak — and among them must be included the former Chancellor Biilow — believe that the work of the Royal Commission has notably strengthened the German cause in the eastern provinces. Certainly any ^ A hectare is 2.471 acres. THE POLISH QUESTION 249 movement which in the first twenty-five years of its existence brought into the eastern marches over one hundred thousand Germans and settled them perma- nently as small farmers, was worth, from a political and military standpoint, many times the outlay. The settlers must in the main be possessed of some small capital for the equipment of their farms, and their coming has brought increased wealth to certain sections both in cattle breeding and land culture. In a country where so much of the land is held in large estates the introduc- tion of so many small farmers — the average size of the Commission's allotment has been twelve hectares — could not but be of great social and economic value. And while the fight between the Commission and the Poles through their banks for the possession of the land artificially inflated land values in certain districts of the provinces, the economic rivalry of the two races pro- moted the general prosperity of the provinces to a marked degree. One necessary but unfortunate result of the coloniza- tion policy was the fanning of the hatred between Ger- mans and Poles in the eastern marches to white heat. To this feeling another circumstance made a note- worthy contribution, the founding in 1894 of the "As- sociation of the Eastern Marches," the Deutscher Ost- marken Verein. The impetus for this organization came from the gathering of a number of Germans from Posen around the aged Bismarck, then living in retirement on his Pomeranian estates. Under the ring of the old Chancellor's eloquence the Association immediately began a vigorous campaign to support the German ele- ment in the East. Its local chapters covered the entire debatable territory; and under the leadership of men of great influence and devotion to the patriotic cause it watched the Polish agitation and by its own and govern- mental means sought to checkmate it. By group meet- ings and by its annual "day," held in one of the large 250 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS eastern cities, it awakened enthusiasm and strengthened weak knees in the Polish districts. It published a monthly, The Eastern Marches, issued from time to time historical and statistical pamphlets, organized lectures, inspired newspaper articles and sought in every way to foster German culture in the "fighting district." Supported by this and other patriotic societies, the government received from the Landtag new weapons for fighting the Slavic advance. In 1904 the right to settle permanently in the disputed territory was made dependent on the approval of the provincial authorities, who might naturally be expected to exclude Polish invaders.^ The object of the law, however, so far as it related to the acquisition of land, was largely nullified by the ingenuity of the Polish "parcellation banks," which bought up great estates and sold them in small lots to the adjoining Polish proprietors. This move and the rising price of land were met by the " Expropriation Law " 2 of 1908, borrowed from the British procedure in Ireland, which authorized the condemnation of land for colonization purposes. Although the amount which might be acquired by this means in one year was closely limited, the law was so widely condemned as "special legislation " that no attempt was made to put it in force until the fall of 191 2, and then only on a very small scale. A paragraph of the " Association Law " of 1907, forbid- ding the use of a foreign language in public meetings, was directly aimed at the Poles, but through Liberal opposi- tion it was so greatly modified as largely to fail of its purpose. A further link in the chain which the Prussian lawgivers sought to forge across the Polish advance was the " Confirmation Law " ^ of 1908, which authorized the purchase on government account of any land coming on the market in the provinces outside of the two most hotly contested (Posen and West Prussia) at 85 per cent ^ Ansiedlungs-Gesetz. ^ Enteignungs-Gesetz. ' Befesiigungs-Gesetz. THE POLISH QUESTION 251 of the assessed value. In every province also private ef- forts seconded the government through the organization of societies for the bringing in of German farmers and the succor of those financially involved, for the importa- tion of German artisans and laborers and the securing of suitable dwellings, etc. To these measures the Poles opposed an organization which grew more solid each year, infused with an energy that knew no discouragement and a national patriotism that shrank at no sacrifice. In the years of struggle the influence of the nobility, always inclined to conciha- tory methods, gave place to the control by a radical- democratic element which hesitated at no violence of expression. The nation, which is also a political party, was represented in the Reichstag of 191 2 by twenty members, in the Prussian Landtag of 1913 by twelve; its press spread by degrees a network of agitation centres over the eastern marches and the whole Rhine-West- phalian industrial district. The spirit of the Polish press may be characterized by a quotation from the Gnesen Lech of September, 1911, showing the attitude of the patriotic Poles towards those members of their race who sell their land to Germans : "If the seller wishes to shake your hand, then turn away and spit on the ground as before the greatest of villains ; if he wishes to enter your house, lock the door in his face. May he live in loneliness hke Cain ! May the curse of the Polish people weigh upon him till death ! May no one follow his coffin, no one pray for the repose of his soul ! " To the efforts of a strong and aggressive press must be added those of the Polish clergy. A struggle between two races is unfortunate at best : it becomes most disas- trous when intermingled, as here, with religious hatred. The Poles, as has been noted, are more than nine-tenths Roman CathoHc, and place themselves with remarkable discipKne under the orders of their clergy. It must be 252 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS remarked, however, that this is because to the rank and file of the nation church and national cause are com- pletely identified. The press cannot find words bitter enough to describe a priest who shows himself weak or wobbly in defense of the national Polish cause. It would be wrong to say that every Polish priest is a Pole before he is a churchman, but it is certainly true that the clergy have fostered the national cause with the greatest zeal. The late Archbishop Kopp of Breslau and other prelates suspected of anti-Polish sentiments were at times the object of the bitterest invective. In spite of the support given the Poles by their coreligion- ists of the Centre party, the Poles robbed the Centre of five Reichstag electoral districts in upper Silesia in 1907. The Royal Commission early found that it was highly desirable to settle Protestants in the debatable districts, for the reason that the Catholic colonist, finding it difficult to obtain the ministrations of German priests, was dependent upon the Polish clergy and ran a strong risk of becoming denationalized. The clergy also have been the leaders in the forma- tion of the numerous societies which link the Poles into such powerful organizations for defense and offense in the pohtical, industrial, commercial and social world. Secret international societies like the Liga polska, a far-flung political union with groups wherever radical Poles are found working for the reerection of the fatherland, and the Zet, a radical student organization, are said to be strongly represented in Germany and interlocked through identical officeholders with the Prussian-Polish social, athletic and industrial organizations. Within Prussia Polish societies multiplied with bewildering rapidity after the beginning of the twentieth century. The Po- lish agricultural and industrial laborers were organized in the St. Isidore Clubs, for the Sachsengdnger, and the Polish Catholic Workmen's Clubs, both groups under the leadership of clergymen, besides a number of unions THE POLISH QUESTION 253 for the various branches of industry. The Polish youth were enrolled in the Sokol ("Falcon"), athletic clubs with strongly patriotic spirit. The Straz, founded in Posen in 1905, won immediate success as an economic- industrial organization. Rural workers were organized into hundreds of rural clubs. The Rolnik, associations leagued among themselves for the purchase and sale of agricultural products and for supplying the farmers with their necessities, made the PoHsh peasant largely independent of the German middleman. There are also merchants' associations, large landholders' associations, etc. Many of these organizations are under the control of the clergy ; each group has its own press, and nearly all are political in tendency and interlocked with the PoHsh political parties. They are radical in their nature, less from any affiliation with the international secret revolutionary organizations of the Poles than because they foster a spirit of racial solidarity and boiling patriot- ism for the Polish cause. No wonder the Germans speak of the "sleeping army," which according to an old Polish legend is some day to arise and set the Polish nation free. Just where the anti- German campaign will ultimately land, even the leaders among the Poles have been un- certain. For the present, they are content to fight the Prussian state with economic weapons. For genera- tions the Poles have been dependent on German industry and German capital, in recent years they have been rapidly making themselves independent of both. Polish banks hoard capital, not merely from the eastern provinces, but from Polish workers in Westphalian mill and mine and from their brothers and sisters in America. Wherever a Polish centre was estabhshed in the debatable territory, there arose a branch of the PoHsh "Folk Bank" {banca ludowy) to supply the money for PoUsh undertakings, principally for the purchase of land from Germans. The work of the "parcellation banks" in 254 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS circumventing the "Settlement Law" by the division of great estates among the Poles has been noted. In the early nineties a priest of Posen, Wawrzyniak, founded a "League of Polish Societies of Industry and Com- merce," which by the end of 191 2 had already articulated together 279 societies for industry and commerce, with 134,000 members, for economic offense and defense. These efforts have not confined themselves to the eastern marches, but have extended, as has been noted, all over the eastern provinces and to more than 400,000 Poles whom the coal, iron and steel industries attracted to Westphalia and the adjacent Rhineland. In upper Silesia dwell more than a million people of Polish race, known in Germany as the "Water Poles." This district ceased to be a part of the Polish state in 11 63; for centuries its people lived contentedly under German rule, and they were often cited by Prussian statesmen as an example of a PoHsh branch which had allowed itself to be peacefully absorbed. Early in the eighties, how- ever, they began to be infected with the Greater Polish idea and they have since then been completely won for the PoHsh cause, so that thousands of them began to make an annual pilgrimage to the tombs of the ancient PoHsh kings in Cracow in Austrian Galicia. Urgent efforts were made to mobilize other Slavic fragments in eastern Prussia for the Polish cause : the Kassubs, a Wendish fragment, dwelling on a strip of territory run- ning back from the Baltic coast into West Prussia and Pomerania, and the Masurs, a mixture of Slavic and German elements in the southern part of the province of East Prussia. The former are, like the Poles, for the most part Roman Catholics, the latter overwhelmingly Protestant. The vernacular of both of these Slavic frag- ments differs from PoHsh, but not so much as to make intercourse impossible. In both of these districts, in- cluding several hundred thousand people, the Poles have made active propaganda since the middle eighties, THE POLISH QUESTION 255 seeking by the establishment of a Polish press, by founding branches of the ''Folk Bank" and by the organization of clubs to awaken the Slavic conscious- ness. Among the evangeUcal Masurians they have thus far met with small success. The Kassubs, an impoverished and economically insignificant race, ac- cepted the PoHsh propaganda with enthusiasm and thus afforded the Greater Polish idea a firm footing on the shores of the Baltic. In Westphalia, whither the Poles have streamed since the middle of the seventies, they have completely sundered themselves from the Germans, and firmly organized into a great number of societies and clubs, and led by an aggressive press, have preserved their language and racial identity. They still regard the eastern marches as their true home, and a consider- able part of their savings has gone to capitalize the struggle for land in the debatable territory. The success of the Poles in this land struggle has already been noted. Their progress in the conquest of the smaller villages and cities of the East, while not so easy to show by statistics, has nevertheless been very real. Their deadliest weapon here has been the boycott, an arm before which the Germans are comparatively helpless, partly from a lack of organization and partly because their fighting spirit has awakened so slowly. The Poles are passed masters in the use of the boycott, and have worked therewith the greatest damage to German trade and industry in the smaller towns of the debatable land. Trained by his press and admonished by clergy and society, the Pole buys only of Poles. He consults only a Polish lawyer or physician or dentist. It never occurs to him to drink his glass in a German tavern or patronize a German restaurant. The Pole who illuminates his house for the king's birthday or affiliates with the former members of his regiment in a German veterans' association draws upon himself bitter words from the pulpit and press and social ostracism 2S6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS from his Polish neighbors. Polish young men and maidens are warned against "mixed marriages," even with Catholic Germans, as a treachery to their nation. An ever watchful correspondent stands ready to report to the nearest paper the name of the girl who buys her hat from a German or Jewish store or the young man who frequents German society. This boycott, which has led occasionally to a sort of terrorism, especially during electoral campaigns, has ruined the German shopkeepers in many small towns of the East, for the German buys where he can buy most cheaply. To begin with, the Pole has a tremendous advantage in the possession of two languages, for while the Pole must learn German in the school and the army, very few Germans command PoUsh. The invasion of a town in the eastern marches by Poles goes on as follows : When a Polish tradesman finds his way thither, he is not immediately recognized as a Pole. By thrift and strict attention to business he wins the respect of all classes. In his place of business he gradually supplants all the Germans with Poles. Soon there come a Polish tailor and a Polish shoemaker. A Polish tavern opens its doors and develops erelong into a good hotel. A Polish phy- sician and a Polish lawyer follow. The press and the priest take care that Poles spend their money only with Poles. Polish clubs begin to flourish and German trades- men begin to employ Polish clerks and even to acquire a little business Polish themselves. With the growth in numbers the Poles grow more aggressive ; they proceed to drive the Germans from the parish council, which through their superior organization they are often able to control. Perhaps at the Landtag election a political row occurs, and Prussian soldiers are sent, whose stay of course contributes still further to the Polish cash boxes. In the meantime Polish children are increasing in the schools and even begin to throng the higher schools. The patriotic German is getting into serious financial THE POLISH QUESTION 257 trouble. Things may go so far that he cannot hold a political meeting because all the halls are in Polish hands. If he ventures to propose publicly a toast to the Emperor or sing " Deutschland ilber alles," he may start a riot and bring on his business an absolute and destruc- tive boycott. Gradually he yields to superior force and hides his German sympathies in the background before Polish terrorism, or even, if he is a Roman Catholic, allows his family to become gradually Polonized. This, or practically this, was the history of Schwetz on the Vistula after 1900, and a similar story might be told of other small cities in West Prussia, as well as in Posen and parts of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. Cases of violence have been rare. The Pole learned his lesson in 1848 and 1863, and knows that any appeal to arms could for the present only hinder the advance of the "sleeping army." Of the abrupt military methods of the Prussian administration he has occasionally had a taste during electoral rows or as the result of too much display of PoHsh patriotism on a German national hoU- day. An instance of the readiness and efficiency of the Prussian bureaucracy when something tangible presents itself was the school strike of 1906-07, a chapter in the struggle for the maintenance of the PoUsh language. Up to 1872 Polish and German had fought with varying success for predominance in the schools of the Polish provinces; after that German was made the language of instruction everywhere, Polish being retained, with some interruptions, merely as an elective subject in the advanced classes. In Germany religious instruction is given in the schools and the religious question of course lurks somewhere behind every struggle over school poUcy. It has been shown how closely religion and national patriotism are intertwined in the Pohsh soul, and it is not to be wondered at that the Poles have made their most determined stand in defense of religious instruction in their own tongue. By a regulation of the 258 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Prussian Department of Education, adopted during the KuUurkampf, it was provided that all children capable of understanding German to a sufficient degree should receive their religious instruction in that language. In practice it came about that the children of Polish families who had been permitted to learn the catechism in the language of their fathers in the lower classes, were trans- ferred with increasing years to religious classes in Ger- man. Constant irritation was the result, mounting with the passing years, the Polish clergy taking a leading part against requiring the Httle ones to "learn the sacred religion in the hateful German language." This agitation reached its cUmax in the fall of 1906, when in imitation of a similar movement in Russia, children in a number of schools in the Polish provinces under instruction from their parents refused to answer questions on the catechism in German or to learn German hymns. Beginning directly after the long vacation in 1906, the strike was vigorously fanned by the PoHsh press and clergy until it involved in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia over one thousand schools, including some 60,000 scholars. The tone of the Polish press and clergy became ex- ceedingly bitter. The Prussian officials were compared to Herod and Pharaoh ; they were charged with misusing religious instruction for political purposes ; the enforced instruction in German was a "sinful desecration of the Catholic rehgion," "a tyranny over the conscience in which only the devil in the gorge of hell and the Prussian government could find satisfaction"; the government, "having robbed the Polish people of all it holds dear, now seeks to rob it of its last treasure, the holy faith." The children were heralded as martyrs to faith and nation; the parents were promised the special protection of the saints for their fight against the Germanizing and Luther- izing of their children. Prayers were said for the striking boys and girls, who on more than one occasion marched directly from the school to church, where a mass was THE POLISH QUESTION 259 said for them. Under such urging, the youngsters left nothing to be desired in the ardor of their opposition, greeting the religious teacher with Polish songs and adjurations and strewing the roadsides with the frag- ments of their German catechisms. The Prussian school administration proceeded against the strike with all of the vigor which its strongly cen- tralized system makes possible. The school regulations discourage corporal punishment; but the youngsters were "kept back," deprived of all privileges and threat- ened with a loss of promotion ; and when that did not avail, the temporal arm was invoked against their parents. Fines were imposed, and parents who, to save their chil- dren from threats and strenuous treatment by the teachers, had kept the youngsters at home received in some cases considerable terms in prison. As a final resort the ministry turned to a measure which has on more than one occasion reduced refractory school dis- tricts in Prussia to obedience : additional teachers were appointed, whose pay fell heavily upon the taxpayers in rural and smaller urban communities. As a result of this vigorous treatment, the strike began to give way in a few months, and by the Easter hoHdays of 1907 was practically suppressed, leaving behind a bitter heritage of hate which will burn fiercely for decades in the eastern marches when the boys and girls involved have become men and women. The strike had therefore its serious as well as its pa- thetic and ludicrous side. As an episode in the Poli^- German struggle it is illuminating. That the Poles actually believe that their sacred rights are invaded by the religious instruction of their children in German cannot be doubted. The Germans, on the other hand, had abundant and humiliating experience before 1872 with the denationaHzing which takes place when German and PoHsh are given equal rights in the schools. Whether from the readiness with which the German assumes for- 26o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS eign culture, — both a strength and a weakness of the race, — whether because of the Pohsh means of agitation, which have been sufficiently described, it is certain that before the KuUurkampf thousands of Germans were swallowed up so completely in the Polish race that to- day even their names are scarcely recognizable. On the other hand, the German is also certainly justified in pointing to the benefits which the German elementary school has brought to the Polish provinces. Even a short journey through the Austrian province of GaHcia or Russian Poland shows the heaven-wide superiority of the German Pole in cultural values. The percentage of illiteracy among males in the province of Posen fell from 41 per cent in 1841 to 15.59 P^r cent in 1871, 0.12 per cent in 1901 and 0.05 in 1905. Indeed, the Germans claim with justice that the fight which the Poles are so successfully waging against them would be far less significant were it not for the matchless organization of the German Volksschule and its graduate institution, the two years' military service. The most unfortunate side of this racial struggle has been touched on several times already: it is embitter- ment by the use of rehgious weapons. It is not merely that the clergy have been for generations the most vigor- ous and uncompromising leaders of the PoHsh resistance. The Prussian state, as has been shown, is two-thirds Protestant; and the German Catholic believes that he must stand guard in defense of his religious rights. It is all too easy to convince the rank and file among the Poles that "Germanizing is Protestantizing," and that in defending his national cause he is doing the will of God. The Centre group in the Landtag has steadily opposed colonization and other moves to weaken the Polish influence in the East; nevertheless when racial interests seemed to demand it, the Polish electoral ma- chinery has been turned against the Centre, even when this meant a temporary alliance with the Social Demo- THE POLISH QUESTION" 261 crats, as in Westphalia in 1907. When it comes to a conflict between church solidarity and racial interests, the German Pole never hesitates to choose the latter. Any priest who "wobbles" in support of the national cause is branded as a traitor to God or the servant of Mammon, and the German Catholics are occasionally described as "disguised Lutherans" or "Christian heathen." Racial solidarity has prevented the Social Democracy from making any great inroads among the Polish work- ingmen. There is, indeed, a Socialist party, loosely affihated with the Polish Socialists of Russia and Galicia, which unites in its program national and socialist ideals ; but the economic Utopia is second in importance to the realization of an independent Poland. There are like- wise conservative leaders among the Poles, adhering to the old "party of the nobles," who would seek to obtain from the Prussian government livable conditions for their people; and believing the resurrection of the an- cient state impossible, would try to perpetuate the Polish language and national consciousness and a truly Polish culture. These, however, are not the influential leaders of the present, who through a far-reaching net- work of clubs of political tendency dictate the policy of their people. For the most part these leaders seem to be affiliated with a National Democratic Party, the accredited representative of the international Polish league and a brother organization to similar parties in Austria and Russia. Their ultimate object is the winning of political independence for the Poles on a democratic basis ; their immediate aim, anything that can be done within the Prussian constitution for the attainment of this purpose. What do the Prussian Poles regard as political in- dependence? What do they believe to be politically obtainable? One may smile at the enthusiasm of the journalist or orator who yearns for "the day when the 262 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS white eagle shall spread his wings again over an inde- pendent Polish empire, stretching from the Dnieper to the Oder and from the Black Sea to the Baltic!" but there is no doubt that the renaissance of the PoKsh state within Kmits which shall be no less than those before the first partition in 1772 is a guiding star for the great body of patriotic Poles, inspiring them to tremendous deeds of industry and sacrifice. For this the Pole works and saves, for this he organizes his young men and women, striving to make them in every point of culture the equal of the "oppressor." While since the turn of the century a radical spirit has grown among the Prussian Poles by leaps and bounds, no one has dreamed of an armed revolution within the immediate future. The leaders realized from the first the futility of any such thing in the face of the opposition of three powerful nations, and the German Pole, being better educated than his Russian fellow-patriot, has reahzed it better than he. To organize, to instil a hatred of Prussia into his children, to get possession of the land and crowd the Germans out of the towns, to defend his language with the greatest tenacity, — these are the things which he can do and which he has done so far as the Prussian law allows. But while generations of opposition have made the Pole a first-class fighter under cover and have heated national feeling to the boiling point, it must be confessed that there has been a great lack of definite propositions for self-government under Prussian rule. Those formulated in 1897 by one of the foremost of radical Polish journals, the Gazeta Grudzionska, are typical. After demanding equal rights for Polish with German as an ofl&cial language, the Polish paper goes on: "In the elementary schools our children must be first taught only Polish, and afterwards be trained as well as possible in the German language. In his official trans- actions the Pole must be permitted to use Polish both THE POLISH QUESTION 263 in writing and in speech. In the Polish districts the officials must be born Poles or at least have a fluent command of the Polish language. All Polish sections — viz., Silesia, Posen, West Prussia, Masuria and Erm- land (in East Prussia) — must be united under the administration of a royal governor with their own Diet. . . . All special legislation against the Poles must be withdrawn, and all officials must be forbidden under the severest penalties to oppress or persecute the Polish nationality in any way." That the granting of such demands would be fraught with the gravest danger to Prussia and the German empire cannot be doubted. The ancient Polish state was not a national state, but a state in which a minority of Poles ruled over a majority of Russians, Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Germans and Jews. If we may trust the figures of the Prussian statistical bureau, of the two so-called Polish provinces, Posen is 39 per cent and West Prussia 65 per cent German at the present time. To give over these provinces to a Polish administration would be to hand over a large minority of Germans to be ruled by a small majority of Poles, and in this connec- tion German writers point to the fate of the Ruthenians of Galicia, whose linguistic and racial claims have been ignored by the PoKsh administration of the Austrian province. It would virtually mean that the German frontier would be moved to the west, making Berlin a frontier city and exposing the vitals of the empire, always without natural defenses to the east, to a Slavic blow. "I would rather sacrifice the Rhineland," said Bismarck in 1863, "than the Polish provinces;" and those who have followed the development of Germany in the train of Prussia's rise will understand why. Out of the East came Germany's unity; towards the East lies her greatest peril. If ever the deathblow to Ger- many's existence as a great power comes, it will not come along the Verdun road and down the valley of the Moselle 264 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS nor through the harbors of the North Sea, but across the plains of the Vistula. This then is the Polish danger. Not because three to three and one-half milHon Poles in the eastern marches could ever threaten the security of twenty times as many Germans have the Prussian patriots regarded the Polish question as vital. But the Prussian Poles are only a small wing, — the best trained and educated, it is true, — only a part of a greater host, which Polish patriots put at eighteen millions, seven to eight millions of whom live in Russia, four millions in Austria and two and one- half milKons in America, ready to supply the sinews of war. The growth of a Polish national feeling is for the Germans dangerously allied with the Pan-Slavic movement. During the Russo-Japanese war the Polish press in Germany, while exulting in Russia's humilia- tion, gave expression to even more earnest yearnings for the fall of the " arch-enemy Prussia." There is no doubt that the growth of a "greater Slavic" feeling among Poles, Russians and Bohemian Czechs is fraught with danger to Germany's future. It is hard to see how the Germans could accord the Poles any considerable share of independence in the eastern provinces without running the risk of solidifying even further an enemy on the eastern marches who might some day hold open a door to an allied enemy. West Prussia and Posen are not Ireland or South Africa, but a necessary bulwark to Germany's greatness. In fact, the same reason exists for holding the provinces as inspired Frederick the Great for de- manding his share in the dismemberment of Poland : what does not remain German runs the risk of becoming Russian, or if not Russian, Pan-Slavic. Nor could the patriotic German think of surrendering the two milUon Germans who live in the basin of the Vistula, the upper Oder and the Memel to becoming Polonized. It has not for centuries been possible to draw a line separating German from Polish districts. The THE POLISH QUESTION 265 two races live together as they have lived for seven hundred years, intricately tied up with each other in agricultural and business Hfe, with here a Polish village and there a predominatingly German parish. Enough has been said of the history of the provinces to show that here, as among the Magyars of Hungary and the Czechs of Bohemia, the Germans were the bearers of a higher culture and the schoolmasters of civilization. This brings with it an historical justification, if one may speak of historical justification in districts where historical conditions have undergone such a tremendous change. And if history is to be cited, it may be shown that the periods of conciliation, such as 1841-48 and 1890-94, were followed by the most rapid growth in the PoKsh national spirit. It must be admitted, however, that here, as in Alsace- Lorraine, Prussia has shown herself no winner of peaceful victories over a subject people. The uncompromising spirit of Prussian bureaucracy aggravated a difficult situation not only among the Poles but among the Danes in Schleswig-Holstein and the Frenchified Ger- mans in Alsace and Lorraine, and on the eastern border as well as on the western and northwestern the irritation of a non-German people has been greater because coupled with a non-democratic system. The Poles with their rare national sense, their strong poHtico-religious or- ganization and their greater simplicity of Hfe have been able to more than hold their own thus far and will no doubt continue to do so, unless Prussia puts more money and more energy into the contest than heretofore. In the meantime the struggle has brought material ad- vantages to Germany's East through the rise in the value of land and the new capital and new economic energy which have been unlocked. It may be that this by- product of a lamentable racial struggle will itself work towards an adjustment. It has been seen how closely the PoUsh question is tied up with the question of rural 266 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS labor and agricultural prosperity. Some day the East will undoubtedly attain a degree of prosperity which will cause economic and industrial questions to cross and complicate the national struggle. When through in- creased wealth the Poles shall have attained the same standard of hving as the Germans, the economic rivalry with the Germans must yield to some extent to the class struggle. It must be added, however, that none of the non- German Prussians will ever be content under Prus- sian rule until Prussia accords to all her citizens full rights of free citizenship. PART IV TRANSFORMATIONS AND TENDENCIES CHAPTER XIII The Rule of the Cities The Germans are the only civilized people who have won great power without the possession of a great city. This fact runs through the entire history of modern Ger- many and is of infinite importance for understanding German development in politics, in art, in social life and industry. In 1840 only Berlin and Hamburg had passed the one hundred thousand mark, and even thirty years later, when the great centripetal forces of railroad building and industrial growth had been making them- selves felt for more than a decade, only six more cities — Breslau, Cologne, Munich, Dresden, Konigsberg, Leipsic — had reached this figure. No more in the early seven- ties than to-day could one name the German capital city. Each had then as now its claims : Dresden, with its unique collections ; Munich, with its rich artistic and industrial life; Stuttgart, a complete though tiny metropolis amid its verdant hills; Frankfort on the Main, the financial capital ; Hamburg, the gateway to the world's trade. And none the less has each of the cities of Prussia a physiognomy so striking and a history and character so unique that no look at German culture would be complete without at least a glimpse at several of them : Cologne, the ancient, sacred queen of the Rhine ; Breslau, the point of the German wedge driven into Slavic lands; Konigsberg, the sentinel on the northeast, the nursery of Prussia's greatness. The whole history of German culture in the nineteenth century is, in fact, provincial history. The scientific 269 270 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS discoveries which have written the name of the Ger- man universities so high among those who have helped mankind came from Gottingen, Wiirzburg, Tiibingen and Heidelberg rather than from the greater metropolitan universities. Jena and Bonn have united with Berlin in supplying Germany with its philosophy; Gottingen and Leipsic led the way in philology, while German literature has clung to Weimar and Munich and out-of- the-way corners of Thuringia, Silesia and Schleswig- Holstein, so far as it has not been Viennese or Styrian or Swiss. To everything the Prussian-imperial capital Berlin has added its part, a noble and increasingly influential part, it is true, but a part no more indispen- sable than that of Munich and others. In fact, until well after the middle of the nineteenth century the great majority of Germans Hved in the country ; indeed, even as late as 1880 the Germans were less a city-dwelling folk than the Italians or the Turks. In the year of the war with France only 26 per cent of Germany's 41,000,000 lived in cities of more than five thousand inhabitants. But the movement cityward had already begun. Its cause was not a political one, al- though the political importance of BerKn and border cities like Metz and Strasburg and Aix-la-Chapelle added greatly to their growth. It began with the development of railroads and the improvement of water transportation, it went forward with increasing acceleration with the growth of German industry and it finally reached a point where only Great Britain, the Low Countries and the United States exceeded Germany in the percentage of city dwellers. Now nearly two- thirds of the inhabitants of the German empire Hve in cities of two thousand and over, more than half in cities of over five thousand ; in fact, practically the en- tire increase of population since 1880 has been in the cities, the population of the rural districts having not only relatively but also actually declined after that date. THE RULE OF THE CITIES 271 Under the lash of an increasing industrial drive this growth has gone forward with stunning rapidity in the case of the largest cities, so rapidly, indeed, as to out- strip even the mushroom swelHng of the American cities of the Middle West. In the first decade of the twentieth century, no large American city except Los Angeles grew so fast as Diisseldorf ; of the ten great- est American cities only New York, Chicago, Cleve- land and Detroit increased as rapidly as the slowest growing German city in a similar group. In 1880 Germany had fifteen cities of over one hundred thou- sand ; twenty years later the number had been doubled ; in 1 9 10 there were forty-eight cities of this class, includ- ing within their Hmits nearly one-fourth of the entire population of the Fatherland. "The pace of thought and action increases with the number of the cities." This remark of Gustav von Schmoller, one of the greatest of German economists, applies very strikingly to the changes which have taken place in the whole character of German culture. Around the institutions which the men of the provincial period founded within sight of hill and valley and forest there have grown up miles of brick and mortar. To-day by far the greater number of the books and periodicals are written and printed in cities ; twelve of the twenty- one universities are located in cities of over eighty thou- sand inhabitants; all of the technical universities, all of the higher veterinary institutions and six of the com- mercial universities are to be found there also. The whole tone of German society has been transformed by this tremendous change. There is, to be sure, no lack of centrifugal tendencies. In Saxony and Rhine- Westphalia, in Thuringia and Bava- ria and Lorraine, factories have been established away from the great centres of population or have developed in the small villages from home industries, and in many places in Middle and Southwest Germany one sees the gray or 2 72 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS red stacks topping a thick cluster of trees or hears the whirr of machinery across some flower-strewn meadow. But it is the exception when industries, such as weaving in Silesia or the glass and slate works of Thuringia, can draw workmen from the cities and permit them to live in semi-rural quiet amid trickling waters and thick shading trees. More often the Westphalian vil- lage has grown to city size and has begun to present housing and sanitary problems no less urgent than those of the metropolis. Dr. Otto Most, the Diisseldorf ex- pert in city growth, states that in 191 2 one-third of all industrial production in Germany took place in cities of over one hundred thousand. More and more has industry drifted towards those sections where coal is most conveniently to be had : to Silesia, to Saxony, neighbor to the Bohemian collieries, and to Westphaha. More and more has the movement gone toward the West, where through the digging of canals and the improvement of the Rhine channel, cities like Diissel- dorf and Barmen have been made maritime, and even once inland trading centres, like Frankfort and Mann- heim, have by the construction of spacious harbors been brought into direct touch with salt water. Those who are familiar with the growth of American cities Uke Cleveland or Los Angeles know the problems which rapid growth thrusts upon a municipality: the la3iing out of streets, where the building lots are sold and the houses rented before the curb can be put in, the disposal of sewage so that it may not contaminate the homes of the future, the problem of water supply for the coming hordes who make a system inadequate before it can be completed, the fight against disease, corruption and crime. The German city builder has had all of these troubles and others peculiarly his own, which are even more difficult of solution. The mainte- nance of healthful living conditions is a terrific strain when the land on the city's periphery is not farming THE RULE OF THE CITIES 273 land, but thickly strewn with villages, whose environs have great actual value as intensively cultivated gardens and rise in addition to such speculative figures as would necessarily cut off the city's growth outward but for active municipal interference. The problem of sani- tation becomes exceedingly acute when it is not merely a question of modern houses but of the creation of Hvable conditions in rookeries, whose walls, damp with humanity and cut off from sun and air, have stood since the early Renaissance. Yet such are the problems which the German cities have had to face in varying forms, from Berlin down to the newest mushrooms of industry like Bochum and Gelsenkirchen. It is in the solution of these problems, in the building and modernization of his cities, that the German has won his greatest administrative and technical triumphs. The same associative instinct and methodical spirit, the same energy and tenacity of will, the same inter- working of higher education and capital that put Ger- man industry to the fore have overcome the difficulties of city administration. "The German," says Friedrich Ratzel, "tends rather to focus his attention conscien- tiously on the duty in hand than to take a broad out- look on affairs." This statement, so thoroughly dis- proved by Germany's conquest of the world's trade, finds confirmation in the excellence of German city government. It is true that the democratic spirit is conspicuously absent in the control of city affairs and its absence is sometimes acutely felt, but this lack is counterbalanced by the absence of the feudal spirit, so manifest in national and state administration. The government of the present-day German city is a business enterprise, where, as in the mediaeval city, capital con- stantly maintains its control simply because it constantly meets the demands of labor more than halfway. The Germans look back on a long history of successful city administration. Mediaeval cities, like Augsburg, 274 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Strasburg, Mayence and Cologne, long before the day of Gutenberg or Luther had developed an administration which insured protection for their trade caravans with- out the walls and by an equitable adjustment between the merchants and the trade guilds — and of ten the em- ployed artisans — brought about peace and prosperity within. The Rhine League of cities, the Swabian League and the Hanseatic League had, before the coming of unhappy religious strife and foreign intervention in the Fatherland, given the first illustration of the real unity of Germans since the time of the Salic emperors. The Hansa especially stretched its hands over the trade of the entire north from Nijni Novgorod to Stockholm and London, and won deep respect for German municipal power from every trader north of Brittany. German political scientists insist that the government of mediaeval German cities had no influence upon that of the modern German city. They were small — these mediaeval mu- nicipaHties — from the modern standpoint, the largest of them, Cologne, containing perhaps not more than thirty thousand within its walls. It is certain, however, that the pride in civic beauty which wrought the beauti- ful fountains of Nuremberg and the handsome city halls and guild halls of Ratisbon, Strasburg and Leipsic has been perpetuated in the noble enthusiasm for the city's adornment which marks these municipalities in modern times. It is certain also that the spirit of compromise between interests and self-sacrifice for the city's welfare so characteristic of modern city admin- istration in Germany are a heritage from Renaissance days. The change of trade routes that came with the dis- covery of the western hemisphere and the lack of enter- prise of Hamburg and the other cities by the sea, which permitted the western nations of Europe to monop- olize the American and East Indian trade, gave the old German cities a staggering blow. The paternal des- THE RULE OF THE CITIES 275 potism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries found civic independence but a hollow shell covering selfish class interest. In the West Napoleon's coming brought the French system of administration to the cities of the Rhine, but in the North and East all traces of a rational self-government had disappeared when in 1808 Baron Stein, who unshackled the serfs and gave feudalism in Prussia its hardest blow, bestowed self- government on the Prussian cities. Since that time political progress in the Prussian cities has been as slow as constitutional progress in the Prussian state, practi- cally no advance having been made in the direction of democracy since the promulgation of the celebrated "City Ordinance" in 1853, though of minor changes of system there have been many. The other German states have in the main followed Prussia's lead. In the thirty municipal "Ordinances" now in effect for German cities, eight of them in Prussia, differentiation is made accord- ing to inherited provincial differences and size, but practically all agree in two particulars : a sharp restric- tion of the right to vote and a careful control over the city's acts by the state government. Under these safeguards all of the German states allow the city wide powers of legislation and administration. This essential difference between the German and the American city, which strikes the attention of every poHtical student, is of the greatest importance. Whereas the American city Hves within certain Hmits sharply prescribed by the legislature, the German city enjoys comparative free- dom to do what seems best for the communal welfare, so long as it fulfils the duties imposed on it by the national legislature and does not by its action contra- vene imperial or state laws. It may with some restric- tions acquire land by process of condemnation, may buy and administer every business from electric trolley to brewery or moving picture theatre, may build and rent any structure from dock to dwelling house, and mort- 276 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS gage future generations by floating bonds to pay for its undertakings, — all without appeal to the national legislature, so long as the provincial or district authorities affix their seal of approval. One heritage of the past still cHngs to the German city. The possession of the right to city privileges does not automatically depend upon the inclusion of a certain number of people within its Hmits. The law does pro- vide in Prussia and other German states a minimum number of inhabitants which will justify a rural commune {Gemeinde) in being brought from under the direct con- trol of the Landrat, the lowest officer in the scale of governmentally appointed officials, and promoted to city privileges; but particularly in the industrial sec- tions of Prussia, where small villages have swelled to cities and cities to great cities in a few years, the govern- ment has shown great conservatism in granting city rights. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that in the eastern districts through emigration to the more industrial West, a city exists as a mere shell of municipal government from which the population has flown. Thus Lagow in the province of Brandenburg, with its 495 in- habitants, had in 1910 full city rights, while Hamborn in the Rhine province in the same year still administered one hundred thousand inhabitants as a rural community, and various lusty suburbs of Berlin whose population entitles them to almost metropoHtan rank have thus far been unable to obtain government approval of their promotion to city privileges. This conservatism is credited by Social Democrats and Radicals to the govern- ment's fear of freeing from the close control of the rural commune places which are largely composed of indus- trial workers. As a matter of fact there has been in Prussia an actual decrease in the number of cities in recent years through the swallowing up of smaller municipal existences into larger ones, a process which has gone on rapidly in the more thickly settled parts of THE RULE OF THE CITIES 277 Germany. Thus Leipsic, which still kite-tails out into swarming independent villages along the chief roads, added between 1880 and 1910, 180,000 inhabitants by the annexing process, and Dresden and Cologne each 115,000 by a similar extension of their corporate limits. There no longer exists the old difference of prerevolution- ary days, when the city, with market and walls, proudly wrote Stadtluft macht frei,^ over its gates, while the great majority of dwellers outside were serfs bound to the soil. Nevertheless, especially in Prussia, the privilege of city government with its freedom from the sharper control of the rural commune is eagerly sought by the larger communities. Thirty-eight communes, each with more than 20,000 inhabitants, were in 1910 still without such privileges in Prussia. Under the control of the state administration, then, the city rules itself through three organs, — a legislative or advisory council of citizens, an administrative board of legal or technical experts and an executive head, the burgomaster. The first is elected by the voters; the last two are chosen by the council. The first receives no pay, while the administrative board consists of paid and unpaid members and the burgomaster is always a paid official. An important modification of this system exists in the Rhineland, Hesse and Alsace-Lorraine. In these districts, where French administration set its centralizing impress during and after the Napoleonic era, the burgomaster forms the central administrative head, with whom a bureau of subordinated technical experts is associated. This three-part system, both in theory and workings, corresponds very closely to such conservative ideas of government as prevailed in Prussia at the time of the promulgation of the Prussian national constitution in 1850. Strangely enough, the influence of Prussia has been so great that even states Kke Wiirtem- berg and Bavaria, which work under more liberal con- ^ "City air gives freedom." 278 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS stitutions, have withstood any democratization of the cities. The lack of a democratic basis is chiefly noticeable in the council of citizens, which under various names {Stadtverordneten, BUrgervorskherkoUegium, Burgeraus- schuss, Burgerschaft, etc.) is chosen for periods varying from four to nine years. It numbers, according to the size of the municipality, anywhere from three in the smallest cities to 144 in Berlin. The right to vote and the method of voting for the city council is in most cases a modification of the usages in state elections. In Prussia the "three-class system" (cf. page 143) may with the permission of the government be modified to a shght extent, so that the smaller property holders may obtain somewhat larger representation than would fall to their share under a strict appHcation of the three-class system. The three classes under this modification divide the city assessment into y\ for the first, -^^ ^^^ ^^e second and 3% for the third. Other modifications with regard to the income tax have developed a highly complicated system for city elections, which, together with the prac- tice of viva voce voting, brings results not very different from those of the elections to the Landtag and insures an overwhelming control on the part of the propertied classes. Thus in Berlin in 191 2 one-third of the city fathers were elected by .2 per cent of the voters, one- third by 8.3 per cent and the remaining third by 91.5 per cent. In Cologne in 19 13 the first class included I per cent, the second 9 per cent and the third 90 per cent. The oft-quoted example of Essen shows what is really possible in city elections under the Prussian system. In this home of death-dealing ordnance, where the Krupp family owns the greater part of the real estate, so long as the late Alfred Krupp lived, four men out of nearly twenty thousand voters elected one-third of the city's representatives. With the passing of the last male of the Krupp family, a complete shift took place, THE RULE OF THE CITIES 279 six hundred voters going up into the first class. In the state most given over to industry, Saxony, the cities are permitted to revise the electoral law for municipal use ; and Leipsic, which in 191 2 on the basis of universal suffrage sent only Social Democratic representatives to the Reichstag, introduced for municipal elections a "class system" as thoroughgoing as Prussia's, while other Saxon cities have graded the electorate according to profession and occupation. Even in the South Ger- man states, Wiirtemberg and Bavaria, where the suffrage is in other respects practically unrestricted, the right to vote in city elections depends on the acquisition of the local right of citizenship (Burgerrecht) with an attendant cost running sometimes as high as forty dollars. The result is to cut down the electorate even further than in Prussia. Thus in Bavaria in 1905 only slightly over six per cent of the municipal population had the right of suffrage in the local elections, and in 1907-08 in the city of Hanover, where a similar restriction prevailed, not quite four per cent, as against 18.7 per cent in BerHn in the same year. Property restrictions on the suffrage and viva voce voting with its attendant duress are not the only means employed to keep city administration out of the hands of the proletariat and smaller property owners. An- other is the provision existing in Prussia and Saxony that at least one-half of the members of the city council shall own real estate in the city. This quaHfication, the so-called Hausbesitzerprivileg, which more than anything else has tended to make the city a business organization, is the object of bitter attack on the part of the Socialists, who naturally count few real estate owners among their members. There seems no doubt that while it has worked benefits in the smaller cities, the provision has repeatedly balked measures of sociological progress in the larger places, like BerHn, where real property is coming more and more into the hands of a few men and syndicates. 28o THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Hedged in by these restrictions, it is plain that the Ger- man city must become to such an extent a business un- dertaking that politics can play but a small part in its government. Bearing in mind what has been said above regarding the economic basis of party division in Ger- many, it will be plain that the Conservative group, whose constituency is largely agrarian, has little or no in- fluence on city affairs, and that the atmosphere of the cities, particularly of the royal residences like Berlin, Dresden and Munich, is hostile to all feudal pretensions. It follows also that the National Liberals, as the large property owning class, are practically in control of the greater number of German cities. The only party which successfully disputes them is the Centre in the Catho- lic Rhineland and Westphaha, where Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne are governed by Clerical majorities. The injection of party politics into city affairs, in spite of the view of the city as a business enterprise, has made the Rathaus in Berlin, Leipsic and many a South Ger- man city the scene of bitter strife. In defiance of all efforts to bar the proletariat from a voice in city affairs, there were in 1913 2753 Social Democrats sitting in the councils of the various German cities, largely in the smaller industrial centres, although the party counted in 191 1 one-third of the council members in Kiel, Mann- heim and Stuttgart and more than one-fourth in Berlin, Leipsic and Frankfort on the Main, It will be shown below that police administration falls largely out of the hands of the city government ; the administration of justice lies also beyond municipal control, and definite state regulations bind local authorities in local affairs and in the care of the poor. Thus limited, the influence of the Social Democrats, aside from tactical manoeuvres to introduce Socialists into city administrative offices, has been directed toward protecting the city's employees from exploitation, increasing administrative efficiency and ex- tending the field of municipal ownership. This exten- THE RULE OF THE CITIES 281 sion of the communal activities is directly in line with the party's program and Socialist city councillors have led the advance in this direction with their advocacy of free municipal labor bureaus, the sale of fuel by the city at cost price, the introduction of free baths and free medi- cal and dental service into the schools and the adminis- tration of the theatres by the municipality. Not a few Social Democrats have been chosen to administrative posts, though naturally not in Prussia ; and on more than one occasion Socialist city councillors have come very near choosing a chief burgomaster of their faith, notably in Stuttgart in 191 1. It is the administrative board that forms the kernel of the German city government and more than anything else has made it a model of municipal efficiency. Whether bearing the name of Magistral, Stadtrat or Gemeinderat, whether consisting of several members with the burgomaster or chief burgomaster as primus inter pares, or of a burgomaster with a bureau of assistants (Beigeordneten), as in the west of Prussia and in Hesse (cf. page 277), it is a body of technically trained experts in city administration, which possesses equal powers with the citizen council in the initiation and approval of legislation and is intrusted with the carrying out of all laws and statutes. These administrators or syndics (Ratsherr is the most general designation) are in part paid employees of the city, in part citizens who serve with- out pay. Except in Schleswig-Holstein and Wlirtem- berg, where they are chosen by public vote, they are everywhere elected by the citizen council. The paternal policy of the German law permits the community to impress the services of a citizen for this and other un- salaried offices and to force him to perform the services for which he is chosen under penalty of fine or imprison- ment ; but this is almost never necessary for the reason that the opportunity to be of influence in the city, to wear the title of Stadtrat or Stadtverordneter and act as 282 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS a functionary of government appeals strongly to the citizen of leisure. Particularly attractive are positions in the administrative board to men of public spirit and technical training on account of the great influence and honor in the community which they bring, and the ad- ministrators or syndics who perform for years onerous duties for the welfare of the city without pay are a most important wheel in Germany's efiicient municipal machine. The paid members of the city administrative board are, hke their honorary colleagues, elected by the citizen council. While the honorary members, however, like the council itself, are chosen for a period averaging six years, the paid administrators are elected for longer periods of from nine to twelve years and sometimes for Hfe. Their election must be confirmed by the state authorities, but once elected and confirmed, they are thoroughly independent of popular clamor and prej- udice. Their removal can be accompHshed only by legal process, a rare proceeding; and on retirement after a period of service they receive a pension which is little if any below their active salary. With the burgo- master, who, as we have seen, may be simple primus inter pares in the board or chief in charge of a bureau of sub- ordinates, they constitute a highly trained class of pro- fessional city administrators, including in their number a majority of university law graduates and also, in the larger places at least, civil and sanitary engineers, school experts, medical men and political economists. They need not be citizens of the community which calls them to administer its affairs, but like other professional men they sell their services to the place which makes them the most attractive offer. The larger cities are thus able to look over the field and select a man with the widest experience in a smaller place. The former chief burgomaster of BerHn, the late Dr. Martin Kirschner, who retired in 191 2, was called to the imperial capital THE RULE OF THE CITIES 283 from Breslau ; his successor, Wermuth, had just resigned as assistant secretary of the imperial treasury. As a re- sult of the speciaKzation which has gone so far in munici- pal service, Diisseldorf established in 191 1 an Academy for Communal Administration, and Cologne in the follow- ing year a higher institution to train men for communal ofl5.ce. Both schools justified their right to existence by gaining a large attendance on the part of those who would qualify themselves for municipal work either as paid or unpaid officials. The administrative board then brings to the city government a technical training which in the larger cities is informed by a wealth of administrative ex- perience. As has been noted, the German system, having found a trained and satisfactory man, intrusts him with large powers of administration and puts him beyond the reach of those who elected him. The board has authority to approve or veto the acts of the city council and it puts these acts into operation. It works out the budget and prepares the plans for the city's manifold activities. Its work is further specialized and facilitated, especially in the larger cities, by the division of the municipal business into departments, each pre- sided over by a professional member of the board es- pecially trained for this field. With this departmental chief are associated other mem- bers of the administrative board, members of the citizen council and other citizens elected for this purpose by the council, the group presenting a combination of technical training, business judgment and local experience. Thus, the school committee in the larger cities may be com- posed of members of both organs of city government, together with representative teachers in the employ of the city and, in Prussia, the ranking evangelical clergyman, Roman Catholic priest and Jewish rabbi, all under the presidency of the Schulrat, who is a paid member of the ad- ministrative board and a trained school-man. Similarly 284 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the finance committee would be under the direction of a syndic or Kammerer, usually a law graduate; the building committee under an engineer; a graduated forester would direct the forest lands of the municipality as Forstrat, and so forth. The number of members of the administrative board is usually one-fourth or one- third of the council, the paid members varying from one in the smallest places to seventeen in Berlin. The combination of technical training and experience and business judgment which is found in the interworking of administrative board and council has shown itself singularly efficient in promoting the public welfare. Their interrelations have been compared by pohtical writers to those of ministry and legislature in the state. To complete the analogy, those cities which have the bureau system of burgomaster and subordinates are like the empire, with its chancellor and ministers responsible to him. Or, since the German city is a business under- taking, one may speak of the stockholders and directors. It must never be forgotten, however, that because of their long tenure of office, the members of the board are independent of the council. Acute differences of opinion between the two are referred to the arbitrament of the state authorities. This leads to another very important function of the administrative board. It is not merely an organ of city government, but a servant of the state and empire as well. Upon it falls the duty of enforcing all imperial and state laws not intrusted to special public officials. It is an important link in the military system ; it is in- trusted with the administration of the national insur- ance laws; it must establish and maintain commercial courts ; in certain states, Prussia among them, it appoints the local evangelical clergy ; in short it has thrust upon it the enforcement of a multitude of statutes passed by Reichstag and Landtag. By these functions, which are constantly increasing, it interlocks the imperial and THE RULE OF THE CITIES 285 state admimstration with the organs of local municipal government. "The city is not outside of the state, but a part of it." This theorem of German administration explains the close oversight which the state government exercises over the acts of the city authorities. Without this con- trol on the part of the government officials one could not explain the wide powers of legislation and administration which the cities of Prussia, Hesse and Saxony enjoy. All of the German states, including Alsace-Lorraine, re- serve to the state officials the right to refuse approval to any of the more important acts of the city authorities. These may be ordinances not in accord with state policy, the incurrence of debts greater than the com- munity should bear, the purchase of property by the city and naturally also the extension of the communal limits. In addition to the direct control which comes through the approval or non-approval of acts of the city government concerning these matters, the state officials exercise an indirect control through the right of confirmation or rejection of all paid members of the administrative board, including the burgomaster, a right that is exercised by every German state except Baden. The organs through which the state wields this power over the cities vary in name and somewhat in function in the various kingdoms and principalities which make up the empire. In them all, however, direct authority is in the hands of the government official who heads the district within which the city Kes. In Prussia cities of twenty-five thousand and over fall under the control of the Regierungsprdsident, a government functionary who heads the administration of the surrounding " dis- trict" (Bezirk) and reports to the provincial authorities; in the smaller states the control of the central power radiates to the city somewhat more directly. Berlin is immediately under a president appointed by the minister of the interior. It need hardly be said that 286 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS from a business standpoint the city rarely finds this control burdensome, the efforts of the central authorities being mainly directed towards keeping municipal under- takings within the limits of solvency ; but when it comes to a matter involving poHtical or social questions, the government hand is immediately felt in restraint of any- thing that smacks of radical poHcy. In view of what has been said, however, about the restrictions to the elec- torate, it is evident that the crown ofl&cials do not often have to interfere : when feudal questions are eliminated, as they are in city government, government poHcy rarely runs counter to the wishes of the propertied classes, which control the cities. Here and there personal ques- tions have arisen, especially in Prussia, where an official whose record smacks of advanced hberahsm may come under the ban. Thus in Berlin, where municipal wishes often collide with crown interests and where there is always a more or less patent feeling of irritation in the city hall against the peremptory tone of the crown offi- cials, the Emperor refused in 1898 to confirm the chief burgomaster. The council promptly reelected the same man and the Prussian officials as promptly refused to resubmit his name for royal approval. City and state stood with locked horns until the council finally gave in and chose another candidate. Dr. Kirschner, whose choice was confirmed after a yeaf's delay. It may be added that the city has the right of appeal to the courts in cases where the line defining the state's power of interference is not clearly drawn, and that this right is occasionally exercised, especially with regard to the police. It is with regard to the poUce power that the centraUz- ing system has gone farthest, and in this regard Prussia again leads. It is not strange that in the matter of police administration the paternal despotism of the eighteenth century has projected itself most forcibly into the twentieth, not strange in view of the love of order THE RULE OF THE CITIES 287 and the gift for discipline inherent in German character that the police should play a commanding role in com- munal and even in private Hfe. Nor is it to be won- dered at, when we remember the military training to which all Germans are subjected, that this semi-miHtary arm of the government should bring to the streets and squares of the cities the atmosphere of barracks and parade ground. The policeman is everywhere in Ger- many and exercises an immediate control over the citi- zen in every phase of communal Hfe. He is not merely a "guardian of the peace"; but construing his duty to protect the pubhc safety and order in the widest possible manner, he is the aggressive enforcer of the laws and also of the numerous and intricate regulations of the police department, which have the force of law. Ride your bicycle on the left-hand side of the street in Leipsic, and the poHceman will arrest you, note your name and address, collect the one mark fine and receipt for it, touch his helmet and send you about your busi- ness, all in five minutes. As street police, harbor police, fire pohce, sanitary police, political police, police in charge of tenements, of water courses, of forests, of fields, of hunting, of fishing, of morals, these ministers of the law surround the German citizen literally from the cradle to the grave and beyond, and see that he minds the thousands of restrictions and "Verbotens'^ which deco- rate every wall and fence and public building and give thunderous testimony to the German sense for disci- pline. It is not merely in enforcing obedience to laws and regulations that the police play a role in the life of the individual German. The police department keeps the personal and vital records, which even in the most rapidly swelling cities of the West are models of accuracy and completeness. With the birth of every young citi- zen of the Fatherland, the police affix a metaphorical tag to him, which he is never permitted to lay aside so 288 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS long as he remains in Germany. The police register keeps careful note of his residence ; it notes his mihtary service, his marriage, the birth or death of his children. The police follow his comings and goings at hotels, they ferret out his income for the tax collector, they look up his baptismal record in order to secure his church tax, they oversee his household arrangements from the hiring of the maid to the hours when the garbage is put out for collection and the garbage can taken in, they see that he has his stoop swept, they fix the hours for locking his front door at night and for unlocking it in the morn- ing, they say when he may play the piano and when he must rest from his playing, they fix the temperature of his water in the public bath house, and should cremation be his latter end, they must, in Prussia at least, minutely inspect and fill out a report on his corpse before burning. For everything there are blanks and formulas in be- wildering number, and every error is tagged with its fine. Few indeed are the Germans or the foreigners in Germany who do not sometime or other come into conflict with this paternal guardianship. The rules governing poHce administration differ widely in various parts of Germany. As might be expected, Prussia goes farthest in state control, while Wiirtemberg allows the greatest freedom to the individual community. As a general thing in the larger cities, — those of over one hundred thousand in Prussia, — and in the state capitals, the Residenzen, the police are entirely and directly imder the control of special heads appointed by the ministry. Even where municipal control is permitted, it operates through the burgomaster, who is in a sense a crown ofl&cial. According to the Saxon law, authority over the police may be temporarily withdrawn from the city govern- ment when the public welfare seems to demand it. This dependence on the crown tends of course to fill the police officers, from the Berlin Police President down to the most unimportant police clerk in Crefeld or Strasburg, with THE RULE OF THE CITIES 289 a sense of independence of the local authorities and to make the police force in a way an army of occupation, ready at any moment to enforce the will of the central authorities in despite of local feeling. This semi-mUitary position is further strengthened by the rigid rules en- forced by the state authorities governing promotions, pensions, etc., which even in the smaller cities of Prussia and Hesse and in states with liberal traditions like Baden and Alsace-Lorraine bind the hands of the municipal authorities and tend to make the police quite independent of the city. The city must provide a cer- tain part of the money for pay and pension, — even all of it, in some cases, — but the state everywhere makes the rules which govern the police force. This state control of the forces of law and order is not confined to Germany of course ; in France and in America the influence of the local authorities on police control is also restricted in many ways. In Germany, and especially in Prussia, the government has assured itself in every possible manner against local interference. That the system has its advantages, no one may deny. The development of the military virtues of loyalty and impartiality in the fulfilment of duty are among them ; and especially in the industrial districts, where strikes and their attendant violence call for poHce interference, the mobility of the German police and the discipline of its individual members insure to the fast-multiplying hordes of Germany's mine and factory population an order and peace which may be found nowhere else under similar conditions. The striking coal miners on the Ruhr or the trolley-men around the Hallesche Tor in Berlin know full well that they have facing them a well-disci- plined body, whose sabres and, if need be, pistols will enforce the law without any fear of the political conse- quences which so often lames the arm of the authorities in France and America. A considerable part of the police force and a large majority of their officers have 290 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS served as subordinate of&cers in the army, and not in- frequently higher police officials are called from the active service. On the other hand, when the independence of local control is carried as far as it is in Germany, it develops in both police and public a feeling of dependence on the police power which robs the citizen as well as the com- munity of sturdy self-reKance. Official arrogance is an outgrowth of the Gertnan bureaucratic system which is borne with increasing impatience by the advancing in- dustrial democracy. Pride in the service of his state is an attractive side of the German character, its reverse is the feeling of caste which the possession of public office infuses into the breast of even the humblest postal or customs clerk. Several years ago the national con- vention of railway employees at Dresden greeted with pathetic joy the permission granted by various govern- ments to wear shoulder-straps on the service uniform and promised a more loyal service in return for this distinction. It is not to be expected that the German bureaucrat will regard himself as a "servant of the people" ; as a servant of the state the lower official too often regards himself as the master of the people. Among the petty office-holders the putting on of a uniform means too often the assumption of an arrogant attitude toward the civiKan, the transformation of a genial citizen into a petty tyrant. The risk is of course greater when this is a police uniform. As a rule the German policeman, even in Prussia, is the soul of helpfulness, a godsend to the perplexed traveller or troubled citizen ; but in the ful- filment of his duties he is apt to show an arrogance which in trying situations, as in the control of traffic in the con- gested Berlin streets or on the occasion of a strike, often degenerates into barracks-yard violence, when the public becomes the recruit and the policeman the drill officer. The policeman knows that his word is law and that the chances of the individual citizen obtaining a hearing THE RULE OF THE CITIES 291 against him are exceedingly small. In 191 2 during a trolley-men's strike in Berlin, several foreign newspaper correspondents who accidentally came into a forbidden zone were ruthlessly sabred by the poKce under orders of an excited officer before their taxicab could be got into motion to take them to safety. Appeal to the higher authorities simply brought the customary reply that the policemen were doing their duty. The German police- man is, as a rule, armed with a pistol in addition to his sabre. Several years ago the PoKce President of Berlin promulgated an order requiring under penalty that the poHce when attacked should shoot to kill. The imme- diate result was, as might have been expected, a series of fatal accidents to bystanders. In the view of the BerHn press the order was not justified by the prevalence of crime in this most orderly great city on earth, nor did it do credit to BerKn's position in the civiHzed world. Under the circumstances, however, it is a credit to the peacefulness and kindness of the German character that cases of police brutality are rare and usually occur only in moments of the greatest excitement. Another feature of the system of state control in the larger cities is the constant extension of the powers of the police. Theoretically the police are to care for public order and safety; but it is easy, of course, to expand these ideas so that they include every field of public utility and service. Under the police interpretation of their powers, they may close any assembly where opinions contrary to public order are being uttered, and the extent to which this right of control goes may be illus- trated by the fact that a policeman is often to be found occupying a prominent seat at the meetings of university clubs for the study of social and economic questions, his presence insuring that the discussion will be scientific and not political. The poKce control, of course, taverns, hotels and theatres, and all relating to them. Naturally it is in the larger cities of Prussia 292 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS and, after it, Saxony where police rule is most mani- fest. They may object to the appointment of any in- dividual as manager of a theater, and they censor his offerings to the pubhc. The individual or the munici- pality may appeal to the courts as to the right of the police to legislate in the premises or as to the reasonable- ness of the regulations, but this is naturally a costly proceeding for individual citizens. In BerHn, where the police regulations imder the vigorous PoHce Presi- dent von Jagow have frequently run counter to munic- ipal feeling, a police order requiring that ladies remove their hats in the boxes at the theatres was tested in the courts in 191 2, and in spite of the claim of the police that the wearing of hats might on occasion lead to excitement and disorder, the court revoked the regulation. There are many Germans, not all Social Democrats and Radi- cals, who feel strongly the irksomeness of a system which in so many ways substitutes police rule for local self- government ; but as a general thing the system is borne because of its efficiency. Especially through the register of the inhabitants which the police keep with such efficiency in the cities, is the convenience of municipal administration aided. It need hardly be remarked that there is no phase of German Hfe to which the American or EngHshman finds it harder to do justice than the system of poUce government, less because it collides with his theories of local self-government than because of the watchful patemaHsm of which it is one expression. Being assured of the solvency and order of the city, it is the policy of the German states to give to the in- dividual communities complete freedom for the promo- tion of the health and prosperity of their citizens. This freedom goes farthest in Prussia, Hesse and Baden, but in all the states of the empire the city is free within the laws of the state to attain these objects in its own way. It has, to be sure, constantly increasing duties assigned to it by the state and empire as their agent in THE RULE OF THE CITIES 293 the administration of the military laws, the collection of statistics, the erection of commerce courts and the mainte- nance of these and the minor courts of civil and criminal procedure, the collection of taxes and the administration of the imperial insurance laws. All of these things the city and rural commune do as the agent of government. In the maintenance of highways, schools and hospitals and the care of the poor the community acts for itself within the limits prescribed by state law. For dis- bursements on these latter accounts the city raises money by taxation, but not infrequently the state inter- feres here too, removing from the control of the city important sources of revenue. Thus in 1902 practically the whole of the octroi, a tax collected by the cities at their gates on certain food-stuffs, was voted away from the.municipaHties by the Reichstag, and in 1909 the cities' revenue from taxes on beer was practically cut off. Occasionally new sources of revenue are opened to them, as in 191 1, when the cities were permitted to take 40 per cent of the newly imposed tax on the unearned incre- ment in land values. CHAPTER XrV The City as a Business and Social Agent The German city is then a joint stock company. This company has at its command a technically trained board of directors in the salaried administrators, and dis- poses as well of the voluntary services of a number of stockholders as adjuncts to the administration and in the council. Under these circumstances the city shows itself eminently well organized to solve the complicated problems thrust upon it. In caring for the physical and social welfare of the hundreds of thousands who have been added each year to the urban population, these corporations have always been ready to experiment out- side of accepted economic theories and to go ahead with undertakings for the common good with the same com- bination of hard business sense and romantic idealism which marked the growth of Germany's big business. These characteristics have shown themselves in many sides of communal hfe. Two of these are especially worth considering : municipal ownership of public utilities and the attempts to solve the housing problem. Communal ownership and administration of industrial and commercial undertakings is essentially a product of the past half-century. The German cities of the era of the Reformation and Renaissance had gone far in the direction of municipal ownership and trading, it is true, not only in the purchase of large tracts of forest and arable land, but also in the sale of grain, wine and beer, and in the conduct of bakeries, bath-houses and similar enterprises. The decay of the cities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought an end to these enter- 294 THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 295 prises, and the liberalism of the nineteenth century, with its narrow views of the functions of government, caused most of the cities to sell their communal holdings. With the rise of manufacturing, however, and the growth of the cities, the spirit of communal ownership and trading took possession of the municipaKties long before the state had abandoned the idea that the duty of the com- munity toward business lay simply in the removal of obstacles to private competition. The first instances of municipal ownership came, characteristically enough, through the exercise of the poHce power. To insure pub- lic safety BerKn and other cities early acquired gas works and water works, and to these were gradually added slaughter houses and public baths, both institutions essential to public health. Once fairly started on the road of communal owner- ship, the cities sped forward to the erection of market houses and docks and the operation of loading cranes, electric plants and public conveyances, before the German states had fully made up their minds to the public ownership of railroads. Since that time nothing has been more characteristic of communal Hfe in Germany than the expansion of the city's field of industry and commerce. To be sure, there is as yet no generally accepted theory as to what properly constitutes an object of public or municipal control, except that it must be something in the proper and regular conduct of which the public is vitally interested and something which brings no very great risk for capital. Under the drive of the rapidly increasing population the German has, however, included in his municipal enterprises undertakings where city control is in no sense neces- sary for the public health and welfare, but where the winning of a profit for the community is the chief ex- cuse for communal ownership. Such are trolley lines, brick works, — started to utilize the clay on municipal property, — breweries, hotels and race tracks. Such 296 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWG WARS enterprises as these do not property constitute mo- nopolies, and in Prussia and other states the city must pay taxes on property thus administered, since it here competes with private enterprise. The entry of the city into the field of private business has not been with- out opposition, and such undertakings as those last men- tioned are sporadic rather than general, even in the larger communities; but it must be said that the op- position has come from the lack of capital on the part of the city or doubt as to the financial returns rather than from any hesitation about competing with private business. Indeed that the community is en- titled to enter the field of industry and commerce for profit seems to be fairly well conceded in Germany. At the time of the urban census of 1908, 94 per cent of the waterworks, 64 per cent of the gas works and 41 per cent of the electrical works in German cities were the property of the municipality. In 1913 only about 50 of the slaughter-houses in the entire empire were in private hands. In spite of the unfortunate financial results from the operation of trolleys by the community, municipal ownership has made progress here too, so that the number of municipal undertakings was in 191 1 nearly equal to the private electric car companies. Next in importance are municipal taverns and brewer- ies ; after them comes a list embracing the widest range of business activity. Of great interest in this regard is the so-called Zweckverband, an association of several cities for common ownership and administration of some public utility. This form of municipal coopera- tion, which enables several neighboring communities to make joint use of water, gas or electricity, or even to run trolleys jointly, has grown rapidly in the more thickly settled districts and has been warmly encouraged by the various state governments. In 1911 the Prus- sian government regulated the legal side of these coopera- tive alliances by a special statute. THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 297 These enterprises employ of course a great number of workers, and in addition to the regular activities of the city bring the payrolls of such municipalities as Cologne or Frankfort up to figures that surpass the entire turn- over of not a few of the smaller states. That the city's business is done with so httle that savors of corruption or the misuse of public confidence is due in the first instance to the conscientiousness with which the Ger- mans look after the control of all of their organizations, chiefly, however, to the fact that the city is a corpora- tion in which the propertied interests have control. The entrance into the field of profit-winning business is only one of the ways in which the strong social conscious- ness of later years has manifested itself in the German city. Here and there in times of stress the municipahty inter- feres and fixes the price of food-stuffs, especially the price of meat, which, as we have seen, became under the agrarian tariff such a serious question. In Stutt- gart the custom has prevailed of fixing meat prices monthly in advance by joint conference between the representatives of the city and the butchers' associa- tion. In 191 2 when a great dearth of meat forced the imperial government to suspend the tariff and admit foreign meat under certain conditions, over two hundred cities imported meat from abroad and sold it either through the butchers or directly over the counter to the consumer, and several regularly embarked on the raising of cattle and swine for sale. Numberless smaller undertakings, such as the conduct of a regular milk business by Mannheim and the raising of vegetables by the municipality of Barmen, show how Httle German cities regard the line which is supposed to separate communal from private enterprise, when it is a ques- tion of protecting their citizens from exploitation. It is evident then that the fact that the German city is a business corporation controlled by the propertied classes has in no wise prevented the fulfilment of its 298 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS mission as a social organism with a heart for the un- protected poor. In the care of the poor and the defec- tive classes generally most German cities have gone much farther than the requirements of the state laws, and some, like Elberfeld and Strasburg, have worked out systems which are models of the cooperation of technically trained administrative officers with a large body of volunteer workers among the citizens. Numer- ous indeed are the ways in which especially the larger cities have sought to bring communal aid to those en- gaged in the struggle for existence. Municipal pawn- shops go back to the early Renaissance, — there is one in Augsburg with a consecutive history since 1591. Municipal savings banks are to be found in nearly every town of considerable size. In several places, not- ably Dresden and Diisseldorf, city-owned banks have met with great success as building-and-loan agencies by accepting second mortgages on real estate and thus bringing much help to home builders in the chronic dearth of capital in Germany. Municipal labor in- telligence offices, which began with the first rush of labor to the cities in the early eighties, have grown to a point where they practically own the field. Strongly opposed at first by the Social Democratic labor unions, these offices have shown a growing tendency toward a joint control by the city authorities and the repre- sentatives of trade unions; and have expanded to in- clude intelligence offices of dwellings for workingmen, writing and rest rooms for the unemployed, and so forth. With a wide-spun affiliation of city with city and city with rural village, with a central clearing office in the state capital, like that at Munich for Bavaria, they make up a compact and well-drilled organization for promoting the mobility of labor and fighting the evil of unemployraent endemic in all industrial states. Through the interlocking of this system a workman can answer a call to employment in a distant district THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 299 with no more loss of time than is incident to steam or electric transportation. By effective intermunicipal and interstate associations, for which there is a national headquarters with the inevitable pubKcation in Berlin, the Germans have made rapid progress towards the ideal of the industrial state, — "no position unfilled, no worker unemployed." A further step in the same direction has been far less successful, — municipal out-of-work insurance. This complicated subject, before which even the im- perial statisticians have confessed themselves at a loss, has caused much perplexity in Germany as well as in England. Leipsic and Cologne tried their hands at it in the first decade of the century with indifferent success. Several South German cities, less antipathetic than the Prussian and Saxon municipaHties to the Social Democ- racy, have tried the experiment of subsidizing the trade- unions, thus supplementing the out-of-work allowances of these organizations, but the complications in classifica- tion and strike situations are difficult, and there has been shown a general tendency to wait until a basis for imperial insurance can be found, paired with a government that will be willing to add this further burden to industry. No such arguments, however, could be brought against distress work, which the German cities have undertaken with readiness and with a really lavish hand. In such industrial crises as 1891-95, 1900-03 and notably in the winters of 1907 and 1909 many of the larger cities employed thousands of men, not merely with the time- honored device of snow removal, but in building. In the winter of 1908-09 Diisseldorf incurred a deficit of fifty thousand dollars, disbursed on unprofitable pubHc works to more than two thousand hunger-pinched members of the proletariat. Uncounted indeed are the ways in which the munici- palities have gone forward to meet the growing and even nascent demands of the economically weak in 300 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the industrial centres. In 1906 there were scarcely twenty public bureaus furnishing free legal advice. Five years later this number had increased more than fivefold, besides the great increase in the bureaus main- tained for this purpose by private benevolence, all supplementing the work of poHtical and fraternal organizations. The Hmit in this direction of communal assistance of a paternal sort has probably been reached at Halle, where the head of the city statistical bureau advertises "free consultation to parents" (Elternstunden) on the choice of a hfe work for their young hopefuls. The most serious problem which has confronted the German cities, not merely in connection with the work- ing classes but with the lower middle classes as well, is the housing problem. The question of adequate dwellings for the multiplying millions is so fraught with important consequences to the Fatherland that it has engaged the earnest attention of economists and sociolo- gists as well as of social workers of every description. Germany is not a large country, and land is a coveted possession at best: it can easily be seen how great the competition for it is and how rapid the rise of land values where in the larger cities from Berlin to Munich and Strasburg the jostling throngs of newcomers de- mand shelter and the speculators step in to send the price shooting farther skyward. Where in the fall gardeners worked in potato fields and onion beds, there rise in the spring street after street of barracks-like buildings, each five or six stories high, each as much like his fellow as one biscuit box is like another and each packed from attic to cellar with tiny dwellings for workingmen. The transformation would suggest the growth of American cities, save that in the newer parts of even the Bronx and South Chicago there is an abun- dance of land and a lack of the crowding which in the newer parts of South Berlin or the Rhine-Westphalian cities makes such a sad impression. It was stated by THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 301 Professor Rudolph Eberstadt of Berlin at the Evangelical- Social Congress in 191 2 that land in the tenement dis- trict of Berhn is eight times as expensive as land simi- larly situated in London, and iii other large German cities five times as expensive. The price of new land is not the only problem which dwelling reformers have had to face. Few cities are, like Elberf eld-Barmen, the creation of the industrial present. Most of them look back to a hoary past, which has left to the city an inner core of old houses, some of them picturesque, most of them rookeries with insufficient Hght and air, soaked with the mould of in- sanitary centuries and falHng to pieces with decay. In these the poorest families are crowded in ever-thickening numbers as the outside lands are built up. In these con- ditions, in spite of all the efforts of the city fathers, many Germans live in veritably Chinese surroundings. Pro- fessor SchmoUer at a congress in 191 2 was authority for the statement that six hundred thousand of the in- habitants of Greater BerHn are packed together in dwellings where from five to thirteen persons have during the entire North German winter access to no other heated room than the kitchen. In investigations con- ducted during the first decade of the century the sick relief bureau of the Berlin Merchants' Association found six thousand sick persons who were obliged to share sleeping rooms with more than five persons. The bringing up of children under such circumstances is of course a veritable slaughter of the innocents, and it is to this cause that the comparatively high rate of infant mortality in Germany is mainly ascribed. The National Association for Housing Reform (Verein fiir Wohnungs- reform) has for years been calling for some imperial or state legislation, realizing that the efforts of the cities to meet the evil must be inadequate. In the meantime the cities have gone forward on the road of reform with all the energy that lies in their administration. 302 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS The first step was naturally the purchase of land. With the forehandedness which is possible under their administrative system, many cities entered early on a program of land purchase with a double object, — in order to hold off the speculator and put the land on the market later at fair prices and in order that the com- munity might share in the increment that comes with the community's growth. It has been estimated that twenty-five million dollars annually would not more than cover the total of such expenditure by cities of more than fifty thousand inhabitants since the beginning of the new century, the city investments amounting to about one-third of all real estate purchases in places of this size. The process has gone so far that in certain cities a considerable percentage of the entire administrative area is the property of the municipality. Thus in 1910 in Frankfort and Augsburg one-half of the land belonged to the city; in other places, hke Strasburg, Breslau, Cologne, Halle and Karlsruhe, one-fourth ; while Ulm, which early created a special fund for land purchase, claimed to own three-fifths of all the land available for building purposes within the corporate limits. Purchases are of course not Hmited to land within the city but extend to the acquisition of forests and fields far out on the periphery. In order to arrive before the speculator it is evident that the city authorities have to lay their plans a long way in advance, as most of the German states sharply limit the right of condemnation to actual street-laying and sanitation, while the effort to bring reserve lands on the market through an increase of taxes to a point where it is un- profitable for the owner to hold them — a much-tried expedient in German cities — has done little to affect land values. The first result of this land control is that the German cities have been able to supply the newer sections with public institutions, such as hospitals, parks and public THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 303 baths, in a manner which would be impossible under the policy of buying only as need dictates. The beautiful green spots, from the larger parks to the mimite Anlagen, which form so attractive a feature of the periphery of cities like Frankfort, Diisseldorf and Munich, are a striking testimonial to the beneficial results of municipal foresight. Furthermore, the city has been in a position to put land for dwellings on the market at fair prices, disposing of it either under long leases or permanently under building restrictions which insure its being used for decent dwellings. A great deal of land has thus been sold with a string to it, insuring to the city the right of repurchase in case the purpose of the city's entrance into the market — the procuring of decent houses for its poorer classes at reasonable rates — • is defeated. A few cities, about fifteen, have entered rather hesitatingly upon the building of small dwellings, Essen, a creation of modern industry, having led the way with the building of a considerable number of one- family houses ; but municipal home building has as yet gone only far enough to show the direction which social policy is taking and the length to which the German cities are prepared to go in solving this knotty problem of growth. That the safeguarding of the German family depends on turning away from the barracks-tenement with its tightly packed layers of humanity to the dwelling of not more than four families is clearly recognized by students of metropolitan life in Germany, and many and interesting experiments are being made in this field. Two or three advanced municipalities, Diissel- dorf and Charlottenburg among them, have also erected homes for unmarried persons, in which the room prices are no less than those offered by private enterprise but the conveniences and safeguards for health much greater. A great deal of effort has been put forth to reduce the evil of renting sleeping accommodations for the night or 304 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS day, where the tenant, usually a young working-man or working- woman, must vacate the quarters in the morning, the bed often being occupied by a night worker during the daytime. These Schlajstellen ("sleeping spots," often Httle better than lairs) furnish the only home of thousands of unmarried workers in Germany, a little box or bundle containing all of their worldly goods; often without daylight or sufficient air, they are the most repugnant spot in the modern housing evil, and as yet little has been done to relieve the situation. By a careful tenement inspection through municipal bureaus, which also act as intelligence offices in finding homes for workers, as well as through a careful super- vision of the means of transportation, the city seeks to mitigate the tenement evils and to bring the workers as far as possible into districts where sunlight and air are accessible. While overcrowding with all of its attendant evils shows itself in the barracks-tenements of the suburbs, its worst forms are apparent in the inner city. It is the restoration and modernization of this oldest part of the city which forms one of the hardest problems of German municipal administration. This core of build- ings in Frankfort, Leipsic, Strasburg and many an- other ancient city offers difficulties which might baffle an administration even as efficient and powerful as the governing boards of these great cities. The visitor who wanders through the streets of old Leipsic, for instance, at the time of the semi-annual fair, when the narrow streets seethe with a mass of humanity, — streaming through narrow alleyways, surging under cavernous arches, disappearing into unnoticed crevices, and bubbling forth from areaway and cellar, — scarcely realizes that the focussing of such a volume of trade into such a contracted heart and centre is only possible through the careful work of a generation, which has removed walls, opened streets, brought sanitary de- THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 305 vices to courtyard and cellar, and light and air to attic and alley, — in short has converted a mediaeval city into a place where the business of an empire can be trans- acted. If one wishes to realize what the mediaeval German city was before modern technique levelled its walls and laid on their foundation splendid promenades and drove streets from the railway station on the pe- riphery through the outer girdle into the heart of the ancient stronghold, let him visit the cities of Italy where no such transformation has taken place and pic- ture to himself Frankfort as old Naples without Naples' sun, or Strasburg as Orvieto without Orvieto's dis- infecting breezes. The smells which accumulate in the courts and hallways of the older German houses during a rainy winter or the " still, sad odor of humanity " that lingers in the vestibule of so many a German dwelling or hotel are an inheritance from the day when the town dweller must have had a supreme indifference to odors. The cutting through of streets, the sanitation of houses, the conversion of blocks of rookeries into dwel- lings which shall have the required amount of light and air are problems which have called for the best technical skill of highly trained municipal engineers. In Stras- burg and Hanover and Frankfort and Cologne and a dozen other cities one may admire the combination of practical sense with piety toward the art treasures of the past which has made the interior of the old German cities healthful without destroying their unique character. It is hardly necessary to say that the sanitary require- ments for new dwellings are rigid and are carefully enforced. The problem of ground utilization is every- where a hard one on account of the prodigious land values : the German engineer has studied it from every standpoint, not only as to the minimum requirements of light and air, but with concentration on what he re- gards as the key to the city's future, the development of the largest possible number of small dwellings. 3o6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS It will be clear from the foregoing that planning for future growth is regarded in Germany as one of the chief duties of the municipality. Those who attended the Expositions for City Building in Berlin and Diissel- dorf in 1910 and the Municipal Exposition at Diissel- dorf in 191 2 and similar expositions at Leipsic and Karlsruhe the following year were astonished at the grow- ing wealth of material which German architects and engineers had collected as to city planning and the wide field which their municipal experiments already covered. A brief visit to only a few of the cities of western Ger- many shows what success the municipal engineers have already won in combining the practical with the beauti- ful : Frankfort, with its strikingly practical arrange- ment of streets and squares, from the busy but never overcrowded Bahnhofplatz inward ; Stuttgart, with its graceful draping of houses upon the hills along ways of serpentine grace ; Charlottenburg, with its electric lines so bound in green that they add to the city's beauty, — ■ everjrwhere tasteful railway stations, tracks hidden in boscage, streams marged with public utilities which are carefully concealed behind an umbrageous sky line. In these and other cities one may see the attempts that have been made to carry out a division into build- ing sections, so that commerce may be isolated from residences and manufactures from both, as well for the health of the citizens as for the convenience of com- merce and manufacture. That the German cities have led the way in this combination of the useful and the beautiful, is in part the fruit of the combination of technical training with business administration, in part because German cities have had the problems of city growth thrust upon them so suddenly and with such imperative force. How well they are succeeding in their efforts is evidenced by the fact that even with all of the housing evils the percentage of mortality for the great cities is less than the average for the empire THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 307 and even in the factory districts of Diisseldorf the rate is less than in the rural districts of the Prussian East. "To build for health and commerce is to build for beauty." This motto on the advance program of the Berhn Exposition for City Building in 19 10 has become the watchword of German cities. They received, in- deed, a rich heritage of art from the Middle Ages, which not even centuries of decay and neglect could destroy. With increasing care and piety the present-day munici- palities seek to preserve what has been handed down, — old houses with their Renaissance panelKng, old churches, fountains and monuments, — and to provide new objects of art which shall be in keeping with the old. The Germans are extremely sensitive to the sacrifice of many of their picturesque city quarters to modern progress, and the pubHc watches with jealous care to see that the vigorous growth springing up from the old municipal roots does not destroy the gnarled beauty of the ancient stock. Nuremberg's inner kernel, with its carefully restored buildings, graceful fountains and neatly washed old streets; Hildesheim's wonderful square, whose jewel, the House of the Butchers' Guild, recently gutted by fire, has been so artistically restored, are like quiet, cleanly kept museums whose walls are girdled about by the uneasy pulsing hfe of the new time. It is only in some of the churches on the Rhine and in Bavaria that one finds mouldering decay, due less to a lack of will to preserve than to rehgious differences, which unfortunately have made them confessional in- stead of national monuments. Not merely in preserving the old but in the architec- ture of the new each German city has striven to retain its individuahty. It has been charged that modern German architecture is formless, that buildings hke the new opera house in Frankfort and the Royal Library in BerKn impress by their soHdity rather than by their grace. This is not the place to go into the values of 3o8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS German art ; but it may be said that a certain solidity has been characteristic of German architecture in all periods since the thirteenth century, which saw the erection of such structures as the cathedral at Mayence and the churches of the Teutonic Knights in the North- east. That German artists and German authorities, imperial, state and civic, sinned greatly against good taste in the first quarter-century of the new empire in their zeal to fill the squares and parks of the Fatherland with splendid testimonials to the prosperity of the present and with proud memorials of the past, cannot be denied. It is only too apparent in the public build- ings of the time and in the rage for monuments which swept Germany like a storm, dotting market square and esplanade with buxom Germanias and shaggy Kaiser Wilhelms, awakening Barbarossas and high- breathing Bismarcks, all of which overbubbling en- thusiasm of the epic period of the new empire found its classic expression in the sadly squeezed monument to the first emperor on the Schlossplatz in Berlin and the long array of heroes of chronology lining the Siegesallee in the Tiergarten. All of these give evidence of feudal enthusiasm and military ardor on the part of the ruling class and of newly awakened patriotism in the folk- soul, but as a phase of German art they are negligible and are quite overshadowed by structures like the Reichstag building in Berlin, with its noble and essen- tially German interior. After the beginning of the twentieth century two tendencies became especially discernable in German civic art : the trend towards simphcity, and the effort, which we have noticed also in city planning, to harmonize and fuse subject and site. The first may be observed in such buildings as the new Rathaus built around the old tower of the Pleissenburg in Leipsic or the great department store on the Leip- ziger Strasse in Berlin and similar business houses in Diisseldorf, where there has been a most successful THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 309 effort to pair simplicity of structure with practical usableness. The second finds expression in Lederer and Schaudt's mighty Bismarck in Hamburg, where on a bold headland the titanic originaHty of the man springs into prominence. It is not merely in artistic buildings and monuments that the present-day German municipality has sought to build the city beautiful. Amid the wildernesses of brick and mortar the German love of nature finds its account in park and cemetery. Such wonderful parks as the Hofgarten in Diisseldorf and the Rosental in Leipsic are not to be found in every municipality, but there is none that has not expended large sums, not merely for great parks, which German neatness and discipHne keep in perfect order for the enjoyment of the many, but for the numerous green spots which, verdant with grateful shade and beautiful shrubbery, break with their waving poplars the sky fine of brick and stone. Here, where in an intimate corner one finds such deKcate appeals to the fancy as the Marchen figure in Leipsic or the Lessing monument in the Berlin Tiergarten, one appre- ciates that the true heart of the German people beats not merely in the intense atmosphere of the smoke- snorting factories beyond the poplars, but also in the cool corners of a romantic worship of the beautiful. And when one enters the Central Cemetery in Berlin- Friedrichsfelde, perhaps the most beautiful of all park- cemeteries in the German-speaking world, where the dead sleep under roses and eternal green, one feels that German sentiment is no less deep and the German soul no less responsive to noble impulses than in the stricken days of a century ago when Holderiin sang of Grecian urns and Schiller called forth from an inspired fancy the theory of the "soul beautiful." In the strenuous hour of his struggle with the problems of existence and growth then the German city-builder has not forgotten that beauty goes hand in hand with 3IO THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS utility and health. The city father has, however, often been reproached with forgetting popular culture and those municipal undertakings which including free libraries, lecture courses, playgrounds, etc., are summed up occasionally under the insulting rubric, "Uplift of the masses." There is no denying that the lack of communal efforts of this kind is one of the things which strike the American visitor most unfavorably. With respect to children's playgrounds, the development since the beginning of the twentieth century has been ex- tremely rapid and has gone to a point where the larger cities have provided a considerable if by no means ade- quate number of grounds both within the city and in the woods and glens of the periphery, where the youngsters receive in their play the same efficient supervision that is to accompany them later on through the business of Ufe. Of Hbraries there is no lack, but they are usually collections of historical and scientific value and not popular libraries in the American understanding of the term. In 1910 out of 540 cities of more than ten thou- sand inhabitants only 168 maintained municipal read- ing rooms, and even in some of these a small fee was demanded of the users of books. Berlin, which has had a public library since 1850, established its first municipal reading room in 1896. Only very recently have chil- dren's reading rooms been opened, and these mainly through private benevolence in the face of the char- acteristically German argument that they would keep the much harassed German child indoors when he should be taking his needed exercise. Some theorists have gone so far as to suggest that children's reading rooms should be opened only in bad weather. Strange as all of this may sound to the foreigner, it opens up an interesting view of the German attitude toward popular culture. No country has hved so completely in the "paper age" as Germany. In recent decades no three nations together have equalled the THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 311 Fatherland's output in books, and among these books a considerable number is devoted to popular education. Aside from the cheap editions of the classics and thou- sands of paper-bound popular books of instruction on every subject, from penny Chinese grammars to "How can I become an Expert Toymaker?" the great pub- lishers of Leipsic and BerHn flood the world with cheap series, covering well-nigh the whole field of modern cul- ture, written by university men of high standing. Then, as we shall see, every city offers opportunity for school- ing after the elementary school in the continuation schools. Besides this, there are museums with penny guide books, concerts with seats well-nigh free and per- formances of the best plays at the cheapest of rates. "What then does das Volk want more in the way of opportunities for culture?" asks the German city father, who, like all Germans, believes that what is to be really valuable to the possessor must mean some financial sacrifice, be it ever so little. It must be remembered also that the Germans are a homogeneous people, and that the Volksschule provides for their education to a point where at least a basis for an appreciation of Ger- many's culture has been laid. There is no denying that there is also a tendency to look upon the demand for "popular culture" with dis- favor because it offends against class prejudice. Ger- many is not a democratic country and there is still a feeling of academic pride which makes of culture a jewel that is not to be thrown before the snouts of the lower classes. This sentiment is waning. That it has not jdelded altogether to the democratizing influences of recent decades is not entirely the fault of the intellec- tual classes. Contemporaneous with the rise of in- dustry came, as we have seen, a rise of class feehng among the industrial workers, replacing the feudal class dis- tinctions by industrial and economic distinctions. The Social Democracy has through its press, clubs and lee- 312 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS ture courses done much for popular culture ; but by the organization of a class consciousness it has sealed up the wells of private benevolence, which are usually the first sources from which free Ubraries and lecture courses come. There is also something in the argument of Dr. Most of Diisseldorf , who in discussing this question says : "It is a monstrosity to offer a man Hbraries and con- certs who is not in a position to provide himself with a decent home, clothes and food." ^ The economic and social problems which came with the rapid growth of the cities have chained the attention of German com- munities and tied up their resources to such an extent that the less urgent duties have had to be neglected. That an awakening has come, however, with regard to the right of the masses to something more than drilling for life as industrial machines is apparent on many sides. Following the lead of the Vienna univer- sity, the German universities at last took up the matter of extension work and proceeded to give it the same slow but careful and methodical development that they have given to other sides of education. In 191 2 fifteen universities and eight technical universities were assist- ing in this work. Free lecture courses on scientific and literary subjects, with abundant opportunities for prac- tical exercises, were organized by the Humboldt and Lessing Academies in Berlin and the Humboldt Academy in Breslau and by similar organizations in Frankfort and Hamburg. As yet, however, the municipality plays only a small part in these endeavors. In 191 1 only sixty-four German cities gave or assisted in giving public lecture courses, with the expenditure of about twenty thousand dollars. Six cities, however, had established or contributed largely to the establishment and support of commercial universities {Handelshoch- schulen), which attracted students from every civilized 1 Die deutsche Stadt und ihre Verwaltung. Vol. 3. THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 313 land ; and courses of university grade have been given in Hamburg and Frankfort by institutes supported by the municipality. It is of interest to note that these courses gave birth in Frankfort to the first municipal imiversity in Germany, a non-theological institution, which opened its doors in October, 19 14, and bids fair to introduce some radical departures from the conservative usages of its staid sister insti- tutions. To one side of popular culture the German cities have from the beginning devoted considerable care and money, — to the cultivation of music among the masses. Mu- sical standards are high, even amongst the poorest classes ; and instead of municipal golf hnks and athletic fields, the German workman has had his music suppHed by the municipality for many years, either free or at a nominal cost. Aside from the open air concert fur- nished on Sundays and holidays by the local military band on the public square in every place that boasts of the neighborhood of a barracks, a great number of the larger cities, nearly one-half of those over twenty thousand in 191 1, support public concerts in halls or gardens, for which the admission is very small, usually from five to twelve and one-half cents. For this pur- pose over half a milHon dollars was spent by these municipahties in 1 9 1 1 . More than seventy of the greater German cities have orchestras, whose members are paid and on retirement pensioned by the city, and there is as keen a rivalry between cities of the same rank for possession of the best musical equipment as there is in the beautification of parks and squares and in the care of streets and drainage. And it need scarcely be said that the programs of these cheap concerts are no less classical than those offered to the patrons of the Palmen- garten, the aristocratic resort in Frankfort, or the fashionable restaurants on the Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden in Berlin. 314 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS The German city administrator recognizes that good music is as much a necessity as good air and water. He also believes in the theatre as an educational institution. The rich patronage which the German courts have always extended to the theatre, and which costs the monarchs in Berlin, Dresden, Munich and the other capitals of the empire considerable sums annually, has been assumed by the municipality in all cities which have advanced to theatre rank, including many communities of very small size. Many of these own their own theatres, where opera during the season and dramas are given usually through a lessee, the city retaining a voice in the control of performance and program and subsidizing the undertaking as far as the municipal budget will allow. For this purpose 164 German cities spent in 191 1 over one and one-half milHon dollars. The pressure upon the city fathers for the improvement of the theatre is always strong, especially from the Social Democrats, who as a matter of policy advocate direct municipal management and a larger outlay for theatrical purposes. Special performances at very low prices are given at intervals during the year at the municipal theatres, the tickets being usually distributed through clubs and associations, whose members enjoy free ad- mission in return for a small club appropriation. As a matter of course the best artists in the direct or indirect employ of the city figure in these popular productions ; occasionally travelling companies of high artistic merit, like that from the Ducal Theatre in Weimar, are en- gaged. Of the 133 theatres which gave performances of this kind in 191 1, a number gave special performances of classical plays for children, with a free distribution of tickets in the Volksschulen; and if one would learn what part the founders of the German stage like Lessing and Schiller or later artists like Grillparzer and Freytag play in modern German education, one needs only to give himself the delightful experience of sitting amid the THE CITY AS A BUSINESS AND SOCIAL AGENT 315 bubbling enthusiasm of Young Germany during the performance of Tell or Minna von Barnhelm or the Journalisten. A few cities, like Altona, for the most part smaller places, have established municipal moving picture theatres in order to sanitate and elevate this important means of amusement and education. Among tendencies in the trend toward an education which shall not merely spell utility must be mentioned the effort to make the museums increasingly useful to the masses. Rare indeed is the small German city which does not through the opening to the public on certain days of school or institutional collections or through a small municipal museum offer opportunity to see at least a collection of casts of ancient works of art and a few pictures of merit. The larger cities which enjoy the possession of older galleries devote each year increasing sums to the support of their collections. Here as elsewhere the old centrifugal tendencies in Germany worked to the advantage of places which though now far from the imperial or state centre, still retain collections dating from the munificence of some petty dynasty long since mediatized or expelled. Thus the student who would know Germany's holdings of the world's masterpieces must visit not only Berlin, Dresden and Munich, but also Cassel and Diisseldorf. To these older collections modern civic wealth, spurred on by civic pride, has added such collections as those in the city galleries at Frankfort and Leipsic. Thus the cities, not one or two, but a dozen, are bidders for works of art, and load their budgets with items for this pur- pose which a century ago would have stocked the Dresden gallery. Up to recent years no special effort had been put forth to make these collections usable for the great public, beyond opening the galleries with- out charge on certain days in the week. Since 1900, however, a great movement has spread with the watch- words, "art for everybody," "art in daily life" and 3i6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS "art in the life of the child." One result has been that several cities have made an effort to increase the use of the city collections by the "unartistic" classes by the addition of cheap books of information to the formi- dable and expensive catalogues and the introduction of lecture courses with expert guidance through the gal- leries. CHAPTER XV Conservatism and Progress in Education Goethe once remarked that every writer whom the Germans admire is a great teacher. He might have gone further and said that every German of full moral stature is a natural pedagogue. There is something in the German character, with its gift for method and its innate sense of discipHne, which makes the Germans as a nation the best teachers and scholars in the world, something which makes of the empire a vast school- house in which every age and rank teaches and is taught. Everywhere within the national boundary posts rule the order and regularity of the model school with its system of merit and demerit, of absolute rule and un- questioning obedience, varied by violent and immature protest, which in the end invariably yields to better counsels of order and disciphne. This love of order, the gift for disciphne and submergence of the individual will, the reverence for the traditional, all of which find their expression poHtically in the submission of a people of the highest moral development occupying the apex of modern culture to a government which is still ab- solutist and semi-feudal, show a briUiant reverse in the efficiency of the nation's social and business or- ganization. The colossal mihtary system with its machine-Hke order, the well-ordered administration of every form of associative effort from the city of Berlin to the humblest rural consumers' league in Pomerania or Silesia, the organization of industry and commerce which brought Germany in less than half a century to the second place among exporting and carrying powers, 317 3i8 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS — all derive their efficiency from the German ability to "take training," all reflect in a way the methods of the school, as indeed aU are closely associated with Germany's vast school system. It is not merely that from the Renaissance down we find a German name to place beside one chosen from any other race to adorn the Kst of great teachers. Such men as Melanchthon, Leibniz, Fichte and Wilhelm von Humboldt are not sporadic offshoots of the race but the normal product of racial development. Their work is intertwined with the whole history of Germany's rise to greatness. On the other hand, there has hardly been a great German from Luther to Frederick the Great and Bismarck who has not built himself in some way into the nation's school system. Even the petty despots of the eighteenth century, with their dissolute lives and cynical scorn of the public welfare, took good and gener- ous care of the schools. One of them, Schiller's ancestral tyrant, Karl Eugen of Wiirtemberg, sold his peasants to fight French battles and loaded down the hills about Stuttgart with lavish structures paid for by the blood and sweat of his subjects, and yet in the days of his broken tyranny gave himself up, like another broken tyrant, the younger Dionysius of Syracuse, to an enthu- siasm for teaching. The school is no less intertwined with the nation's present than with its past. Every part of Germany's system is dependent on the school and interlocked with it; even the highest birth and greatest wealth are im- avaihng to win real place in the intricate mechanism of the nation's government or industry unless the holder has at least gone through the form of a regular prepara- tion in the higher institutions or the technical schools. Like the army, the school does allow special privileges to those who have name and wealth, but like the army it is also democratic in permitting no one, whatever his birth or means, to escape its discipline. It applies CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 319 its acid test to all who pass through its hands and marks them indehbly as "good," "fair" or "deficient." And as the Germans feel that the army guarantees their national existence from without, so the school is the sheet anchor of Germany's greatness within. Not only must every German attend school, but every one who aspires to be more than a mere laborer or lay figure in the nation's progress must make school the serious business of his Hfe, for throughout fife he is tagged with the results of his schooling. It has been often said that the Hfe of the German boy of class is a hurdle track of examinations, each of them no formal paper test, but the fitting cKmax of years of effort. At sixteen years of age or thereabouts comes the " volunteer examination," which allows him the privilege of one year's service in the army as a volunteer instead of two years as a conscript ; upon that follows three years later the graduation exami- nation, which frees him from the school and admits him to the universities and preparation for a learned career. On these follow the doctor examination winning the title so necessary for a full place in the intellectual-social system, and the state's examination, fijially admitting him to his profession. In addition the technical students and the young disciples of medicine and law have their university path and professional apprenticeship strewn with practical tests . Each examination is conscientiously conducted, and the professional man goes through life tagged with the result of each. Once entered upon a career higher than that of a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, there is no avoiding the hurdles, and if the unfortunate candidate knocks one over or tips it, the fact is at once noted, and he is lucky if it is not henceforth a serious handicap to him in the course of life. He may try again, but a second success cannot wipe out the memory of the first failure. The intricacy of the German school system is natural in view of its age and of the complex interests to be 320 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS served. School organization and administration is con- servative everywhere, and in a country like Germany, where, as has been said, not altogether waggishly, one- half of the people are busy teaching and giving examina- tions to the other half, the schools are so interwoven with the national Hfe that they are inextricably mixed up with age-old social, confessional and racial problems, some of which must wait yet many generations for a solution. The result is that the educational system in Germany is like a time-honored building, which has had a wing added here and a window punched yonder, with marks still remaining from the removal of unsightly parts, so that the whole makes on the observer the im- pression of a structure that is extremely efficient, though formless and in places much in need of repair. Only a few experts know their way around in the rambling building, and even these are unwilling to trust them- selves into some of its nooks and crannies without the guidance of the minister of education or some one of his satraps. Each biennial meeting of the great elementary teachers' federation, the Deutscher Lehrerverein, which had in 1914 over one hundred and twenty thousand members, calls for a reform and a codification of the school laws in the larger German states. The convention of the association in Diisseldorf in 1908 demanded an imperial law which should take school affairs, hke the military, the post and the telegraph, largely out of the hands of the individual states. This call for a stronger central- ization in school affairs has foimd few echoes in Ger- many, since there are many who believe that the highly diversified character of the empire requires that abun- dant freedom should be left not only to the individual states but to the local school authorities as well. It is therefore not altogether a misfortune that political and confessional rivalries in the two largest German states, Prussia and Bavaria, have thus far prevented any simpli- CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 321 fication and unification of the school laws and will doubt- less long continue to stand in the way of such a move. As a result of the lack of legislation both of these states intrust their ministers of education with wide authority, and the regulations issued by the ministry have piled up into a mass of precedent which is about as binding as law. The lack of a broad basis of law is particularly felt in the case of the Volksschule, the elementary school, upon which approximately 94 per cent of all Germans are de- pendent for their education. The growing spirit of democracy which we have noticed in so many other phases of German life demands that all children should be required to attend the Volksschule, and that the way be opened for the graduates of the Volksschule into the secondary school system and from there into the higher callings. To the demand for a greater democratization of the elementary schools is added that of the schoolmen for a greater elasticity in the program of studies, and another, emanating from representatives of many classes, for the entire secularization of the schools, or at least for a removal of church supervision of religious teaching. In the fight for the unburdening of the schools from religious instruction many of those interested in the secondary schools have also joined. Secondary educa- tion, which has practically won the fight waged since 1890 for breaking the monopoly of the classical Gym- nasium and the admission of modem culture as repre- sented by the natural sciences and the modern languages to equal rank with the so-called humanities as a prepara- tion for the professions, demands with increasing insist- ence to be freed from all religious guardianship. Add to these manifestations of the growth of a new spirit the rise of technical education, the demand for greater facili- ties for manual training and the yearning for more individualism in the work of both teacher and pupil as an offset to the growing bureaucracy of administration, 322 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS and we have some of the reforms which occupy the minds of those who have been working for a greater adaptation of the work of the schools to the forward movement of the nation. More insistent still in their demands on the purse of the nation are the continuation schools, which extend over the whole field of practical, vocational instruction and occupy the young army of Germany's workers from two to five years after leaving the Volksschule. This graduate instruction of the working class has taken on ever greater proportions and represents Germany's greatest advance in the educational field since the beginning of the new century. Such a glance as that which we have just taken at the tendencies of progress in matters of education in Germany shows the intricacy of the system by which the Germans have won first place among the greater nations in the matter of schools. The foundation of this system is the Volksschule, which is in the truest sense of the word the basis of the nation's greatness. The success of the Volksschule has been said to rest upon two factors : the severe professional training of the teachers, to whom the state assures a fixed and permanent appointment at a living wage with a fair pension, and the rigid carry- ing out of the law compelling parents to send their chil- dren to school. By the former the schools are assured of a fairly adequate number of male teachers who have been trained for six years for the profession, by the latter the German child is led to look upon the attendance on school for eight years during approximately forty- eight weeks of the year as fixed and unavoidable a requirement of nature as the coming and going of the seasons. Since the days of Frederick the Great education has been compulsory in Prussia. The same requirement has long prevailed, of course, in all of the German states, and begins practically everywhere with the sixth year, continuing until the fourteenth. Wherever, as in CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 323 Bavaria, schooling covers only the thirteenth year, the child is not permitted to leave school until he has passed an examination showing that the required work has been properly done. So thoroughly do the German ad- ministrative ofl&cers enforce this requirement that il- Hteracy has practically disappeared within the black- white-red boundary posts, scarcely one in two thousand conscripts drawn in for service at twenty years of age being without schooling. What the Volksschule, the continental parallel of New England's Httle red school- house, has done since the days of the great Frederick in nationahzing the eastern provinces of Prussia has been indicated in a previous chapter. In order to study its effectiveness one needs only to compare the educational equipment of the natives of the neighboring provinces of Belgium, Austria and Russia with that of the German worker, who of whatever condition in life, can always read and write and has mastered the elements of mathe- matics, geography and the history of his native land. In 1899 the German fleet visited Vigo in Spain, where several Spanish cruisers were anchored. During the fraternizing of the jackies of the two nations mail was delivered to the German sailors from their consulate. Great was the astonishment of the Spaniards when every German tar received mail and their marvelling passed all bounds when it was seen that each one proceeded to open and read his own letters. Rare indeed is the German child who escapes the school. He enters its portals in obedience to a law as inevitable as the coming of the equinoxes; once there, his training goes forward in the elements of knowledge, with the constant by-products of religion and patriotism, with military regularity and precision. The German elementary teacher takes his place beside the German drill sergeant as the foundation of the nation's unique position in the world. In addition to the idealism which makes the teacher the world over willing to lay 324 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS up for himself treasures of a sort not to be deposited in banks, the German Volksschule teacher enjoys a prepara- tion for his work which gives him a unique position when compared with those of his craft elsewhere. No elementary teacher in the service of the German state "happens" into the profession; none uses it merely as a stepping stone to some other Hfe work. The candidate for a teacher's p>osition after graduation from the Volks- schide spends three or more years in a preparatory institu- tion, which is in most cases a state school, and then three years more in a state seminary. If he enjoys a stipend, as many do, during the years of instruction, he binds himself to enter the state's service as teacher; in any case he finds himself at twenty years of age with other professions closed to him, but with a thorough equip- ment for his life's work in giving elementary instruction to Young Germany. When he enters the state's service, his salary is small, — the average for Germany is under five hundred dollars a year, — but so long as he performs his duties and keeps free from Radical or Socialist en- tanglements, his position is secure for life ; he is entirely indep>endent of political changes, and on retirement he enjoys a pension which enables him to face the future without misgivings. He may find opportunities for university study, it is possible to become the principal of a school, and in some cases — though not in Prussia — school inspector ; but as a general thing the higher walks of the profession are closed to him with the finality of the German system of specialization, which decides the future of every boy before he is well into long trousers. The primary school-teacher would not be a German if he did not love his work and give himself up to it with devotion. His peculiar training has given him what teachers the world over most lack, a pride in profession, an esprit de corps, which may chafe under feudal and clerical restrictions but is sincerely religious and devotedly patriotic. CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 325 Naturally the rapid growth of Germany's population has put a tremendous strain upon the elementary school system ; and it is inevitable that in many sections great numbers of children are still herded together under one teacher. Especially in the Prussian East, where the school has had an important task in the nationalization of the Polish elements, there is a great lack of teachers and a consequent overcrowding of the schools. In the period 1891-1912 the number of children in the elemen- tary schools of the empire had increased from approxi- mately eight to ten millions, the number of teachers from 120,000 to 180,000, the average per teacher falling from 66 to 55, while the average expenditure per scholar had doubled, from 30 to 60 marks. It is unavoidable that a large number of children have to be kept on half time ; and according to figures submitted at the conven- tion of the Deutscher Lehrerverein in 191 2 one and one- quarter million of the children were still crowded into classes of from 60 to 150. Saxony, whose industrial development has rivalled that of the Prussian West, had in 1906 more than 6 per cent of its primary pupils in classes of over 80. Conditions have, however, improved in this regard, for, as has just been shown, while from 1891 to 191 2 the enrolment of the Volksschule increased 25 per cent, the number of teachers increased 30.5 per cent, and the average disbursement per scholar doubled. The Lehrerverein found, indeed, the increase of teachers quite inadequate to keep up with the demands of modem life; and pointed out that in the same period the em- ployees of postal and telegraph services had increased 87 per cent. The comparison is another testimonial to the wide-awakeness and solidarity of the German teachers, who are constantly dinning into the ears of the ministry what they regard as the inadequacy of the school system : that of ten millions of children four millions are crowded into large classes and receive scarcely more than the beginnings of instruction, that 326 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the school buildings are much inferior to those in Eng- land and America and that the teachers are underpaid and overworked. To these laments, which are heard from teachers the world over, they add certain ones pecuhar to the German system: the struggle with the confessional question and the caste spirit, which closes to the teacher in the elementary school the avenues of promotion to higher places in the hierarchy of educa- tion by demanding for these places the university train- ing from which in Prussia and some other states he is excluded. Beside, and as a continuation of, the Volksschule exist, especially in the larger towns, Burgerschulen or "middle schools," which by the addition of a modern language and other studies prolong the child's training for one or more years beyond the eight years required for the primary school. They are a sort of link between ele- mentary and secondary education, opening the way into certain trade and technical schools; but gradua- tion from them does not admit to the privileges of one year military service, a right which entitles the posses- sor to regard himself as of the upper caste, and which automatically falls to the graduates of the so-called " higher schools." These higher schools, which make up what may be called secondary education in Germany, form a some- what intricate system, and dovetail at last into a higher trade or technical institution or into the universities. The striking and undemocratic feature of the system, which has already been noted, is that the Volksschule does not form the basis for all education, but that second- ary education is built up separately and independently of it. The German system does not regard it as desir- able that the children of the classes, the future political and intellectual rulers of the nation, should mingle in tender years in schoolroom and on the playground with the children of the masses, and there are not many CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 327 voices heard against the caste segregation which is so old and integral a part of the Fatherland's institutions. Increased criticism is heard, however, among the popu- lar parties of the speciaKzation which excludes graduates of the primary school, except in very rare instances, from the possibility of later transference to higher institutions and from participation in the professions and the so- called "higher callings." Nothing less than the secondary school with a six-year course, — the Pro gymnasia and Real- schulen, or private institutions approved by the govern- ment and much more expensive than the pubKc schools — will obtain the coveted "one year volunteer" privilege and admission to the higher schools of agriculture and art as well as to the second class of technical schools and pre- ferred positions in the government service. The schools with a nine-year course — Gymnasia, Realgymnasia and Oberrealschule — are the only road to the university de- grees and professions. All of these schools take the boy at nine years of age, after he has received three years of elementary schooling, which may be had in the Volks- schule, in preparatory institutions attached to the second- ary school or in the licensed elementary schools, which serve their purpose in preparing for the higher institu- tions. Several of the German states, including Bavaria, Saxony and Baden, do not license private elementary schools, and the existence of these private Vorschulen is condemned by German pedagogues because it breaks the symmetry of the whole educational plan. As has been remarked, the number of voices is increasing year by year which call for a reorganization that shall in some way build secondary education upon a broader basis, opening the higher schools to every child, accord- ing to lus ability, without regard to the social and finan- cial standing of his parents. For the present, then, secondary education is not to be regarded as a link between the Volksschule and the institutions of university grade. Only in extraordinary 328 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS instances can the graduate of the popular school or its extension, the "middle school" (Biirgerschule) , find his way into any higher institution of learning ; he does not enjoy the privilege of one-year military service. It is about this privilege that the whole system of secondary education revolves ; and it maintains in the higher schools of Germany a spirit of caste, which like every other mani- festation of the same kind is directly opposed to the spirit of liberal culture. It is this privilege, joined to the pressing demand of modern life for early specializa- tion, that maintains and fills the group of six-year schools, — the Progymnasium, Prorealgymnasium and Real- schule, — whose graduates, having enjoyed to their sixteenth year or thereabouts a strenuous training based on classical and modern culture, pass out into business or into industrial and technical institutions which pre- pare them for the middle walks of technical or official life. The number of such schools increased rapidly as Germany's industrial and commercial life grew and new lines of industry opened, demanding an earlier apprenticeship. The six-year schools are an earnest effort to meet these demands and at the same time fur- nish the business and industrial leaders of Germany with a sound basis of liberal culture : unfortunately the feeling of caste attached to the "one-year privilege" attracts into them a great many whose parents can ill afford the sacrifice, and many others who could best serve their generation in the lower walks of life. The number of such intellectually bad investments is naturally much smaller in the group of nine-year institutions, which prepare for the universities and for all of the higher technical and official places. At their head marches the time-honored Gymnasium, where Greek and Latin still maintain their age-old position as the backbone of a liberal culture. After it comes in point of prestige the Realgymnasium, which has banished Greek and installed the modern languages in its place; CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 329 and last of all the Oberrealschule, where instruction rests on modern languages, mathematics and the natural sciences. Not over one per cent of the school enrolment of Germany is in attendance on this group of nine-year schools in any one year; and the demands which the schools make is best evidenced by the fact that a con- siderable percentage of those who enter drop out without completing the course, for the most part after passing the one-year military service examination. Neverthe- less the number of these schools has constantly increased, to the alarm of a considerable body of reactionary poh- ticians and, it must be said also, not a few progressive schoolmen. The former see in the growing number of men preparing for the universities, among them a large number very poorly equipped with financial means to launch themselves in the professions, an increase in the "intellectual proletariat," which since Bismarck's day has been charged with furnishing Social Democratic leaders and unruly spirits of all sorts. The latter feel that the learned professions are already overcrowded and that a large number of the graduates of the higher schools must of necessity enter pursuits and professions for which the secondary schools, from the Gymnasium, most determined in its defense of the classics, to the Oberrealschule, most liberal towards modern culture, give Httle preparation but rather an ww-preparation by their attitude toward the productive pursuits. In their own field, that of a liberal education as a basis for professional study, these schools are unique in the spirit which fills them and their teaching corps. To praise their accompHshments would be to paint the Hly and adorn the rose. Their teachers are practically all university-trained men, who with five years of study have passed the state's examination, usually after win- ning the title of *' doctor of philosophy." They have then spent one year in pedagogical study under seminary instruction with the school as a laboratory, followed by a 330 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS trial year of teaching under the supervision of a vigorous school principal, before they are fully certificated. Add- ing to this a year of military service and a period of wait- ing averaging of late five years, during which the teacher does substitute work in preparation for a permanent appointment to a vacancy, and we see that the secondary school teacher passes through something like thirteen years of professional study and experimental teaching before the state finally appoints him to full charge of class work. Once appointed, however, he has a Hving salary, a fair pension allowance and a position that is secure if he does his duty and often secure when years of tenure have brought a slouchy performance of duty. Besides this, his social position, while yet considerably below that of the university professor, is nevertheless increasingly honorable. Under the circumstances it is no wonder that the secondary school-teachers are filled with a strong professional pride and a spirit of scientific investigation, which, to be sure, sometimes results in neglect of school duty for the sake of producing some well-nigh useless fragment of investigative scholarship, but which fires the work of the energetic and progressive teacher with the creative spirit that passes like a burning torch to his pupils and prepares them for the severe charms of university scholarship. It is apparent from the foregoing that the strength of Germany's educational system lies in specialization, its greatest weakness in the hard and fast way in which the pupil in the popular Volksschule is shut out from a share in the benefits of a liberal education. The ele- mentary school contains just what is necessary for the training of pious and patriotic townsmen and peasants; whatsoever is more than that belongs to the nation's social and intellectual elite, whose course diverges from that of the children of the Volk at about the tender age of nine. A similar specialization goes on within the secondary school system, for at the same age, i.e. on CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 331 entry into the secondary school, the father of the pupil must decide whether his young hopeful is to enter a pro- fession for which the humanistic preparation of the Gymnasium is required or whether the humanistic- modern training of the Realgymnasium or the modern training of the Realschule best suits the youngster's future career. The task is by no means so difficult as it was before the royal decree of 1900 broke the gym- nasial monopoly. Up to that time only the Gymnasium could prepare the student for the study of law, medicine and theology at the university; since then Prussia, followed by the other states, has opened all the pro- fessions to students of the ''Real" institutions, except the profession of theology, where the training in Greek is still regarded as an absolute condition. Even before the School Conference of 1890 and the royal decree of 1900 efforts had been made to miti- gate the evil of this extreme specialization. As early as 1894 experiments had been made at Altona and Frankfort on the Main in the direction of postponing the decision as to the pupil's choice of preparation and a life calling, and a system had been evolved that was variously baptized according to its several varieties, the most popular of which bears the name of the ''Frank- fort plan," because first developed in the famous Goethe Gymnasium in Frankfort. This system provides for an arrangement of studies which permits the pupils of all three institutions — Gymnasium, Realgymnasium and Oherrealschule — to pursue their studies together for three years and then makes it possible for those who study Latin to go on two years longer together before a decision has finally to be made between the strictly humanistic and the humanistic-modern ideal of culture. The need of such a plan, by which the heavy responsi- bility of the parent is delayed until some idea can be had of the child's aptitudes, has received abundant proof through the popularity of the "reform" schools, which 332 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS are further recommended for the sound pedagogical reason that they permit further concentration on fewer subjects and consequently less splitting up of the pupil's time than is allowable in the older system. By 1910 fully 20 per cent of the German secondary schools were conducted according to the "Frankfort" or the "Altona plan" or some minor variation of them ; and despite the opposition of the Gymnasia, which see their peculiar institution threatened by this commingling, the "reform" movement has apparently won the day and marked the route upon which future reforms in secondary education must travel. No less interesting was the very popular experiment made in Berlin with the curricula of the Realschulen, which by delaying the commencement of a modern language until the third year makes it possible for the student to attend the Volksschule for five years before he enters on the higher school. By 1913 the num- ber of these schools had increased to 13. The success and popularity of this arrangement is encouraging because it marks a trend toward greater democracy in the schools.^ Enough has been said to show that the battle of the centuries between ancient and modern culture is still waging in Germany. However, the breaking of the gymnasial monopoly in 1900 and the rapid multiplica- tion of the modern municipal Realschulen under the drive of modern business has put the venerable human- istic institutions more and more into a defensive attitude. A similar movement has been noticeable in the growth of the technical universities, which have gradually won their way to equality with the time-honored academies ^ A further evidence of the drift towards democracy is the increased interest in the " union school," which formed one of the subjects of dis- cussion at the Deutscher Lehrertag at Kiel in 1914. This Einheitsschule, which should unite the children of all classes until the age of 12, was a dream of the liberals of 1848. It has been successfully experimented with in Hamburg and other places, but finds no favor with the Prussian au- thorities. In Prussia, however, many of the cities have scholarships, which permit the transfer of bright pupils from the Volksschule at an early age to " free places " in the secondary schools. CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 333 of higher learning that have been Germany's glory for centuries. There are now eleven of these technical institutions of university rank in Germany, most of them founded in the first half of the nineteenth century as vocational schools and advanced through the addi- tion of various departments after the middle of the century to the rank of polytechnic academies. Half a century ago the universities might have absorbed these institutions as technical departments, but academic conservatism stood in the way. Since that time they have seen their younger technical sisters gradually fight their way to university rank in spite of the opposition and contempt, of the older humanistic institutions, until finally in 1899 the Emperor conferred the right of grant- ing the degree of "doctor of technical science" upon the Technical University at Charlottenburg and thereby set the stamp of equality with the university. These polytechnic institutions march at the head of the whole system of technical and industrial education in Germany. Their students must have pursued a nine-year course in the secondary schools; their grad- uates become inventors, engineers, superintendents and heads of larger industrial enterprises. They are expected not only to lead along the old ways of technical science, but also to mark out new ones, for the creative spirit which has been the glory of German advanced scholar- ship everywhere marks them also. Next below them in the training of the army of technical students are institu- tions, like the Royal Industrial Academy (Gewerbe Aka- demie) at Chemnitz in Saxony, with departments of mechanics, chemistry and architecture, which require for admission a six-years course in the secondary school. These bridge over the gap between the technical uni- versities and the great group of intermediate industrial schools. The latter are practically all vocational in character. Their students have had a course in the Volksschule followed by a course in an elementary indus- 334 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS trial school or a continuation school; their graduates become the officers of larger factories and the superin- tendents of smaller shops and are known as " technicians." Upon these intermediate schools follow the lower voca- tional schools, whose students have completed the Volks- schule, with additional work in mathematics and drawing. They have also usually entered upon an apprenticeship in the branch which the school teaches. The training in these elementary vocational schools sticks close to the practical side of the trade, and lasts sometimes for months, more usually, with interruptions, for years. From some of them come the foremen in large factories or the managers of small undertakings. Others succeed only in preparing well-trained machinists, engineers or electricians. To these schools, all of which are day institutions requiring almost the whole time of the student, is to be added a fourth group — the continuation schools. The continuation school system, largely a creation of the industrial and commercial demands of Germany since the eighties, is regarded with justice as a triumph of German pedagogy. It has, however, grown so fast, keeping pace with the empire's rapid industrial advance, that legislation has not been able to keep up with it. In many of the states no attempt has yet been made to bring the continuation schools under state control. The Prussian government brought in a bill in the Land- tag in 1 91 3 for state regulation, but it soon got into diffi- culties through the injection of confessional and political or semi-political questions. In the largest state, which is accustomed to lead in matters of education as in other things, the continuation school has as yet been left en- tirely to the individual communities, the state con- tributing to the schools only when education is made compulsory. In most Prussian communities attendance is compulsory for three years after the completion of the Volksschule. In Saxony boys must attend three CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 335 years, girls two; in Bavaria both sexes must attend three years. These schools are a remarkable testi- monial to the industry and ambition of German youth, who give up their Sunday mornings and week-day evenings to study, for as a rule instruction extends from eight to ten hours per week. A number of the con- tinuation schools have a general character and include German, drawing, some mathematics and a Httle law and history ; but the better ones are vocational schools, preparing directly for some trade or business, and as is to be expected, the better and more enthusiastic class of students attend these. The continuation scheme in- cludes in the larger cities an intricate system of schools for the widest variety of vocations, from machine-build- ing, textile work and horology to blacksmithing and barbering. It draws into its widespread net boys and girls of fourteen to eighteen and older from almost every hamlet in the Fatherland. It is the graduate and professional continuation of the Volksschule and takes care that the young German worker does not waste his,, evenings and Sunday mornings, but invests them as interest-bearing capital for the nation's commerce and industry. CHAPTER XVI State and Church in the Schools Even so rapid a survey of Germany's educational system as that in the preceding chapter must give an idea of the vastness and intricacy of it. Next to the military system, which it resembles and with which it interlocks in so striking a fashion, it lies closer to the heart of the German lawgiver than any other institution of the state. "Whoever controls the schools, controls the future," is an adage which the Germans have at all times taken very much to heart, and never so much as in recent years, when the rise of Socialism and atheism have threatened the existence of society as now constituted. In both the school conferences called by William II, in 1890 and 1900, which were attended by such important results, especially for secondary education, the national task of the school was strongly emphasized; and the bearing of the educational system on the future of both church and state has been the subject of frequent dis- cussion in all the state parliaments. " The community supports education, the state controls it," is a maxim to which the German governments cling tenaciously. In practically all of the states a sharp control is exercised by the government authorities over the establishment of new schools, the erection of school buildings and the appointment and pay of teachers, while the expense of elementary education in greater part and of secondary education in part, is borne by the individual communities. In Prussia school affairs are administered jointly with medical and religious matters by one ministry. This department, through 336 STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 337 the provincial school boards, under the chairmanship of the provincial president or his representative, brings all of the schools in direct dependency on the crown. The provincial school boards are composed of trained schoolmen, selected for their efficiency and naturally also for their tried loyalty to the government ; and the oversight of all elementary and secondary education in the province falls under their control. On their recom- mendation the department of education fixes the course of study, determines the salary and pensions of the teachers, controls the examinations for teachers and pupils, and in many cases appoints the teachers or confirms their appointment by the local school boards. Under these provincial boards the elementary schools are regularly inspected by district inspectors, of whom about 30 per cent (1910) give all of their time to school affairs. The other 70 per cent are chosen mainly from the clergy, who also play a considerable role as district inspectors in the states outside of Prussia. The Volks- schulen are further subject to a local inspection, which in Prussia and most of the other states is largely in the hands of the local clergy, a state of affairs that will come up for further discussion below. In Prussia particularly the teachers in the primary schools look forward eagerly to the time when the schools shall be freed from local inspectors and when district supervision shall not be in the hands so largely of jurists and clergy, but, as is al- ready the case in certain of the smaller German states, of trained professional schoolmen. Every move in this direction, however, is bitterly opposed by the Centre and Conservative parties, who look upon the church as the mother of the schools and regard any spread of the system of professional district inspection as a blow at clerical influence. In the smaller states, where reli- gious differences do not play so large a part as in Prussia and Bavaria, state control of the schools is more direct and thorough. SS^ THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS The state, therefore, through a strongly centralized administration controls the schools in their organization and activity. The community pays the bills for some- what under 70 per cent of the German elementary school system, and through the local school board exercises a legislative and advisory voice in all that concerns the outer welfare of the schools. The board is variously organ- ized in the various states; but its make-up is essen- tially the same everywhere. Whether in city or country, it includes the representatives of the local administration, certain teachers or school principals, the local clergy of the three recognized faiths (evangelical, Roman Catholic and Jewish) and representative citizens from the local legis- lative body. This school committee provides the money for the support of the schools and in some cases selects teachers from eligible lists prepared by the department of education. In everything, including the pay and pension of teachers and the plans for new buildings, it must conform to the provisions of the state authorities. With the inner administration of the schools it has nothing to do, its members in most places not even having the right to attend classes or inspect in any way the work of the schools. In Prussia the state provides a large part of the pensions and backs up the weaker communities financially in the maintenance of the schools and the building of new ones, especially in those districts of the eastern marches where the work of the schools in the Germanization of the Poles is of such importance. In fact, state aid is an important item and one on which the Volksschulen in the poorer communities throughout all Germany count. In 1906 the share of the states' contributions, not including the education of teachers and inspection, summed up 29 per cent of the total cost of the elementary schools for the empire. Of secondary schools a considerable part are through- out Germany state affairs. These state Gymnasia are usually old foundations, for in recent years the govern- STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 339 ment authorities in the larger German states have closely restricted the opening of new state secondary- schools. With Bismarck's warning against an "edu- cated proletariat" ringing in their ears, conservative lawmakers and government oihcials have been very- unwilling to increase the schools that prepare for learned careers. "The attendance on the university far exceeds the demand," declared a leader of the Conservative "Imperial Party" in the Prussian Landtag in 191 2. " By this means there has arisen an educated proletariat which is a danger to the state. It is from among such men, whose careers are wrecked, that the Social Demo- crats draw their best strength. Every increase in university attendance must increase this danger." It is indeed not solely for political reasons that objection is made to the multipHcation of candidates for the learned professions. Germany certainly needs business men and farmers, technicians and handworkers, and not more lawyers, physicians and philologians, whom the ambition for the social prestige that comes with a learned title and calling rather than any sympathy with their life's work is driving into overcrowded pro- fessions. However, the refusal of the state govern- ments to found new schools has spurred the pride of the rapidly growing cities to open on their own account a number of secondary schools, which often outstrip the older and more dignified state institutions in their equipment and salary Hst. Thus while in Bavaria all of the secondary schools are state institutions, in Prussia a great number of them are ci-vic and in Saxony almost all are municipal foundations. The older state institutions, some of which trace their history from the sixteenth century, claim a certain prestige of age and tradition that even the splendid equipment of the new city schools has not yet greatly diminished. Of the Gymnasia in Prussia, two-fifths are now city affairs, while practically all the Realgymnasia and Realschulen 340 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS are municipal foundations. The six-year Realschule, indeed, with its emphasis of modern culture and a more practical education, is the most distinguished contribu- tion of the city spirit to intellectual Germany. The city must of course obtain governmental approval before a new school is founded, and while this is given readily enough where a real need exists, it is subject to the fulfilment of every state requirement as to build- ings and equipment. In these respects, indeed, the municipahty usually goes much farther than the re- quirements, for nowhere have the growing wealth of the cities and their strong civic pride shown themselves more splendidly than in their magnificent school build- ings and the generous provision in equipment and in pay to the teachers. In this regard they have set far too fast a pace for the older state institutions. These evidences of the modem spirit in the schools are a noteworthy sign of the growth of democracy in the German cities. It is the lack of democracy in the state's attitude toward the schools that forms the chief burden of complaint among German teachers. State control is in most ways very beneficial. It normalizes the schools and organizes them under a central control, which puts highly trained men in charge and insures the appointment of the best teachers available. It provides a system of supervision which, so far as it is done by professionally trained inspectors, guarantees the proper performance of duty, without fear of local influences, by every functionary from the principal down to the last, substitute. As a result, the whole system, from the East Prussian one-class Volksschule up to the venerable monastery-like Schul-Pforta near Naumburg, is characterized by German method, thor- oughness and conscientious performance of duty. On the other hand, it is due to state supervision that the same barriers against democracy are maintained in the schools as in the poHtical life of Prussia and other Ger- STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 341 man states. It is due to reactionary forces working in parliament and ministry that distinctions of class still prevent the logical articulation of primary educa- tion into secondary education. As we have seen, the schools are not organically built up. The Volksschule is for the masses which are cut off from the social and intellectual ehte of the nation in even the earhest years of school life. This essentially undemocratic character of the schools is bitterly assailed by the teachers of the Volksschule, but there are at present few signs of a change. It is natural also that progressive teachers, whether of elementary or secondary schools, should demand a larger share of at least an advisory sort in the conduct of the schools. In 191 1 Baden, one of the most pro- gressive of the German states in the direction of popular government, founded a school council (Landesschulrat) , composed of members of the ministry and professional schoolmen, whose business it is to oversee the schools and advise the ministry as to their administration. Something like this is especially desired in the larger states, where the ideal of many teachers is the creation of school ''synods," elective like the church synods from citizens and school experts, so that the school interests of each district and province and of the state itself may be cared for by an elective body, consisting in part of "laymen" and in part of trained teachers. Such bodies, the champions of this system contend, would without interfering in any way with the admirable sides of the state's inspection and control, administer the affairs of the schools in a much more homogeneous and democratic manner than is possible imder the present highly diversified system. However, such a imified scheme finds strenuous opposition among those who believe that the very variety of the Prussian school organization is necessary and secures better results in view of the wide differences in population and spirit 342 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS between the feudal East, the patriarchal North and the industrial West of the kingdom. In this effort of the teachers to increase their influence on the school administration there is another evidence of the rise of professional pride among a class which has, after many struggles, at last won for itself a recog- nized place in the state bureaucracy, second only to that of the army and those higher officials who owe their position to early financial and social advantages. With this growth of professional pride there has spread among the schools in the development of the new em- pire a spirit of militarism which, especially after the beginning of the new century, quite took possession of the secondary schools. This spirit has shown itself throughout the empire, but finds, like other things military, its most striking form in Prussia. The Prus- sian schoolmaster is like the Prussian in general by nature and training a soldier, and the Prussian school- boy falls in unresistingly with the spirit of rigid discipline and unwavering obedience that has been so characteristic of his native land since the days of Frederick William I and has become so characteristic of Germany under Prussian hegemony. The procession of children who follow their teacher on an afternoon excursion through the suburbs of Berhn or Hanover is a vivid illustration of the military spirit. Two and two they march, with unbroken step, halting at a crowded corner in obedience to a wave of the teacher's hand or deploying into the fields at their marshal's signal, — no dodging under trolley cars or staring into store windows or other acts of insubordination so inseparable from schoolboydom elsewhere. More striking still is the spirit of militarism in the secondary schools, where the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome have been taught with an ever increasing tendency to Prussian Schneid. Many of the secondary school-teachers are officers in the reserve forces or the Landsturm, an in- STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 343 vasion of the temple of Minerva by the spirit of Mars which has been encouraged by the higher school authori- ties. It means that the spirit of high personal honor and devotion to the Fatherland is coupled with a control of men and a demeanor toward the students that sets perfect discipline and high national patriotism above every other consideration. It is but natural that such men should take as their model the officers' class, socially so much superior to that of the teacher, and that they should bring into the schools, along with high national ideals, a further deepening of the caste spirit. This spirit of caste is, as we have seen, still further encouraged by the fact that the secondary school student is the possessor of a special class privilege, the one-year mihtary service. It is a privilege which brings con- siderable cost upon the family of the student, for while the Volksschule is practically free in Prussia and attended by so small a cost in the other states as to be a burden to no parent, in the secondary schools the tuition cost averages twenty to twenty-five dollars annually, and even if he study no further after the service examination (Abschlusspriifung) has secured him his privilege of one-year service, the "volunteer" soldier has to bear the expense of his equipment and board during his year of service. In return, the "volunteer" has certain much-coveted rights, such as the privilege of living outside the barracks, the freedom from certain menial duties, the postponement of service four years later than the conscript and the right of choice as to the arm of the service he wishes to enter. More important still, he may advance to subordinate office during his service, and later, if he is capable, be commissioned as an officer of the reserve forces, with the social pres- tige thereto attached. The "one-year privilege" is closely watched over by the Imperial School Commis- sion, and the entry of incompetents among the "vol- 344 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS unteers" is barred by a rigid examination, rigidly ad- ministered. The privileges accorded to the "one-year volunteers" make of these young men, who constitute about 3 per cent of the total number enrolled under the imperial colors each year, a special class and intro- duce into the schools a spirit which the opponents of the system in Germany characterize as highly un- democratic. We have seen that the social privileges attaching to this arrangement bring into the secondary schools numbers of young men who would best serve the Fatherland by preparing for trade or commerce, and that indirectly through its working, numbers tend to crowd into the universities and later overcrowd the professions. The growth of the military spirit in the schools has been strongly encouraged by the state. "I am looking for soldiers," declared the Emperor in 1890 in calling together the conference which resulted in the increase of Realschulen. That the militarizing of the schools has been of immense advantage to the army as a ma- chine of offense and defense has been abundantly proved by the history of the great war. That this govern- mental encouragement of militarism in the schools has gone hand in hand with the discouragement of liberal tendencies is the burden of lament of Radical and Social- ist papers whenever the school question has come up for discussion. In 1890 the Emperor charged that the schools were not adequately performing their duty in combating the spread of Socialist propaganda, and the same charge is constantly repeated in the Conservative press and in parliament. "We are now in the midst of a struggle about the conditions of life," declared the Conservative representative Heckenroth in the Reichstag in 191 2. "In this struggle we demand that the teachers stand on the side of Christians and patriots, and that they make the children pious, God-fearing and strong in faith, so that the young people may give to God STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 345 what is God's and also hold faith to their earthly ruler. This is our ideal of school and education." This ideal is that of the Prussian ministry as well as of Clerical and Conservative circles ; and especially in Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony teachers to whom a sus- picion of radical tendencies attaches are apt to feel the weight of governmental displeasure. The with- holding of promotion, pubHc censure, suspension and even removal from oj6&ce are weapons which may be brought into play against any teacher whom the govern- ment officials suspect of a share in Radical or Socialist propaganda. Naturally these things show themselves more in Prussia than elsewhere, and most of all in the Prussian East, where the elementary schools are es- pecially exposed to reactionary influences. Occasion- ally, if the Radical newspapers are to be believed, the ofl&cials go even farther in their effort to make the teachers do positive work for the government cause in a close election, in such cases the district inspectors being the agents of communication. Thus in the Reichs- tag election of 191 2 the attention of the teachers in an East Prussian district was called to the coming election, and when the Social Democratic candidate was finally successful, one of the primary teachers was given five days in which to make report as to why he had not voted. The attitude of the Conservative ministry in such a case has been this : The Socialist is an enemy to the state and no person can be tolerated in the state's service who in any way gives the party of revolution aid or encouragement. Like the soldier and the employee of the postal, telegraph or customs service, the teacher is expected to stand by the government through thick and thin. Such instances of direct interference in the personal liberties of teachers have been rare, for the latter are as a class both by nature and training faithful servants of the state. Intense pride in the greatness of united 346 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS / Germany and a patriotic devotion to the Fatheriand are nowhere stronger than among teachers, the success of whose work was splendidly apparent in the oneness of Germany's response to the call to the colors in July and August, 1914. That the old separatism and jeal- / ousy of the petty states have given way to a broad enthusiasm for the German Fatherland, one and in- divisible, is largely due to the devoted teacher whose obscure and ill-rewarded work has nowhere borne richer fruit than in instilling into the present generation the ideal of German unity and Germany's world power. It is unfortunate that this devotion to the Fatherland / and reverence for the monarchy may be misused by a reactionary ministry, which represents the success of governmental policy as one and the same with the salvation of the country. The fact that cases of in- fringement on the Hberties of the teacher do occur tends to have two unfortunate results, which in Prussia at least must be set off against the successful sides of the school system. Either the teacher, with the sturdy in- dependence and love of liberty which are basic traits in German character, is driven into a feeling of sullen discontent that manifests itself in a vote "to the Left" whenever possible; or being of more pliable sort, he crooks the pregnant hinges of the knee and develops a serviHty toward those in high places which is an un- attractive reverse to officialdom in Prussia and else- where in Germany. Besides the great majority of men in high official positions who have won for the German school system its unrivalled place in the world, there are not a few school principals and higher officers who are petty tyrants to those under them and models of pliant sycophancy toward everything that comes from above. Such manifestations of the bureaucratic spirit, how- ever, leave the great majority of German teachers, both secondary and elementary, untroubled, and they STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 347 go ahead weaving their part in the web of Germany's greatness. Of far greater importance to the primary teacher is the system which tends to exclude him from the higher positions in the educational system. The secondary school-teacher, who is without exception university-trained, may advance by the stages of school principal and inspector to the highest administrative positions in the educational department, or if his cir- cumstances permit further study, may become a uni- versity professor. Not so with the teacher in the Volks- schule. If he is the graduate of a Burgerschule or has had other opportunities, he may become principal of an elementary school. In Saxony, Hesse and Weimar he may study from four to six semesters at the university in preparation for a "pedagogical certificate," which opens the way to higher positions in the school adminis- tration, but not to a secondary school position. It is a sign of progress that many of the universities have introduced courses especially designed for teachers in the Volksschule both during vacation and term time. It cannot be long ere Prussia also joins in this forward movement, which while retaining the elementary teachers in the elementary school system, nevertheless opens to them fields of wider activity; but for the present the Prussian universities are closed to elementary teachers as regularly matriculated students. The only way in which they can enter is by passing the regular gradu- ation examination of a secondary school of nine-year course. It was mainly of the Prussian system that Pro- fessor J. Tews, a radical school reformer of Berlin, was speaking when he lamented at the national teachers' convention in 191 2 : "While other states are developing their institutions of youth, the German Volksschule re- mains narrowed by church control and social restrictions, the teacher a servant of the church ; and in order to pre- serve these relations, the coming army of teachers is shut out from the sources of knowledge."/ 348 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS "A servant of the church !" This expression suggests a side of the pubHc school system of Germany which is most difl&cult for an American to understand, — the side of church control. In the first place, it must be called to mind that in Germany, as in most of the Euro- pean states, church and state are still united with a thousand inter twinings. As the result of a struggle, lasting with interruptions since the days of the Salic emperors and by no means ended, an arrangement has been reached in all of the states of the German empire by which the supreme authority of the state is acknowl- edged in all that relates to the temporal welfare of its citizens ; but as has been shown in Chapter X there is still considerable doubt as to the line dividing tem- poral from spiritual interests. Full liberty of conscience is guaranteed in all of the German states, nevertheless religion is estabUshed, that is, the state still cares for the material welfare of the three approved churches, and the clergy — evangelical, Roman Catholic and Jewish — are theoretically public oflS.cers. In case of the Roman Catholic clergy, the state imposes con- ditions for their education and exercises an oversight over the seminaries and lyceums to see that these conditions are fulfilled. The bishops, and in some states the individual priests, must take an oath of allegiance to the state authority before they can assume spiritual office. The evangelical church in Prussia, Saxony and other Protestant states is still more closely interlocked with the state, the ruler being in theory the supreme bishop of the church, while the state con- trols completely the education of the clergy, appoints or confirms all higher church officials and guarantees the support of the church from a special tax, which in Berlin has averaged as high as 20 per cent of the total income tax. While, as has been stated, full liberty of worship is guaranteed to every one, the tax officials follow up with great zeal the collection of the church STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 349 tax even from foreigners temporarily resident in Ger- many, and in Prussia it is necessary that those who would avoid paying it should formally and legally de- clare their separation from the church. More than one American and Enghshman staying in Berlin or other Prussian cities has been astonished at having to undergo a rigid cross examination by the tax police as to his religious faith, and even certificates of baptism may be required as collateral evidence from those who would escape the church tax. The fact is, that the average German looks upon his religion as being as much a matter of pubHc concern as his nationahty, and feels no resentment in being tagged as Protestant, CathoHc, Jew or Dissenter as pubhcly as he is classified as merchant, farmer or official. It is but natural, therefore, that he should look upon religion as an essential part of his child's training, to be under- taken and watched over by the state as much as train- ing in algebra or history. The oft-repeated claim of the Clericals and Conservatives that "the church is the mother of the school" surely finds historical justification, for ever since the Protestant Reformation put education in Protestant Germany into secular hands, the church has watched closely to see that Luther's maxim be carried out : "Let the chief est and most general subject of study be the Holy Scriptures." In fact, one may say that the whole history of education in Germany since the Renaissance has been one long-continued effort to free the universities and schools from the wor- ship of barren ideals of the past on the one side and from jealous guardianship of the church on the other. That this struggle to completely secularize scholarship was won first in the universities is natural, for there the more enlightened spirits gather. Since the day when Frederick the Great confirmed the doctrine of freedom of instruction {Lehrfreiheit) , the German professor has studied and taught in an atmosphere almost chemically 350 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS clean of ecclesiastical control. Again and again attacks have been made upon this freedom of scholarship ; and here and there a Roman Catholic bishop has ordered a boycott on the lectures of some Hberal historian or philosopher in Bavaria, or the Prussian church consis- tories have shown themselves overzealous in getting an ultra-orthodox apologist into a theological chair at Gottingen or Rostock or Halle; but such action has always provoked a widespread and spirited protest from intellectual circles, and the state authorities have been well-nigh unwavering in defending those accused of dangerous heresies. PubHc opinion insists that the universities shall guarantee a freedom of investigation and instruction in the field of rehgion as absolute and unconditional as in physics or biology. This freedom, however, applies only to the universities. The mind of the g5minasium upper-classman is held to be still too immature to entertain heterodox ideas, and all religious teaching in the primary and secondary schools is strictly confessional. In fact, the principle of religious teaching in the schools is closely bound up with another principle, recognized throughout the greater part of Germany, that of the uniconfessional school. That the school should be organized according to the religious faith of a majority of its pupils and tagged as evangelical, Roman CathoHc or Jewish, is a principle that is rigorously carried out through almost the whole of the empire.^ Nor is this spKtting up into sects so inconvenient for the school system as might be im- agined, in view of the fact that confessional lines in Germany are unfortunately also usually geographical lines. As we have seen, the valleys of the Rhine, the Main and the Danube are in the main Roman CathoKc ; the northern and eastern plain, except the PoHsh prov- inces, with the highlands of the centre and in part of ^The exceptions are Baden, the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Saxe- Meiningen, Saxe- Weimar and the city of Hamburg. STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 351 the Southwest, largely Protestant. The dividing lines which make a community overwhelmingly Protestant or Roman Catholic have determined historically the confessional character of a great majority of the second- ary schools, and in the older Gymnasia the principal and a majority of the teachers are evangeHcal or CathoHc as a result of traditions which run clear back to the Reformation. Owing to various causes, the interest of the Roman CathoHc population in secondary educa- tion is proportionately less than that of the Protestant ; as a result we find that in the larger cities, where since 1890 many Realschulen have sprung up, there is usually one Roman CathoKc secondary school and sometimes a Jewish institution, while the others are Protestant. In such cases no constraint is exercised to force parents to send their children to a school of a certain confession, and in the smaller places the school usually contains a respectable minority of evangelicals or CathoHcs, as the case may be. If the mmiber of pupils belonging to the minority is large enough, classes in rehgion are formed for their instruction by one of their own faith; if not, they are sent to some other school, or even to approved private instructors for their work in rehgion. In the Gymnasia and Realschulen, where an atmosphere of higher scholarship reigns, confessional differences are of small importance. In the great mass of the Volks- schulen, however, they are of the greatest weight, and may have a direct effect upon the efficiency of the school. Thus the Prussian law of 1906 authorizes the formation of a new school in a city of over five thousand inhabit- ants if there are 120 children, or in a rural community 60 children, of a confession different from that of the existing school. The result is sometimes the organiza- tion of a one-class or two-class school besides a highly efficient school of eight classes. While there is Httle objection among German school- men and poHtical thinkers to the teaching of rehgion 352 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS in the schools, there is considerable opposition to the spHtting up of the school children on confessional lines. Baden, Hesse and several of the smaller states do not favor the uniconfessional school, but train their chil- dren in so-called "Simultan^^ or "Paritdtic^' schools, where the confession of the teachers follows the con- fessional percentage of the state. In the Grand Duchy of Hesse over 90 per cent of the children attend these schools. In Prussia their introduction meets with the determined opposition of the Conservative and Clerical parties, and they make up only 2.28 per cent of the total number of elementary schools, being found especially in the eastern marches, where the political and economic situation make them especially advisable, and in the district around Wiesbaden, where Prussia received them as a tradition. In Bavaria official opposition to them is no less intense than in the great kingdom to the north; but it has often been noted by schoolmen that the confessionless schools are very popular among school patrons in the southern kingdom. In Munich the number of children applying annually to the few SimuUan schools is far in excess of the vacancies. Not- withstanding this, the principle of the confessional school finds opposition only in Socialist and Radical circles. How far Conservative and Clerical leaders go in the opposite direction is shown by the fact that demand is frequently made on the school authorities to divide the Hilfsschulen, that is, those for defective classes and even those for tubercular children, accord- ing to confession; and that a similar demand in the case of the continuation schools, together with a de- mand that religious instruction be made obligatory in their program, is one of the chief causes which has thus far prevented the passage of a law bringing this class of schools under state control in Prussia. In Prussia, as elsewhere in Germany, the confessional school is a compromise. It is a compromise which the STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 353 great majority of Prussian patriots, with memories of the KuUurkampf still in mind, are quite wilKng to endure. They are satisfied with the principle, firmly maintained during that struggle, that the schools shall be under the control of the state, and point a warning finger at America, where the public schools do not in- clude, in the earlier years at least, a considerable per- centage of Roman Catholic children. At present while over 37 per cent of the registered school children in Prussia are Roman CathoKc, under 30 per cent of the schools belong to this confession, proof enough that the minority is already making considerable concessions in school attendance. Whether, as is contended, the gradual increase of Simultan schools would lead to the formation of a separate Roman Catholic school system, which uiider the present law could not be prevented, is a matter on which one can have his own views. Thus far opinion seems overwhelming that Prussia does better to retain the present confessional school with all its drawbacks than to run the risk of losing from the state's schools a large percentage of Roman Catholic children and driving in still farther the wedge between the confessions. Whether in confessional school or not, the teaching of religion in the school itself is regarded as a matter of course, and beyond a few Radicals and the Social Democrats and a few schoolmen who have progressed far beyond their fellows, there is no sentiment in favor of abolishing it. In practically all of the German states it occupies the first place on the school program, where it is given the choice hour, the first one in the morning, from three to four hours per week in the Volksschule and from two to three in the secondary schools. In the latter religious teaching falls into the hands of in- structors who have elected the subject along with other, usually humanistic, subjects for their academic preparation. There is frequently a sharp collision be- 354 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS tween the individual conscience of the teacher and the orthodox material which he is required to impart. The teacher is always a university man, brought up in the searching scientific methods which provoke criticism and doubt; he is face to face with immature youth, to whom he must teach the Bible, the catechism, the doctrines of the faith and some church history and patristic literature, with the use of text-books and readers approved by the church authorities, under the inspection of the senior among the local clergy. The result is frequently a collision between the individual conscience of the teacher and the demands of his career, leading to such experiences as Max Dreyer, himself formerly a secondary school-teacher, mirrored in 1899 in somewhat exaggerated form in his play Der Probe- kandidat. To a man of earnest personal rehgious con- victions the situation offers a fascinating opportunity; but to the German secondary school-teacher, whose at- titude toward religion has of recent years grown to be a more and more formal one, the temptation to treat reHgion in the formal way in which other academic subjects are treated is usually too strong to be resisted. If he has strong religious convictions, they are usually other than those contained in catechism and church exegesis, and he must say to himself, as Mephistopheles to Faust : " The best thou leamest, in the end, Thou dar'st not tell the yoimgsters — never! " The alternative of purely formal treatment is all too easy. The subject-matter of faith becomes a corpus vile for the exercise of memory and the powers of con- centration. To most secondary school students the historic side of their rehgious study is interesting and the contents well mastered, but compulsory study of reHgion is a failure as promoting personal rehgious im- pressions at this impressionable age. The Prussian STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 355 ministry of education has persistently sought to pre- vent the classes in religion from becoming simply formal by emphasizing the importance of intrusting this work only to men of high character and personal attractive- ness. But teachers of such sort are rare anywhere, and the net result is that most boys go through the pliant years of adolescence with little religious experience and enter the university with the feehng that the hour in religion was a part of the school drudgery of which they are glad to be rid. The secondary school-teacher should not of course be held responsible for the rehgious in- differentism so characteristic of the intellectual classes in Germany since the eighties. When the time is ripe for a great revival in evangelical Germany, it is probable that the secondary schools will share abundantly in it and that the classes in rehgion will take on a new vitality. In tJie primary school the teaching of religion assumes an even more important position, for the reason that fewer concessions need to be made to the struggle be- tween the scientific spirit and religious faith. Practically every German state puts the moral and rehgious training of the child first among the requirements of the elemen- tary school. As stated on numerous occasions by the Prussian ministry, the object of the Prussian Volks- schule is "the religious, moral and patriotic culture of youth by means of education and instruction, as well as the introduction into such general knowledge and skill as is necessary for civil hfe." In carrying out this moral and religious purpose instruction in religion plays also an important part in the training of teachers. Of the 137 seminaries for elementary teachers in Prussia (1902) only six were " Paritdtic'^ or not uniconf essional ; and every care is taken that the future teachers of the children of the people shall be well grounded in the- faith. The Prussian law of 1906 permits the formation of a new class in rehgion provided twelve pupils belong 3S6 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS to a different faith from that prevailing in the school which they attend. This is going very far in admitting the religious rights of the minority ; but law and prac- tice never go so far as to permit any scholar to leave school without regular religious instruction. "Better religion poorly taught than none at all," they say, for to the average German citizen the French schools with their lack of all reHgious training are a horror. Religion and Fatherland then are the two pillars upon which German elementary instruction rests. Conservative circles, for whom throne and altar must stand or fall together, cannot conceive it possible that the great fabric of Germany's educational system could endure without being firmly braced on both supports. Radicals and Social Democrats, however, object to the collocation. Religion in the schools, they say, means too often narrow orthodoxy, and they cannot forget that since 1848 the forces of orthodoxy in Prussia have repeatedly been debased into tools for repressing the popular will. It is not merely that these radical poHtical thinkers look upon religion as a private matter with which the state has nothing to do ; they fear the effect of the class in religion in the hands of political reaction- aries. "As reHgion is now taught in the schools," they assert, " the effect is not to cultivate independence of thought, but to instil in the mind of the child the idea that to worship God and to honor the king are one and the same." The foundation of this feehng was laid in the Prussia of half a century ago, when the church became the handmaid of reaction, and ever since that time the evangelical church has been well- nigh without influence on liberal and democratic circles in Germany. The Roman Catholic church has, as we have seen, through the deep-going democratization of its priesthood and its readiness to oppose feudal in- fluences in the government, kept a stronger hold upon the masses. STATE AND CHURCH IN THE SCHOOLS 357 This guardianship of the church over education shows itself in the control which the clergy actually exercise upon the conduct of the schools. In the secondary schools it goes only to the point of supervising reKgious instruction, a right guaranteed to the chief local clergy- man of each confession for the class in his own faith. This right of inspection is very loosely exercised and goes Kttle farther than the supervision of the text-books used, the results of the religious instruction being easily checked up when the pupil comes up for confirmation. In the Volksschule, however, the range of clerical inter- ference goes much farther and amounts in many rural districts of both North and South Germany to bringing the entire elementary school system under the church. In the larger places the local supervision of the schools falls of course into the trained hands of the school principal or a member of the municipal administrative board, and the clerical members of the school board simply oversee religious instruction ; but in the country districts in the two leading German monarchies, Prussia and Bavaria, the leading local clergyman is the regular local inspector. This condition of affairs is a constant thorn in the side of progressive teachers in the Volks- schule, who thus find themselves hampered by a super- vision which is in no sense professionally trained, and often at the mercy of an espionage which is narrow and intolerant. Ever since the Kulturkampf Prussian minis- ters have asserted the principle that the state has a right to appoint all local and district school inspectors ; never- theless, in practice not only the former but a considerable percentage of the latter are taken from the ranks of the clergy. The explanation is of course to be sought in the control of the legislative affairs of the kingdom by Conservative and Clerical forces. In Bavaria, where the Centre party has practically controlled legislation since 1869, the determination to keep the schools under ecclesiastical domination has been equally great. Here 358 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO. WARS again, the more liberal southwestern states, Baden, Wiirtemberg and Hesse, and some of the smaller Thuringian states, have shown that it is possible to do away with clerical control without driving religion from the schools or lessening their moral power. The charge that the schools are unduly influenced by the church is an old one in Germany and is heard with ever increasing insistency. Progressive school- men and many patriots of no decidedly radical leanings yearn for the time when the entire inspection and con- trol of the schools shall be taken out of clerical hands and put into those of professionally trained schoolmen, such as now supervise the secondary schools in the empire and the elementary schools in the cities. How soon this state of affairs will be reached depends like other reforms in the school system upon political progress in Prussia and Bavaria, Thus far Conservative and Clerical opposition have blocked all efforts toward reform in the largest German states; and here again Prussia, which is accustomed to lead in the cultural as well as the material things of the nation, has fallen behind in the march of liberal ideas. CHAPTER XVII The Press and Public Opinion Since the day when the bankrupt Mayence genius invented movable types, Germany has with few inter- ruptions held the first place among printing and pub- lishing nations. Her annual output in books surpasses the combined production of France, England and the United States ; and even if we subtract pamphlets, which in German statistics are rated as books, and which bring into the world many things that appear in other countries in magazines, the Fatherland exceeds in its contribution to this "paper age" any two other nations. The explanation is to be found not merely in the high culture of the nation, but also in the method- ical spirit, which drives the German to analyze, corre- late and formulate, seeking not merely apostles for his patiently won ideas but often clearness for the writer through the very formulation of his ideas. In no land is access to the press so cheap and easy, in no land are the rewards for the author proportionately so large. Unfortunately also in no land are there so many worth- less books brought into the world, from the machine- made doctor dissertation with its pathetic testimony to years of youthful vigor wasted in counting the hairs in Homer's beard down to the penny manuals on "How to learn French in Three Weeks." The Germans pay the penalty of a nation which produces each year a mass of creative scholarly research with the by-products of boneless pedantry and speculative dilettanteism. 359 360 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Besides the book press, the periodical press rolls up each month and each day its vast flood. Every science, art and industry, every branch of commerce, every po- litical fraction has its press; every handicraft, yes, almost every forceful personality in the country has its periodical exponent. The press directory of 19 13 men- tions II periodicals devoted to the continuation school system alone. The Schornsteinfeger, published monthly in Berlin, ministers to the Hterary needs of chimney sweeps; the AUgemeine deutsche Kdsehlatt to those of the cheese workers : a specialization in the printed representatives of Germany's multifarious industries confronts us as hairspHt and bewildering as in the in- dustrial branches themselves. Only indeed in a land where the division of industry and the organization of commerce are carried as far as in Germany could this vast array of trade periodicals live and flourish. On the other hand the number of popular periodicals deaHng with history, political science and geography is small : the Deutsche Rundschau, founded by the late Julius Rodenberg, the Suddeutsche Monatshefte and the Deutsche Revue are the only ones which deserve to be put beside half a dozen or more great British reviews. In the field of artistic and Uterary criticism there is none which in the variety and brilliance of its contents appeals to so large a public as the Revue des deux Mondes. Nor do the more popular Westermanns or Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte, Nord und Sud or the time-honored Gartenlauhe attain to the vivid contemporary interest of a few of the best American illustrated magazines. The out-of-door element, so attractive a part of British and American magazines, has only recentty made its appearance in German periodicals and is to be found mainly in publications devoted to Alpine, automobile and aviation clubs or other special sports. If, how- ever, the German press has something less to offer to the leisure hours of the man of general culture than THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 361 that of the western nations, to the specialist and scholar, whether he be a specialist in Sanscrit, stamp collecting or soap boiling, it brings each year a wealth of material which serves later on as a reservoir for the writers of other nations. The spirit of the German press is then that of German scholarship. It shows the same enthusiasm for truth, the same conscientiousness in the search for it and the same honesty in proclaiming it as have set their stamp on German scholarship everywhere. The reverse of this in pedantry of manner and boring tediousness of portrayal is not lacking. The daily press, to which this chapter is chiefly devoted, shows these characteristics in an even greater degree. The most popular child of the printing press, the newspaper, had also its birth in Germany, and so far as numbers are concerned, Germany is still above all its home. Exact statistics are lacking, but in 1908 the number of daily papers was estimated by competent authorities at four thousand, of which Dr. Robert Brunhuber,^ an expert in this field, counts about four hundred organs of considerable importance. Of these perhaps 35 are papers of great influence, of which over one-half appear in Berlin and less than half a dozen outside of Prussia. In the aggregate the Ger- man daily press rises then to tremendous figures. The post-office department acts as the agent of the press, receiving subscriptions at all offices and distributing the papers, and reckoning by post-office statistics, German observers set the distribution of papers in the year 1906 at between twelve and twenty million copies per day. This mighty flood, which pours itself daily over all parts of Germany, rippling to the most distant dune villages of the Baltic coast and the eeriest nests of the Bavarian highlands, flows most densely in the Rhine valley. Here the Cologne, Diisseldorf and Dort- mund papers find their way into every hamlet and in ^ Das deutsche Zeitungswesen. 362 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the industrial centres into every house. In the Rhine Palatinate the average is one daily newspaper to every fifteen thousand inhabitants in the entire district. Through this great flood, from the Berlin and Frank- fort journals down to the provincial "General Anzeiger" ("Official Gazette") is a long journey past all sorts of newspaper undertakings. Most of the larger papers maintain correspondence bureaus in the greater German cities, and the largest also in foreign capitals, but as in the case of other lands, by far the greater part of the news comes to them through press associations. The great German press association is Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau, which differs from international bureaus like Reuter's and the Agence Havas in that it is mainly national in its scope, and differs from the American press agencies in being directly under government control. Wolff's Bureau counts among its subscribers practically all the important papers in Germany, its despatches are forwarded over the imperial telegraph system toll free and have a certain precedence over private messages, and it is used, as we shall see, to disseminate governmentally edited news. Besides Wolff's, there are in Berlin and other larger capitals other news agencies which send out information, — telegraphed, printed, mimeographed, — flooding the newspaper world with official, semi-official, political or colorless news items, which play a great part in the make-up of the provincial press. The pirating of news from the larger journals is carried on by the provincial papers in Germany in a way that is absolutely conscienceless, possibly because, as will be shown below, the reading public seems less eager for news than for editorial comments thereon. This borrowing of news items is not, however, con- fined to the provincial press. As we have seen, the larger papers maintain correspondents in foreign capitals ; but only in a few cases is this correspondence forwarded by telegraph, since the papers, apparently following THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 363 the desires of the reading public, prefer to spend their money on literary essays and scientific treatises rather than on telegraph and cable tolls. For their daily news from abroad they depend on Wolff's Bureau, which has a Kmited staff abroad, but derives most of its information through the great international agencies like Renter's. The cheapest and readiest source of information is the French and British dailies, whose news columns even the largest BerHn papers do not hesitate to use, reproducing with a generous hand news items from the Times, the Daily Chronicle and the Standard forty-eight hours after publication in London. The effect on Germany's relations with the outside world of this dependence on British-influenced news agencies has already been noted (cf. page 73 ff.). Even more important for the development of public sentiment at home is the lack of an adequate, independent system of telegraphic correspondence from foreign countries. The greater metropoHtan papers which do maintain foreign correspondents have not succeeded in placing in the foreign capitals men who are able to give a true picture of foreign feeling or through personal influence and adroitness to fill the semi-diplomatic mission of their ofl&ce, with the result that the readers of even such high-class journals as the Kolnische or Frankfurter Zeitung or the Berliner Tagehlatt are often uninformed as to the real condition of public affairs and public feeUng in France, England and America. The result has been that each succeeding international crisis has found the German reading public Hving in a fool's paradise of misinformation with regard to the mighty forces of public sentiment which sway cabinet decisions in London, Paris, Washington and to some extent Rome. Some of the greater German dailies, Hke the Kolnische, have spent vast sums in sending experts to spy out the highlands of Thibet or the savage stretches of the upper Congo and spread before their readers a 364 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS wealth of information regarding the economic possi- bilities of southern Brazil or the valleys of Mesopotamia or the fauna and flora of the strangest islands of the southern seas. Of everything that has a scientific in- terest they render account with characteristic German enthusiasm for truth : in political matters their informa- tion is usually neither complete nor accurate and their correspondence from neighboring French and Italian cities or even from Alsace or the Prussian East is often but valorous vaporing of the tap-room sort. The weakness of the German papers as international newsgatherers is partly to be explained through the personnel of the German newspaper office. This sel- dom has at its command men of the standing of those who represent the great London papers in foreign capitals, a lack that is directly traceable to the inferior standing of the journaHst in Germany as compared with Western lands. In the Fatherland, as elsewhere, the newspaper man does not as a rule freely elect the profession which he practises, but gravitates into it as a result of circum- stances. Here, however, the result is worse than else- where, not only for the training of the journalist, but for the social status of the profession. In this land of speciaHzation every aspirant for a professional career selects or is supposed to select, or have his parents select for him, his hfe career before he goes to the university, and he is expected to follow it up with all his force and enthusiasm from that time forth forevermore. Few, very few, select journalism, for while the financial re- wards of the successful journalist are not inconsiderable, the social prestige belonging to the profession is still al- most as lacking and the professional pride among journal- ists as undeveloped as half a century ago, when Gustav Freytag wrote his charming comedy Die Journalisten to prove that German editors could be men of honor. The editorial chairs of Germany contain some brilliant men, who, feeling an inner call to journalism, have THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 365 deserted the teacher's chair or even the lawyer's desk or surgeon's case. Besides these and others, whose lives have been given to a special training for the periodical press, there are a very great number who have found their way into the newspaper office simply because they have failed as lawyers or as teachers or in some other calling where success means official position. Hard-and-fast conditions of society in Germany admit a fall in the social scale, but seldom a rise. There is no such thing as working for a while in a minor or menial position and then entering one of the learned profes- sions : the educational system forbids it. The dark side of German efficiency is that those who have through temperament or other causes made a failure in the pro- fession for which they have prepared, have thereafter small chance of success in any calling of equal social rank or even in the close in-fighting of business competi- tion. To a good many such journalism offers the only field where they can still hope for a remunerative ac- tivity without entire loss of social position. In addition to the lack of preparation for their profes- sion under which so many Gernian newspaper men suffer, they are not permitted, as in France, to sign their articles. Not a few leading articles and summaries are signed by the chief editor ; but as a rule the German newspaper man is hidden behind the same impenetrable veil of anonjrmity that shrouds his colleagues in Eng- land and America. His work, be it ever so faithfully done, brings him no personal advertisement. On the other hand, the lack of Kberal institutions condemns the editor to something like political impotence; and ex- cept among the Social Democrats, where newspaper editors are frequently elected to legislative office, he rarely gets anything in the way of poKtical reward. The positions in the consular and even the diplomatic service that now and then recompense the American editor for faithful service to the party cause and the 366 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS titles and distinctions which successful British journal- ists receive have no counterpart in Germany. With the exception of the two groups with the best developed political sense, the Conservatives and the Social Demo- crats, the journaUst plays but a small part in the active Hfe of the party and is practically never rewarded by the gift of political office. The effect of this upon the ambition of newspaper men can well be imagined. Thus cut off from adequate preparation, shut in behind a paralyzing anon>'Tnity, inehgible for political rewards, the German journalist cannot, save in the case of a few great papers, lay claim to an enviable social or political position. As a rule he does his duty faithfully within the limits allowed him by the laws and by the business considerations of his office. These considerations play a no more important part in Germany than in more democratic lands, where the cashier's office is too often permitted to dominate the editorial rooms. Absolute independence of the adver- tising columns and similar considerations is an ideal rather than a fact in every part of the newspaper world, though here the German publisher may be said to be less exposed to temptation because of the rigid laws which govern business competition and because by education the German is opposed to unfair play in business Hfe. The treatment of the editor as a hireling who must echo the policy of the publisher and guard the latter's political and financial interests is a sacrifice which the editorial profession makes everywhere to the capitalistic organization of society, and it is no more common in Germany than abroad, although it must be said that anything that in any way diminishes the im- portance and standing of the press as a tribune of the people must increase the temptation of publisher and editor to sell their influence to the highest bidder. The dignity of the press is then directly dependent upon the Uberty allowed it, and this Hberty in turn THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 367 upon the habit of free institutions. It follows that those statesmen who have shown themselves most hostile to these institutions have in the history of pres- ent-day Germany done the most to prostitute the press. Bismarck, according to his press secretary, Moritz Busch, frequently expressed himself with cynical con- tempt on the subject of the honesty of the German press and its value as a representative of the people. "German papers," he declared in 1876, "are bound to be amusing reading, for they are meant to be glanced over while drinking a mug of beer and to furnish topics of lively conversation, usually about something which has taken place a long way off in foreign parts." The Iron Chancellor, however, himself made constant use of the newspapers to influence pubhc opinion both at home and abroad, maintaining at the foreign office, in addition to the official Hterary bureau, a private bureau under the adroit management first of Busch and later of Professor Aegidi. Through these men he played upon public opinion by means of articles inspired by himself and often prepared under his dictation, which were pubHshed not only in the semi-official Nord- deutsche Zeitung, the Kolnische Zeitung or the Kreuz- zeitung, but in papers issued in remote cities of the provinces, whose connection with the government would not be guessed. Sometimes under the direction of their wily chief his lieutenants would put the Chan- cellor's ideas in the form of a letter from a German long resident in Paris or a Prussian close to Vatican circles in Rome, plajdng upon the various keys and stops of prejudice and sentiment as the national or international situation demanded. By his Press Or- dinances of 1863 Bismarck had shown himself quite willing to throttle a free press, later on he assured himself of adequate newspaper support by means of a cleverness and an insincerity a Httle more than diplo- matic. That these means were at times highly immoral, 368 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS no one who reads Busch's biography of the Chancellor can deny. From the income of the sequestrated prop- erty of the King of Hanover and the Landgrave of Hesse, who had been deposed on the annexation of these countries by Prussia in 1866, the Chancellor drew the so-called "reptile funds," by which the im- perial government maintained an influence over the press which extended into the remotest corners of Ger- many and made itself felt in London, Paris and Rome. All of this was justified by Bismarck and his apologists as a measure of war. It is certain that the Iron Chan- cellor had to face all of his Hfe the bitterest opposition on the part of a few independent newspapers, the most relentless from the Kreuzzeitung, which under its brill- iant editor Hammerstein forced the fighting in the most violent manner whenever Bismarck showed the slightest inclination toward liberal ideas. Confronted by bitter enemies not only in the Liberal and Clerical ranks but among his own class, the conservative aris- tocracy, as well, Bismarck did not hesitate to assure himself of press support by means which were sometimes, as has been pointed out, of doubtful morality. He believed that his enemies were poisoning the wells of public opinion; he himself disdained no weapons of deceit and bribery in his newspaper campaigns, furnish- ing false information to draw the fire of his opponents, or introducing misleading articles into the trusted organs of the opposition. The success of this poHcy for the Chancellor's aims cannot be denied; its final result was to weaken for decades the political influence of the German press at home and abroad. Bismarck's successors in the home and foreign offices inherited something of his cynical contempt for the press without the great Chancellor's skill in using it for his purposes. Indeed the attitude of the govern- ment officials in Germany toward the representatives of the fourth estate has been one of arrogance, not un- THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 369 mixed with fear. Often the feeHng seems to be that the press represents an improper curiosity on the part of the masses about government doings, a curiosity which must be checked if possible, and if that is not possible, satisfied with such meagre news as the govern- ment may find fit for popular consumption. The re- sult is, that the same feehng is cultivated in the German newspapers that one finds often among German citizens toward public affairs : they have been told so often that the governing classes can manage things without their help that they have grown to believe it, and the press thus frequently accepts without hesitation govern- ment leadership and voluntarily resigns its rights as a tribune of the people. Two instances will illustrate this, both taken from the exciting days at the end of July, 1914, just before Germany declared war against Russia. On July 30 the air was full of rumors and the Berlin Lokalanzeiger published an extra announcing that war had been declared against Russia. This was followed immediately by a governmental denial and a disavowal and the withdrawal of its issue by the offend- ing paper. The premature news reached Munich, where it was published in various extra issues and caused the greatest excitement. At the height of this the newspapers, which were unable to communicate with Berlin on account of the overloading of the wires, applied to the Bavarian government to know the truth of the situation. For hours they were kept waiting, and finally with the greatest reluctance the Bavarian officials gave the information that they had not been advised of a declaration of war, which as a matter of fact did not take place till two days later. As show- ing how dependence on the government has become a matter of habit in crises, on the same day on which the press representatives were treated so superciliously by the Bavarian government when making inquiries regarding a matter of the highest public concern, the 370 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS Munich Zeitung, a Radical paper, called urgently upon the imperial officials, in view of the disturbed state of the pubhc mind, to "take charge of public opinion!" As a rule the papers have no right to find fault with the government for not attempting to mould pubhc opinion. Since Bismarck's day, however, with the growth of healthfulness in German political Hfe, minis- terial efforts to control the public view have become less insidious, although they are not yet always sincere and devoid of trickery. At the present time govern- mental influence finds its way to the public mind through papers which are directly "official" and papers whose utterances are known as "semi-official" and also by means of articles in journals where government in- fluences are least suspected. The directly and openly "official" papers, such as the Reichsanzeiger and the organs of the army and navy and the various Anzeiger to be found in the Prussian provincial capitals and the capitals of the other German states, are merely organs of governmental announcement, and have no more in- fluence on public opinion than departmental announce- ments in Washington. Aside from these organs of the imperial and state governments, the various depart- ments of the federal government contain officials whose duty it is to furnish information to the press, the most important bureau of that kind being found in the Foreign Office. The organization of these bureaus is as efficient as the German bureaucracy always is, and their work includes not only the furnishing of information to the press, but the preparation of editorial leaders and all sorts of articles intended to work upon pubhc senti- ment, which find pubHcation in some of the "semi- official" papers. As has been noted, the most important agency for disseminating news throughout Germany is Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau, an institution which may be called a governmentally owned press association. It THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 371 antedates the foundation of the new Gennan empire, having been organized in 1865 as a joint stock company, with the Prussian government in control of a majority of the stock. Like Reuter's Bureau, the Agence Havas and other national news agencies, the Wolff Bureau claims an international character. It maintains cor- respondents in foreign capitals and has in peace times affiliations with other great news agencies. It prac- tically controls the news field in Germany, although its known governmental character causes German readers to discount its despatches to some extent, less because there is any possibility of Wolff's Bureau falsifying the actual facts furnished from the world outside of Germany than from the feeling that other facts may be suppressed. To the American in Germany the tone of the Wolff messages, when they concern royalty, smacks not a little of unctuous servility. Good or bad, it forms the first means by which the German reader learns his for- eign news : that it has not developed further in past years as a real newsgatherer is due less to governmental control than to the traditional lack of interest among Germans in international affairs. Next to Wolff's Bureau come the information bureaus of the government offices, referred to above, and that brings up the question of "semi-official" papers. Just which papers deserve this title is hard to say, the Ger- man press itself being often in the dark as to how far government influence extends over certain papers. Universally recognized as the government mouth- piece is the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of Berlin, which has been in the service of the Prussian and the imperial government since the sixties. Bismarck used it from the early days of his chancellorship, and since that time it has published the government's views, particularly on foreign affairs, prepared in the govern- ment offices and under the direction of the imperial chancellor and occasionally of the emperor himself. 372 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS The statements of the rather old-fashioned Nord- deutsche are recognized as having the highest authority. At the other end of the scale stands the rural daily which champions the government program and especially at election time rages against the Social Democrats with eager zeal in return for the local government advertising given by the all-powerful local administrator, the Landrat. Between the two there extends a whole line of papers, whose articles are regularly or occasion- ally inspired by the federal or state officials. Certain journals, Hke the Kdlnische Zeitung, the Tdgliche Rundschau of Berlin and the Hannoverische Courier, have been regularly used to express government opinion on domestic or foreign affairs, the actual subject-matter or the general ideas being furnished from the Home or Foreign Office. Frequently the reading public is hard put to it to know whether articles in these papers represent the ideas of the government or not, for even the staid Norddeutsche occasionally kicks over the traces and treats the topics of the day in a manner which is quite opposed to all theories of feudal-conservative ad- ministration. In proportion, however, as the news matter concerns the person or entourage of the Emperor or one of the rulers of the major states or a foreign crisis the articles in the papers in question are apt to reflect the feeling in government circles, for the value of the proper public treatment of such subjects is well understood by the governing class. The public and semi-public utterances of the Emperor are regularly reported by an official stenographer and carefully edited by the Foreign Office before publication. "One cannot carry on international politics without a press." This statement of the late Marschall von Bieberstein, formerly German foreign minister, is un- doubtedly confirmed by the practice of every civilized land. But there is considerable difference between the information furnished the national press in London, THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 373 Paris and Washington and the press articles which find their way into the German "semi-official" papers, a difference pecuKar to the German government. In the more democratic countries the press is taken sufficiently into the government's confidence as to facts to enable it to fulfil its mission as the mouthpiece of the nation. In Germany the imperial and Prussian government by the use of its system of anonymous inspiration has been accustomed to play upon the various organs in which the government's views are wont to appear so as to control public opinion, fanning or restraining the fires of national enthusiasm as the foreign situation demands. This was illustrated in the careful management of the press in the Morocco crisis of 191 1, when the anti- French and anti-British feeling was alternately stimu- lated and checked; incontestibly also in the days preceding the outbreak of war in 1914, when a series of "hands off!" articles following Austria's ultimatum to Serbia was well adapted to steel and inspire the national spirit for the approaching crisis. Occasionally, however, public opinion in Germany gets very much out of hand. This was the case during the Boer War, when the waves of enthusiasm for the South African republics rolled high in spite of all efforts of the governmentally inspired press to pour oil upon them, and in 1906 when through the Kaiser's interview with the Daily Telegraph correspondent the last phases of the pro-British attitude of the imperial government at the time of the struggle with the Boers were laid bare. On such occasions as this, when German ideals are strongly touched, the press arrays itself with force and remarkable unanimity on the popular side and leads an outbreak of Teutonic fury that echoes in every home and hall of the Fatherland. Such unanimity is, however, rare. Some of the strongest papers are handicapped in their influence on public opinion by the suspicion of government inspiration. All tend to suffer. 374 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS so far as they are not the mouthpieces of the Foreign Ofi&ce, from a lack of a feeling of responsibility, passing in their leading articles from an unmotivated exultation over Germany's present and future situation to an equally unfounded despair. Much more than in foreign matters has the system of governmental influence been harmful to the German press in matters of domestic poHcy. While the ministry no longer poisons the wells of pubKc opinion as in Bis- marck's day, it does greatly impair the influence of a great section of the press. During crises Hke that before the Reichstag election of 1907 or the discussions preceding the passage of the Defense Bill in 1913, the imperial ministry constantly played upon the keys and stops of the press. Here, however, there has grown up in the great National Liberal and Radical papers, not to speak of the vast network of Socialist organs, led by the Berlin Vorwdrts, an array of popular tribunes, who guard jealously the interests of the economic groups which they represent and are themselves free from all suspicion of unfair government influence. Almost all of the great papers of Germany are in fact strict party organs, only a few like the Lokalanzeiger of Berlin professing to be impartial in matters political. PoHtical interests have, as we have seen, combined with economic interests in Germany, so that journals repre- sent not merely a party, but an economic group as well. Thus the Kreuzzeitung, the old organ of the Conserva- tive party, is likewise the most influential representa- tive of agrarian interests, while Radical organs like the Frankfurter Zeitung have their constituency among the financial and commercial classes of the cities and the great National Liberal papers, like the Kolnische Zeitung, the Tagliche Rundschau of Berlin and the Hamburger Nachrichten, represent the industrial in- terests and those of the upper middle class. It is but natural that those political parties which are most THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 375 closely identified with economic groups should be rep- resented by the most aggressive press. Thus the two groups which occupy opposite ends of the poHtical scale, the Conservatives and the SociaHsts, whose organizations rest on a strong community of economic interest, have an aggressive and well-disciplined press ; and as a result it is chiefly among the Conservative and SociaHst editors that one finds men of strong personal influence on the counsels of the party. Next to them comes the press of the Centre party, led by the powerful Germania in Berlin, a journal which was founded in 1870 with the first leap into power of the ultramontane party and which has valiantly led the firing line in defense of Roman CathoHc interests ever since. Between these extremes stands a long line of papers with liberal and radical leanings. It is remarkable indeed that by far the greater number of journals of national and international standing in Germany are National Liberal in faith or tendency, just as this party, with all of its trimming and irresolution in program, contains a vastly greater proportion of the brains of the empire than its electoral figures would lead one to suppose. Papers Hke the Kolnische Zeitung, the MUnchner Neueste Nachrichten, the Schwabische Merkur of Stuttgart, the Hannoverische Courier or the Tdgliche Rundschau of Berlin, with their Radical contemporaries, the Berliner Tageblatt, the Vossische Zeitung of Berlin and the Frankfurter Zeitung^ represent the very best that German journahsm has to offer, both as newsgatherers and in the national-patriotic tone of their policies. In Germany as elsewhere the more narrow the political attitude of a paper, the less its importance as a gatherer of news. Every poKtical, social and economic direction then has its own press, which watches jealously over the interests of its group and presents them with more or less passion and narrowness. From the wild chauvinism of the Berlin Deutsche Tageszeitung or Post to the bitter 376 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS class appeals of the Socialistic Vorwdrts, each strikes its own peculiar note and plays the pipe for its party's dancing. It seldom happens indeed that a newspaper ties itself completely to the fortunes of a political leader, as in France, nevertheless the party press reflects in striking fashion the individualism and separatism of German politics as well as the pettiness and narrowness which is a part of factional strife. The fulminations of the agrarian aristocrat against the inheritance tax, those of the manufacturer against the income tax or the radical against the tariff on food-stuffs and the appeals of the Social Democrat to class feeling echo and re- echo harshly and shrilly according as the acoustic space furnished by the individual sheet is large or small. The German, whether country squire, townsman or peasant-farmer, demands that the paper which he reads beside the family lamp or the restaurant table shall support first of all Germany's claims abroad and secondly, the program of his particular party, with loyalty, which is the trait which he most reveres. In no country is a newspaper more clearly tagged with its party name, and in no country does the reader insist more strongly that it shall remain true to its colors. Through thick and thin, right or wrong, in disaster or success, the paper must be the defender, apologist and conserver of the party's traditions. Every act of the party's leaders must be championed, every move of the party's opponents must be attacked or given an unflattering interpretation. Characteristic of this is the attitude of the papers in reporting political debates. "I always took care that the Whig dogs should not get the best of it," said Dr. Johnson in speaking of his parliamentary reporting, and something like this has become the motto of the German press. Even journals of the highest standing almost always have their party's representative emerge from a political discussion covered with honor "for his clear and practical demonstration THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 377 of the facts," while his opponent invariably "seeks to confuse the matter and takes refuge in excuses and hedging." The result of this attitude on public opinion is still further to narrow and to embitter poHtical life. The unfortunate side of this Kfe, already pointed out, is that it splits the nation into factions and creates among these factions the feehng that the government is a hostile force with which in various crises the best terms possible are to be made. The result is that the German citizen gets very little help from the press in laying aside the swaddling clothes of political separatism. He swears by his Frankfurter or Magdehurger or Kdlnische and avoids other papers like the pest. This attitude toward the newspapers is characteristic of the narrow partisan in every country. An especially unfortunate result in Germany, however, is the weakening of Uberalism through the dissipation of its energies in factional controversies. Radical and National Liberal papers have found it as impossible to make common cause against feudal pressure and agrarian demands in the press as in parKament, and the Social Democratic papers attack the middle-class BerKn Tagehlatt as fiercely as they do the feudal Kreuzzeitung. Unfortunately then political factionahsm and bhnd subserviency to the party program harm the inde- pendence of the press and damage its influence as an organizer of pubHc opinion. On the other hand it seems that the sources of public opinion are kept purer from strictly financial and business contamination in Germany than elsewhere. Such bribery as there is, is usually backed in some way by government influence, which dominates many a petty provincial or rural sheet. In the various "districts" and "circles" into which Prussia is divided some one of the local newspapers enjoys the official advertising and is regarded as the governmental mouthpiece. This provincial sheet, which 378 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS assumes the proud title of "Official Gazette" {Amts- und Kreisblatt), is a private undertaking, of course, but is strongly under the influence of the local crown official, the Landrat, who has the privilege of withdrawing at any time the official titles and official advertising. Naturally the paper is expected to support the govern- ment, and particularly the policies of the Conservative party, with all vigor, and the Landrat sees to it that it goes for the Social Democrats without gloves and he permits nothing to pass uncensured that might be construed as a reflection on the ruler or the monarchy. During electoral campaigns the editor of such a paper must do his utmost to prevent any increase in the Radical or the Socialist vote in his district, if he would avoid a vigorous bulljdng from the all-powerful Landrat, who is nearly always a member of the feudal class. Aside from such instances of official terrorism, it is not usual to fi.nd German journals listening to financial seduction. Certain papers, it is true, represent par- ticular business interests, as the Rheinwestfalische Zeitung of Diisseldorf those of the Westphalian mine operators and iron and steel manufacturers. The big business interests, indeed, have their own press, which is in great measure independent of party, although supporting of course Conservative or National Liberal poHcies. Thus the Krupps and iron and steel interests are said to own the Berlin Neueste Nachrichten, which represents most adequately those industries and the financiers behind them, while individuals identified with the Agrarian League own the Berlin Tageszeitung. It is, however, extremely rare when a newspaper modi- fies its understood political policy as a result of financial considerations. Especially in the case of the Social Democratic press is the influence of the advertising columns on the papers' policy negligible. Of aU the influences then which work upon the press, the government through its various open and subter- THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 379 ranean agencies is far and away the strongest. Even in peace times the BerKn ministry may hold a heavy hand on public information through its control of the only great news agency, Wolff's Bureau, to which every German paper is in a sense tributary, from the metro- poHtan journal with its four editions daily to the "patent outside" of the East Prussian or Bavarian village. The result is a marked lack of enterprise in seeking news on the part of the individual journals, greatly in contrast with the papers of western Europe and America. To begin with, in the very arrangement of the greater number of German papers the news plays a much less important part than the editorial and essay, for the telegraphic news is usually relegated to the inside pages, the first page being given over to discursive articles, which in the greater journals may concern the most recent news, but in the smaller papers usually limp twenty-four hours behind it. More often the first columns in the morning or evening editions are devoted to an essay on some political or sociological subject or to a resume, such as would be found in the Sunday issue of an American paper. Even some of the best German newspapers put the latest news in the last columns of the inside of the last page, the place which seems to foreign readers the least conspicuous in the whole paper. News is indeed furnished with startHng frequency by the greater German papers, such journals as the Kolnische Zeitung putting out four editions daily, with a specialization that is characteristic of other sides of German industry, one edition containing general news, another especially market reports, etc. The wealth of material which such a daily offers, including social and political philosophy, fiction, poetry, travel, biography and Hterary criticism, much of it of consider- able scientific and Hterary value, is confusing to the American, who seeks first of all the news in his daily paper. 380 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS There are other confusing sides in the German attitude towards the day's news when approached with British or American prejudices. One of the most striking is the habit of even the best papers of interlarding news despatches with editorial comment. Provincial sheet and metropolitan daily alike are apt to introduce tele- graphic news which is favorable to the cause which they represent with salvos of editorial applause, while unfavorable items are emasculated by constant inter- linear comments signed "D.R." {Der Redakfeur, the editor), such as, "We doubt that!" "Well, we shall wait and see !" or even "This is an open falsehood !" or "Such a campaign of lies!" and similar remarks. Or passages of crucial importance in the text may be in- terrupted by a bracketed row of question marks or points of exclamation. This confusing mixture of edi- torial opinion with the day's news is not countenanced by some prominent publishers, like Louis Ullstein, the owner of the Berlin Morgenpost and other publications, who have tried to make head against it. Like most newspaper sins, this is also to be laid at the door of the reader, for it must be said that the German reader likes to have his news served up in a way which shall spice the attractiveness of welcome announcements and soften the bitterness of unwelcome things. The German, it must never be forgotten, embraces a cause with his whole soul, whether it be the cause of the whole Fatherland, or that of his economic class or political party, or even his side in the teapot tempest of local politics. He as a devoted champion and good fighter, but also a hard loser, and his tendency to ro- manticism often permits him to revel in a paradise of dreams even when the enemy is at the gate. This characteristic of the great body of Germans is not of course a weakness of the politically trained classes nor of those aggressive men who guided Germany's industry to the front. But it must not be forgotten that the THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 381 great majority of German citizens are just emerging from a state of political immaturity. They devote themselves with patient conscientiousness and enthus- iasm to the daily duties of home and family, handiwork or profession, and leave poKtical leadership to those who make a profession of ruling, quite wilHng to accept their orders so long as their patriotism seems trust- worthy. If the liking for news flavored with the sauce of editorial comment indicates a weakness in German public opinion, the distaste for a directly sensational treatment of news is a strength. Germany has, to be sure, its political press of a sensational sort. The wild chauvinism of some of the Berhn and provincial journals is not to be outdone in Paris or Petrograd ; but in all that does not concern politics, the most sensational of German journals is as mild when compared with certain French or American dailies as the poems of Felicia Hemans with the early effusions of Swinburne. In the whole field of personalities and in the matter of crime especially, the German papers show a decency and re- serve all the more refreshing in view of the flood of impure books which has risen to such a height in Ger- many. There are, to be sure, yellow journals in Berlin and Munich, and especially certain comic weeklies, the clever Simplicissimus at their head, show a coarseness of tone which has on more than one occasion shut them out from the mails in those countries where puritanism is still a strong tradition ; but the German demands that the news columns of his daily paper shall be clean, and the law backs him up in it. For here as elsewhere in German life, the correction of abuses is not left simply to the force of public opinion. Court proceedings must be reported in such a way that they cannot possibly educate to crime; certain classes of cases are entirely shut out of the papers, and it may be said in general that the atmosphere of the German court room does 382 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS not lend itself to yellow journalism. Offenders against the press laws are invariably punished, often with a severity which seems really out of proportion to the offense. Especially does the German journalist have to walk carefully to avoid conflict with the rigid Kbel laws. Even the most innocent remark about the behavior of some pubHc servant or a news item which permits of a construction placing some private individual in an un- flattering light may call forth a demand for a public retraction or provoke an expensive Hbel suit. The German law, indeed, goes very far in protecting the individual in all the- rights of personality, especially in the right of avoiding pubhcity. The retractions published from time to time in German papers are one of the most enlightening chapters in a study of the German press, illustrating as they do how fully the rights of the individual are guarded. The feeling seems to prevail that the doings of no person or group of persons shall be dragged before the public without the consent of those concerned. It goes without saying that the interviewer plays no considerable role in the German newspaper world, and that the position of the reporter is much less important than in those countries where an unrestricted license of the press prevails. Indeed the German law goes so far that in many ways the importance of the press as a sanitary agent is taken away. A newspaper is sometimes forced by threats or legal sentence to retract a statement when the retraction is practically a falsehood, for the mere fact that a news item is true does not by any means serve as a defense against a libel suit, if the item may be construed as a reflection on the behavior of any person or group of persons. Thus a case is recorded where an editor was convicted for publishing a statement reflecting on a hospital, although it was shown in the court proceedings that the statement had been made in a public medical THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 383 gathering. In this case the law guaranteed to the physician the right of criticism, but denied to the editor the right of publicity. The libel laws are the constant burden of editorial complaint in Germany. Especially the Social Demo- cratic press has had to suffer under their administration at the hands of their poHtical opponents. The German bench is far above any suspicion of bias except that which comes with the belief held in official circles that the Socialists are public enemies, combined with a reverence for those in authority which degenerates at times into servility. This, the SociaHst press has con- tended, was hardly the right source from which it might expect a square deal. In the nineties and the earliest years of the present century heavy sentences, often from three to five years in prison, were pronounced against Social Democratic editors for Use majeste. The modification of the law in 1908 (cf. page 108) did much to soften the tone of the SociaHst and Radical press towards royalty in Prussia; but prosecutions for libel still occur when the press of these parties breaks the bounds prescribed by conservative feeling in its criti- cism of some municipal official or even of a minister of state. Such cases are usually fought bitterly up through the various courts and usually result in a conviction. With the increase of the number and influence of the Socialist press — the party had by 1910 established daily newspapers in more than 68 cities — the watch- fulness of prosecuting officers under the inspiration of the higher provincial officials is kept constantly alert. All of this has not tended to soften the tone of the SociaHst editor, who never turns the other cheek to the smiter. This unfortunate state of affairs has done much to lower the tone of poHtical discussion in Germany to a bitterness and brutality, which, especially in electoral campaigns, swells into a crescendo of bilHngsgate and presents a most unattractive side of the German press. 384 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS No stronger evidence could be presented that the cure for the shrill outbreaks of political immaturity is to be found in liberty and not in constant paternal correction. In spite of these false notes, the lack of sensationalism in the treatment of news is one of the most refreshing characteristics of the German press. The fact that in Prussia and in some other German states every issue must show the names of the persons responsible for the news and editorial portions and for the advertising columns is a guarantee ; and the innate German love of truth and hatred of sham hangs heavy on the success of those metropolitan sheets which show a dangerous tendency to rival the yellow papers of France and America. That these tendencies are manifest in some of the Berlin papers is not to be denied, and it is to be expected that they will continue to grow in proportion as the Americanization of the imperial capital eman- cipates the individual spirit from the traditions of the past. But the whole spirit of German public opinion is opposed to this hectic demoralization of the press. A few years ago, when an enterprising Berlin firm estab- lished an illustrated weekly on the model of those British and American papers which have a maximum of the personal in pictures and articles and a minimum of news and literature, the undertaking was received with a shaking of heads everywhere. "This personal advertisement is against the genius of our people," re- marked a prominent Leipsic business man concerning it. "It is an importation from America and is fostering a spirit which Germany has never known." It must be said in defense of America, however, that the German press admits without hesitation advertisements and a sort of humor which in America would be impossible in any paper using the mails. The reformation of the libel laws cannot long be de- layed in Germany, and the result will almost certainly be an improvement in the tone of political and public THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 385 discussion. It is, however, very improbable that the tone of the German daily papers will be much bright- ened thereby. The staring headlines which form such a feature of the foreign press the German newspaper reader knows only in a mild form : he demands that he be given that which is true or at least that which is in accord with his ideas of the truth, and wants no trifling with his news in order to make it sensational. The interesting "write-up" of the American or English reporter cannot therefore find a place in a paper which takes itself and its functions so seriously. The editor may himself destroy the effect of the news by critical interpolations, but these spring in most cases from soul convictions which are those of the reader himself. The latter disdains any attempt to make either news or editorial matter interesting, and this paired with the German lack of feeling for literary form makes the German press dull reading for those who seek in it anything like the sparkle and crisply classical presen- tation of the Paris journals. The dull and formal narration of the news, fortified usually by editorial comment, political resumes, rhodomontades of doubtful inspiration, accurate but colorless police and market reports, with here and there an outburst of Teutonic rage against foreign competitors or political opponents, — these make up the current parts of the newspapers, and certainly do not appeal to those who read the journals for the froth of life or expect from them models of literary excellence. Since Schopenhauer's day, indeed, "newspaper Ger- man" has been a term of contempt. "Pig German, — I beg pardon, — newspaper German !" exclaimed the celebrated pessimist more than half a century ago in a memorable essay on "The Butchery of the German Language." "The linguistic debauch," he exclaimed in his customary gentle style, "to which no other nation can show a parallel, seems to proceed in the main from 386 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS the political newspapers, the lowest form of literature, and go from them into the literary journals and finally into books." It is certain that newspaper Gernian has done nothing to remove this reproach since Schopen- hauer's day; indeed, the style of German prose, which seems to grow more cumbersome and unwieldy every year, can charge much of its degeneracy to the daily and weekly press. An illustrated journal of the highest standing introduces to its readers a series of pictures "from the by-the-Russians-temporarily-occupied-and- by-the - German-army-under-the - brilliant - leadership-of- General-von-Hindenburg-gloriously-reconquered prov- ince of East Prussia," and similar sins against all of the muses may be found in the best journals. Of recent years a reaction has been observable, led by papers like the Vossische Zeitung of Berlin, "Auntie Voss," as it is humorously called by its contemporaries, which looks back on a century and three-quarters of literary history since no less a stylist than young Gotthold Ephraim Lessing contributed to its early numbers, or the Frankfurter Zeitung, which commands some very able pens. Such criticisms of the German newspaper as litera- ture, however, apply only to its news and editorial columns. Besides these transient expressions of the popular spirit which are written day by day and exist only for a day, the German journals, provincial and metropolitan alike, offer each day a mass of material, which is not merely literature in the strict sense of the word, but which for richness and variety of literary and scientific material has no equal anywhere in the world's press. It is the custom for most papers to maintain a feuilleton, separated from news and editorial matter by a tj^e-bar, which reserves the lower half of the page for matters of more lasting content, non-contempora- neous or quasi-contemporaneous in their interest. This essay was a French invention developed in Germany THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 387 early in the nineteenth century by the Jewish prose virtuoso Heinrich Heine, and it has cultivated a light- ness and gracefulness of style which is strikingly in contrast to the soggy editorial or news paragraph. In light essays on science, Kterature or art, the whole field of modern culture is laid under tribute with a style which recalls the conversational tone of the drawing room or club. The feuilleton writers of Germany lack the grace which marks the best salon literateurs of the French press ; but they count among them some of the most brilliant stylists of the nation and maintain a high standard in the wealth and variety of their scientific material. To these articles of critical and conversational tone are to be added literary works, such as novels by the best authors of Germany, published serially in the daily papers. Gerhart Hauptmann's Atlantis first appeared in the daily edition of the Berlin Tageblatt, and other names scarcely less well known on the Ger- man Parnassus are to be found in the daily press of the larger cities. Articles of more solid import appear in special supplements, forming a weekly or semi-weekly part of the larger papers. Some of these command the ablest pens in Germany in the field of literature, art and science, and become an indispensable reference material for investigators and critics. Indeed, the literary criticism of such papers as the Berlin Tag and the Vossische Zeitung or the Cologne Volkszeitung is among the best that appears anywhere in Germany. The well-nigh inexhaustible wealth of material offered in this way may be shown by a resume of the various supplements issued within one week to accompany the morning and afternoon news and editorial matter and market reports of a large Berlin newspaper : a technical supplement of eight pages; a supplement containing essays on legal subjects, four pages; a literary review, two pages; an illustrated supplement, six pages; a 388 THE GERMAN EMPIRE BETWEEN TWO WARS comical supplement, six pages; a household supple- ment, six pages; and a page each for women's affairs, for art and drama criticism and for tourists. In addi- tion the regular issues contained a letter from China on politico-economic subjects, a sketch of the Hungarian drama, and essays on the teaching of pedagogics in the universities and on the sleeping sickness in the African colonies, and one page daily devoted to a review of sports, mostly horse racing and aeronautics. It is evident that while the German newspaper does not as a newsgatherer satisfy western demands, it brings to its readers each day a wealth of material which in other lands would find its way into the "heavier" magazines or into scientific periodicals. It is evident also that while the German who reads his chosen newspaper may be insufficiently informed or biassed regarding that which is called in press par- lance "hve news," he is schooled in scientific methods of observation and inquiry and in accuracy of report- ing regarding those things which can be divorced from the ephemeral passions of the day.' He finds in his daily or weekly journal not so much a raconteur of the day's doings as a pedagogue and staid mentor, who delights to lead him into the devious paths of science or the romantic world of ideas and ideals. The peda- gogical instinct and the enthusiasm for knowledge for its own sake, the love of truth and the careful accuracy in method, narrowness of poHtical view and passionate insistence on the personal standpoint : these ingredients of German character are nowhere more clearly exempli- fied than in the nation's press. mDEX Abdul Hamid 11 (1842- ), sultan of Turkey, 43, 77, 90, 92, 192. Abschlusspriifung, 343. Accident Insurance Act, 181. Adana, 92. Adige, 42. administrative board, cf . City. Adriatic, 42, 44, 68. ^gean Sea, 36, 92. Aegidi, Ludwig Karl (1825-1901), 367. Afghanistan, 54. Agadir, 8, 18, 62. Agence Havas, 362, 371. Agrarian League, 128, 151, 152, 151- 154, i6s, 378. Agrarian Party, cf. Conservative-, agrarian. agrarian tariff, 152-154. Aix-la-Chapelle, 221, 270, 280. Albania, 19, 36, 43-46, 68. Aleppo, 93. Alexander (1857-93), Prince of Bul- garia, 31. Alexander II (1818-81), Czar of Russia, 6, 27. Algeciras Conference, 17, 39, 42, 48, 49, 62, III, 115. Algeria, 16. Alliance of the Middle Classes, 165. Alsace, 3, 4, 218, 219, 364. Alsace-Lorraine, annexation, 3, 4, 217; French resentment over, 7, 10, 20, 30, 72 ; early government imder empire, 221-223; constitu- tion of, 106, 134, 156, 191, 212, 225; in the Reichstag, 117, 120, 123, 222, 224; German claim to, 217-221; popular feeling toward Germany in, 223-232, 265 ; prog- ress in Germanization, 233 ; govern- ment of cities in, 277, 285, 289. Altona, 315. Altona reform school, 331, 332. America, 58, 84, 264, 289, 326, 363, 365, 379, 384- Anatolia, 92. Anatolian Railway, 92, 93. Andrassy, Julius (1823-90), 28, 34. Ansiedlungs-Gesetz, 250. anti- Jesuit law, 208. anti-modemist oath, 207. anti-national parties, 117, 121, 123. anti-socialist laws, 181, 182. Argentine, 85. armed peace, 72. Armenian massacres, 90. Asquith, Herbert H. (1852- ), 62. Associated Press, 58. Association for Housing Reform, Ger- man, 301. Association Law, German, 250. Association of Eastern Marches, Ger- man, 249. Asia Minor, 39, 42, 90. Atlantis, Hauptmann's, 387. Augsburg, 177, 273, 302. Austria, in aUiance with Germany, 6, 7, 26-28, 31 ; leans on Germany in the Balkans, 11, 35-37, 40, 41, 373 ; annexes Bosnia and Herze- govina, 34-35 ; German element in, 37~3Q; in rivalry with Italy, 41, 44-46; Poles in, 235, 239, 244, 264; illiteracy in, 323. Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, 40. Austro-German Alliance, 26-38, 35, 38-41. Baden, suffrage in, 141 ; Socialists, 188; KulturkampJ in, 203-204; cities of, 285, 289, 292; schools of, 327, 341, 3S8. 389 39° INDEX Bagdad, g2, 95. Bagdad Railway, 69, 94. Balkan Alliance, 11, 36, 67, 68, 91. Balkan states, 28, 30, 39, 54, 115, 200. Balkan wars, 11, 45, 67, 91. Ballin, Albert (1857- ), 163. banca ludowy, 253. Barbarossa, Frederick (i 121-89), Ger- manic emperor, 65, 89. Barmen, 160, 168, 272, 297. Bassermann, Ernst (1854- ), 170, 172. Bassora, 95. Bavaria, overseas' enthusiasm in, 61 ; Conservatives in, 121 ; subordinates local interests, 140; national char- acteristics of, 141 ; Socialists in, 188; religion in, 200; in Kultur- kampf, 203, 204; Center party in, 213; cities of, 277, 298, 307; schools of, 320, 323, 327, 335, 337, 345, 3SO, 352. Bavarian Palatinate, 115; cf, Rhine Palatinate. Bebel, August (1840-1913), 179, 180, 186, 197. Befestigungs-Gesetz, 250. Belfort, 23. Belgium, 13, 68, 70, 80, 201, 323. Belgrade, 40. Berlin, press, 58, 74, 361-363, 374, 375, 381, 384; growth of, 269, 270; government of, 278, 280, 282, 285, 286, 290; trading enterprises, 29s ; land values, 301 ; popular culture, 312, 314, 31s; Realschulen, 332 ; church tax, 348, 349. Berlin Congress, 28, 54, 86. Berlin Exposition for City Building, 306, 307. Berlin group (Roman Catholic), 210. Berlin Lokalanzeiger, 369. Berlin Merchants' Association, 301. Berlin Neuesle Nachrichten, 378. Berlin Post, 6, 375. Berlin Produce Exchange, 151. Berlin Schloss, 136. Berlin Schlossplatz, 129, 308. Berlin Tag, 387. Berlin Tageblatt, 174, 363, 375, 377, 387. Bernstein, Edward (1850- ), 185, 186. Bethmann-HoUweg, Theobald von (1856- ), IIS, 116, 130, 134, 137- Beust, Friedrich von (1809-86), 26. Bezirk, 285. Bismarck, Otto von (1815-98), policy toward France, 3, 7, 10, 15, 20; toward Austria, 26-28; toward Russia, 31 ; toward the Balkans, 35 ; toward England, 54 ; view of treaties, 46 ; of British liberalism, 52, 53 ; of diplomacy, 75, 76, 83; of imiversal suffrage, 102 ; of Prussian liberalism, 105, 139; of a responsible ministry, 114; of German parties, 116, 117; policy toward German parties, 118, 119, 122-124, 148, 151, 155; toward the Socialists, 178, 180- 182 ; toward the Roman Catholic Church, 204, 205, 209; toward Alsace-Lorraine, 217, 222, 223; toward the Poles, 244, 246; toward the press, 367, 368. Bismarck Archipelago, 85. Bismarck's Memoirs (jGedanken und Erinnerungen), 53. block system, 126, 130, 132. "blue-black" block, 130, 206. Bochum, 168, 273. Bodenstedt, Friedrich von (1819-92), 93- Boer republics, 56, 57. Boer War, 51, 53, 57-61, 70, in, 112, 373. Bohemia, 38, 265. Bonn, 270. Bordeaux, 3, 217. Bosnia, 28, 30, 34. Bosphorus, 28, 54. Boulanger, Georges Ernst (1837-91), 8. Bourgogne, 220. Boxers, Chinese, 79, 88. Brazil, 85. Brandenburg, 139, 155, 276. Brant, Sebastian (1457-1521), 218. Brenner, 48. Breslau, 269, 283, 302, 312. Briand, Aristide (1862- ), 7. Brindisi, 47. Brunhuber, Robert (quoted), 360. Brunswick, 122, 123. INDEX 391 Bukowina, 232. Biilow, Bernard Ernst von (1815- 79), 139- Biilow, Bernard, Prince von (1849- ), III, 112, IIS, 116, 129, 130, 206, 247, 248. Bund der Landwirte, 128; cf. Agrarian League. Bundesrat, 101-104, 108, 109, 126, 134, 140, 156, 208, 212, 223; cf. Federal Council. Biirgerschule, 326, 328, 347; cf. Middle School, burgomaster, 284, 285, 286. Busch, Moritz (1821-99), 7. 53> 54. 367- Byron, 52, 235. Cambon, Jules (1845- ), 18. Camorra, 48. Canossa, 204. Caprivi, Count George Leo von (1831-99), II, 31, 32, 115, 127, 148, 152, 205, 247. Cartels, 62. Casablanca, 17. Cassel, 102, 315. Catarro, 44. Catholic labor unions, 168, 169, 194, 211, 213. Catholic Workingmen's Union, Ger- man, 211. Cavour, Count di (1810-61), 29. Centre party (cf. Clerical party), 60, III, 117, 122, 123, 129, 130, 132, 14s, 201-216, 225, 260, 280, 337. Champagne, 22, 222. Charlemagne, 29, 237. Charlottenburg, 303, 333. Chemnitz, 160. Chemnitz Royal Industrial Academy, 333. China, 75, 388. Churchill, Winston (1874- ), 64. Cilicia, 43. dty, German, administrative board, 277, 281-284; art, 307; art muse- iims, 315; banks, 298; citizen council, 277, 279, 283 ; government, 275-293 ; growth, 270-274 ; labor bureaus, 281, 298; land purchase, 300-303; legal bureaus, 300; libraries, 310; music and theatres, 313-315; overcrowding, 300-301, 303-305; ownership and trading, 294-297; Ordinances, 275; pawn- shops, 298 ; planning, 306, 307 ; playgrounds, 310; price fixing, 297. Civita Vecchia, 29. Clerical party (cf. Centre party), 10, 48, 117, 120, 122, 127, 152, 153. 157, 159, 168, 172, 345, 349, 357- Clerical supervision of schools, 321, 357, 358. coal strikes, 167, 168, 217. coal syndicate, 167. Coblenz, 221. Cologne, 58, 89, 125, 144, 160, 221, 269, 274, 277, 278, 280, 283, 297, 302, 361. Cologne group (Roman Catholic), 210. Cologne Volkszeitung, 387. Colonial Museum, 88. Colonial Society, 88. Colonies, 81, 85-89, 213. Combes, Justin Louis (1835- ), 204, 215. commercial treaties, 152. commercial universities, 55, 271, 312. Commune, Paris, 7. " compulsory workingmen's insurance, 9, 38, 66, 119, 127, 178, 181, 182, 284, 293. confessional schools, 352, 353. Confirmation Law, 250. Congress of Berlin, 28, 54, 86. Congress of Vienna, 86. conquered provinces, 217-233. Conservative-agrarian group, 120, 121, 127, 149, 150, 163, 190. Conservative party, in, 112, 117, 128-130, 151-153, 168, 172, 280, 337, 345, 349, 357, 366, 375. Constantinople, 11, 58, 77, 90, 91. continuation schools, 322, 334, 360. Corfu, 89. Council of Basel, 210; of Constance, 210. Coimter-reformation, 238. Cracow, 254. Crefeld, 160, 288. 392 INDEX crematories, 144, 288. Crete, 92. Crispi, Francesco (1819-1901), 41. Croat, 38. Cromwell, 147. Cyrenaica, 58. Czech, 38, 39, 264, 265. Daily Telegraph interview, 59, in, 373. Dalmatia, 44. Damara Land, 86, 87. Danes, 120, 224, 275. d'Annunzio, Gabriele (1864- ), 43. Danzig, 237. Dardanelles, 27, 91. deathrate, German, 80, 81. Debussey, Claude Achille (1862- ), 24. Decazes, Louis Charles, due (1819-86), 16. Defense Bill, 11, 12, 20, 37, 61, 67, 97, 131, 187, 374. Delcasse, Th6ophile (1852- ), 8, 17, IIS- Deutsche Bank, 93, 163. Deutsche Revue, 360. Deutsche Rundschau, 360. Deutsche Tageszeitung, 375, 378. Deutscher Lehrerverein, 320, 325. Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, 249. Deutschfreisinnige, 118, 173. dictatorship paragraph, 222. Diedenhofen, 221. diplomacy, German, 15, 16, 18, 22, 71, 75, 77- distress work, 299. Dittrich, Franz (1839- ), 215. Dortmund, 160, 361. Dresden, 58, 160, 269, 277, 280, 314, 315- Dreyer, Max (1862- ), 354. Dreyfus, Alfred (1859- ), 8, 14, 15, 114. Dual Alliance, 32, 34, 59 ; cf . Franco- Russian coalition. Duke of Cumberland, 123. Durazzo, 45, 46. Diisseldorf, 160, 271, 272, 283, 299, 303, 306, 308, 309, 31S, 320, 361, 378. Diisseldorf Exposition for City Build- ing, 306- East Africa, 86, 87. Eastern Marches, The, 250. East Prussia, 121, 158, 190, 248, 254, 257. Egypt, 4, 42, 79, 94. Einheitschule, 332. Eisenach Convention, 179. Elberfeld, 160, 298, 301. elementary industrial schools, sz5, 334- elementary school, cf. Volksschule. Eltemstunden, 300. emigration, 81, 84. Emperor, German, 106, 108, no. Engels, Friedrich (1820-85), 183. England, 18, 24, 41, 50-71, 81, 83, 299, 326, 359, 363, 365- Enteignungs-Gesetz, 250. Enver Bey, 91. Epirus, 45, 46. Erfurt Platform, 185, 186. Erwin von Steinbach (?-i3i8), 218. Essad Pasha, 45. Essen, 160, 168, 278, 303. Euphrates, 69, 93-95. European Turkey, 35. Evangelical Church, 197. Evangelical-Sodal Congress, 301, Expropriation Law, 250. Far East, 82, 84. Federal Chancellor, cf. Imperial Chan- cellor. Federal Council, cf. Bimdesrat. Ferry, Jules (1832-93), 7, 15. feuilleton, 386. Fez, 18. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814), 318. Fischart, Johann (1545-90), 218. Fischer, Anton (1832-1912), Cardinal, 211. fleet building, German, 60, 61, 83, 88, Folk Bank, 253, 255. Foreign Legion, 17. Forstrat, 284. Fortschrittliche Volkspartei, 118, 172, 173- France, 3-25, 72, 127, 142, 217, 219- 221, 227, 228, 230-233, 289, 359, i(>3, 365, 376, 384- INDEX 393 Franche Comte, 22. Francis Ferdinand (1863-1914), heir apparent of Austro-Hungary, 40. Francis Joseph (1830- ), emperor of Austria, 26, 38. Franco-Russian coalition (cf. Dual Alliance), 15, 17, 32, 67. Frank, Ludwig (1874-1914), 198. Frankfort on the Main, 269, 272, 280, 297, 302-307, 313, 315, 362. Frankfort Parliament, 52, 236. Frankfort reform schools, 331, 332. Frankfort University, 313. Frankfurter Zeitung, 64, 174, 373, 386. Frederick (1831-88), crown prince of Prussia, 26, 52, 53 ; German emperor, 55, 105- Frederick of HohenzoUem (1371-1440), Elector of Brandenburg, 155. Frederick the Great (1712-86), king of Prussia, 24, 51, 264, 318, 322, 349. Frederick William I (168&-1740), king of Prussia, 342. Frederick William III (1770-1840), 240. Frederick William IV (i 795-1861), 106, 142, 241. Free Conservatives, 120, 145, 156. Freisinnige, 170. Freisinnige Vereinigimg, 118. Freisinnige Volkspartei, 118. French Congo, 19. Freytag, Gustav (1816-05), 314, 364. Galicia, 232, 244, 260, 263. Gambetta, Leon (1838-82), 7. Gartenlaube, Die, 360. Gazeta Grudzionska, 272. Gelsenkirchen, 273. Gemeinde, 276. Gemeinderat, 281. Genoa, 47. German Conservatives, 120. "German peril," 62. German Workingmen's Party, 179. Germania, Die, 208, 375. Gnesen Lech, 251. Goethe, 52, 93, 218, 317. Golden Book of Senators, 106. Golden Horn, 58, 91. Goltz, Kolmar von der (1843- ), 43. Gothein, Georg (1857- ), 174. Gotthard, 48. Gottingen, 270, 350. Grafenstaden, 226. Graudenz, 245. Gravelotte, 23. Great Britain (cf. England), 18, 51, 270. Great Elector, 87. Greater Berlin, 301. Greater Germany, 61, 212. Greater Poland, 39, 45. Greater Serbia, 40. Greece, 36, 235. Grey, Sir Edward (1862- ), 268. Grillparzer, 314. Guelph party, 117, 120, 122, 123, 140, 224. Guiscard, Robert, 76. Gulf of Alexandretta, 92. Gumbitmen, 192. Gwinner, Arthur von (1856- ), 163. Gymnasium, 321, 327-329, 33i, 339, 351. Habsburg, 26, 29, 34, 38. Halle, 300, 350. HaUesches Tor, 229. Hambom, 276. Hamburg, 274, 309, 312, 313, 332. Hamburger Nachrichten, 374. Hammerstein, William, Freiherr von (1838-?), 368. Handelshochschule, 55, 312. Hannoverische Kurier, 372, 375. Hanotaux, Gabriele (1853- ), 72. Hanover, 58, 102, 117, 122, 123, 225, 244, 279, 305, 342. Hansa League, 93, 274. Harden, Maximilian (1861- ), 24, 108. Hauptmann, Gerhart (1862- ), 387. Hausbesitzerprivileg, 279. Heckenroth, Ludwig (1867- ), 344. Heine, Heinrich (1797-1856), 235, 387. HelSerich, Karl Theodor (1872- ), 163. Hellenic kingdom, 46. Henry IV, Germanic Emperor, 1050- 1106, 204. Henry V, Germanic Emperor, 1106- II 25, 65. 394 INDEX Henry VI, Germanic Emperor, 1165- 1197, 89. Eercynia potash mine, 166, 178. Herero, 86, 129. Hertling- Georg, Freiherr von ( 1 843- ) , 208. Herzegovina, 28, 30, 34. Hesperus, Jean Paul's, 52. Hesse-Cassel, 102, 225. Hesse (Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darm- stadt), 10, 88, 277, 281, 289, 292, 347, 352, 358. Heydebrand, Ernst von (1851- ), 163. Hildesheim, 307. Hilfschulen, 352. Hirsch-Duncker labor unions, 167, 194. Hohenlohe, Chlodowig von H.- Schillingfiirst (1819-1901), 115, 127, 205. Hohenstaufen, 48. Hohenzollem, 10, 26, 55, 65, 115, 123, 146, 149. Holland, 72, 93. Holy Alliance, 27. Holy Roman Empire, 65, 89, 219. House of Commons, 63, 64. House of the Butchers' Guild, Hildes- heim, 307. housing problem, 294, 300. Humboldt Academy, 312. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767-1835), 318. Himgary, 27, 265. illiteracy, German, 14, 323. Immaculate Conception, 203. Imperial Chancellor, 115, 116, 134. Imperial Diet (cf. Reichstag), 119, 120, 126. Imperial Land, 123, 222, 225, 227-230. Imperial party, 120, 165, 339- imperial prerogative, 104, 106, 107, 109, no. Imperial School Commission, 343. Imperial Supreme Court, 66. income tax, 170, 376. increment tax, 131. India, 42, 79, 87, 94. inheritance tax, 130, 131, 170, 171, 376. Ionic islands, 46. inorganic constitutions, 142. intermediate industrial schools, 333. internationalism, 197. Italy, 19, 28-31, 41-49. 58, 72, 75- Itaha Irridenta, 44. Italian-Turkish War, 19, 42-44, 48, 91. Jagiello, king of Poland, 1386-1434, 238. Jagow, Traugott von (1865- ), 230, 292. Jameson, Leander Starr (1853- ), 56. Japanese-Russian War, 33, 37, 62, 264. Jena, 3, 193, 270. Jean Paul (Richter), 51, 52. Jerusalem, 90. Jeshurun, 78. Jesuits, 201, 206, 208. Jews, 197. Journalisten, Die, Freytag's, 315-364. Julian Alps, 44. Junker, 27, 136, 144, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153, 159, 178. Jiiterbog, 13, 192. Kaempf, Johannes (1842- ), 136. Kamerun, 85. Kammerer, 284. Karl Eugen (1728-93), Duke of Wiirtemberg, 318. Karlsruhe, 302, 306. Kassubs, 245, 255. Kautzky, Karl (1854- ), 186, Kiao Chau, 79. Kiel, 208. Kinderlen-Waechter, Alfred von (1852- 1912), 18, 126. Kipling, 54. Kirschner, Martin (1842-1912), 282, 286. Kitchener, Earl (1850- ), 112. Kolnische Zeitung, 64, 78, 363, 367, 372, 374. 379- Konia, 92, 93. Konigsberg, 269. Konigsplatz, Berlin, 122. Kopp, Georg, Cardinal (1837-1914), 210. Kreuzzeitung, 145, 155, igo, 367, 368, 374, 377- INDEX 395 Kriiger, Paul (1825-1004), 56. Krupp, 13, 163, 278, 378. Kulturdiinger, 87. Kulturkampf, 6, 122, 204, 205, 208, 209, 216, 242, 258, 260, 353, 357. Ladysmith, 58. Lagow, 276. Lamprecht, Karl (1856-1915), 178. Landesschulrat, 341. Landrat, 276, 372, 378. Landstunn, 342. Landtag, Prussian (cf . Prussian Diet), 143, 144, 155, 166, 169, 189, 190, 202, 207, 246, 255, 260, 278, 284, 334, 339- Lasalle, Ferdinand (1825-64), 179. League of Polish Societies, 254. Ledebour, Georg (1850- ), 192. Lederer, Hugo, 309. Lehrfreiheit, 349. Leibniz, 318. Leipsic, a, 66, 269, 274, 277, 279, 280, 299, 304, 306, 308, 311, 315, 384. Leo XIII, Pope, 1878-1903, 204, 209. 16se majest6, 108, 383. Lessing, 314, 386. Lessing Academy, 312. Levant, 90. libel laws, 382, 384. Liberal group, 118, 123, 124, 127, 128. Liberal-industrial group, 120, 121. liberalism, 53, 61, 119. Liberals (cf. National Liberals), 10, 52, 117, 119 159. liberal-socialist alliance, 172. Lichnowsky, Prince Karl (i860- ), 69. Lichtemberger, Henri (1864- ), 24. Lieber, Ernst Moritz (1838-1902), 206. Liebknecht, Karl (1871- ), 180, 192. Liebknecht, Wilhelm (1826-1900), 179, 186. Liga polska, 252. Liman von Sanders, Otto (1855- ), 91. Linz, 237. Lithuania, 238. "little Germans," 86, 88, 174. Livonia, 238. Lloyd George, David, (1863- ), 62. Lombardy, 43. London, 74, 274, 363, 368, 372. London Conference, 19, 36, 37, 68. London Daily Chronicle, 73, 363. London Daily Telegraph, 59, in, 373. London Standard, 363. London Times, 363. Lorraine, 3, 4, 23, 220. Loubet, Emile (1838- ), 7. Louis XIV of France, 219, 220. Low Countries 270. Luther, 318, 349. Lutheran Conservatives, 145. Macedonia, 42, 43, 90. MacMahon, Count Marie de (1808- 93), 7- Madrid, 58. Mafeking, 58. Magistrat, 281. Magyars, 27, 265. Main, 350. Maistre, Joseph de (1754-1821), 73. Maltese Straits, 43, 48, 89. Manchester school, 151, 177. Mandel, Kari Wilhehn (1851- ), 226. Manila harbor, 76. Mannheim, 160, 271, 280, 297. Manufacturers' Alliance, German, 165. March victims, 183. Marcinkowski Association, 242, 243. Maritime Alps, 41. Marschall von Bieberstein, Adolf (1842-1912), 56, 68, 69, 76, 77, 91, 372. Marshall Islands, 86. Mars la Tour, 23, 223. Marx, Karl (1818-83), 179, 182, 183, 197- Massenet, Jules Emile (1842- ), 24. Masurs, 254, 255. Mayence, 221, 274, 308. meat scarcity, 166, 297. Mecklenburg, 128, 142, 245. Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 142. Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 142. Mediterranean, 29, 30, 39, 40. Meistersinger, 218. Melanchthon, 318. Memel, 264. Mercier, Auguste (1833- ), 14. 396 INDEX Mesopotamia, 92, 94, gs, 364. Metz, 4, 23, 160, 219, 230-233, 270. Meuse, 22, 50. Middle Schools, 326, 328. Minna von Barnhelm, Lessing's, 315. Mirza Schafy, Songs of, Bodenstedt's, 93- Moltke, Hellmuth von (1800-91), 4, 5. Montenegro, 35, 36, 45. Mon Village, Waltz', 228. Moravians, 38. Morocco, 8, 11, 42, 62, 63, 65, 66, 74, 78, 83, 114, 130, 183, 373. Moselle, 4, 22, 218, 220, 221, 230, 263. Most, Otto (1881- ), 272, 312. Mosul, 92. Motu proprio, 207. Mukden, 32. Miilhausen, 233. MUnchner Allegemeine Zeitung, 78. Miinchner Neueste Nachrichten, 375. MUnchner Zeitung, 370. Munich, 58, 269, 300, 303, 314, 315, 369, 381. Municipal, cf. City. Naples, 305. Napoleon I (1769-1821), 2, 53, 218, 275- Napoleon III (1808-1873), 28, 29, 218. National Assembly, Bordeaux, 3, 217. National Democratic Party, Polish, 261. National Liberal Party, 53, 118, 124, 125, 130, 131, 133, 152, 153, 157, 165, 169, 170, 179, 212, 216, 280, 37S, 377- Naumann, Friedrich (i860- ), 107, 120, 174. Naumburg, 340. Navy League, 61. neo-bourgeoisie, French, 8. Neue Zeit, 186. New Guinea, 85. New Kamerun, 19. "newspaper German," 385. Nicholas I (1841- ), king of Montene- gro, 35, 45- Niemen, 33. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), 96. Nijni Novgorod, 274. Nile, 95. nine-year schools, 327-329. Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 367, 371, 372. Nord und Slid, 360. North Africa, 43, 58. North German, 161, 196. North German Confederation, 10, loi, 102, 140, 161, 179, 203. North Sea, 3, 50, 63, 65, 66, 89, 93, 94. Nuremberg, 274, 307. Nuremberg Convention, 189. Oberrealschule, 327, 329, 331. octroi, 293. Oder, iss, 264. Old Age Pension Act, 181. Old Catholics, 203. Old Liberal Alliance, 172. Old Mark, 121. "Oncle Hansi," 228. one-year volunteer examination, 319, 343- one-year volunteers, 327, 343, 344. open ballot, 143, 149. Ordensland, 238. Orvieto, 305. Paasche, Hermann (1852- ), 170. Panama, 15. Pan-German, 22, 55, 63, 65, 88, g6, 231. Pan-Slavic, 245, 264. Panther, 18. papal infallibility, 203. Papal State, 203. parcellation banks, 253. Paris, IS, 21, 363, 367, 368, 373, 381, 385. paritatic schools, 352, 355. paternal despotism, 274, 286. peace of Frankfort, 4, 9, 217; of Rys- wick, 219; of Thorn, 238. Peninsular Campaign, 51. "perfidious Albion," 51. Persia, 94, 95. Persian GuK, 94. Peters, Karl (1856- ), 85. Picardy, 220. Pichon, Stephen (1857- ), 115. f INDEX 397 Pius IX, Pope, 1846-1878, 203, 204. Place de la Concorde, 230. Platen, Count August von (1796- 183s), 235. Po Valley, 48. Poincar6, Raymond (i860- ), 7, US- Point du Jour, 23. Poland, 234, 264. Poles, 38, 39, 120, 14s, 212, 224, 232, 234-266, 338. police power, 286-292. Polish Catholic Workingmen's Clubs, 252. Polish danger, 264, 265. Polish provinces, 237, 240-266, 325, 3SO. Polish school strike, 258, 259. Pomerania, 121, 158, 254, 257, 317. population of Germany, 81, 82. Port Arthur, 32. Porta Pia, 29. Posadowsky, Arthur, Count von (1845- ), 164. Posen, 117, 123, 220, 236, 240, 241, 243, 246, 247, 257, 260, 263, 264. press, German, 17, 20, 21, 58, 70, 74, 78, 359-388. Press Ordinances of 1863, 367. Prinetti, Nobile Giulio (1851- ), 44. Probekandidat, Der, Ernst's, 354. Progressive People's Party, 118, 173, 174- Progymnasium, 327, 328. Prorealgymnasium, 328. protective duties, 128, 152, 153. Prussia, growth of, 8, 9; England and, 51; in the empire, 104, 105, 107; agrarians of, 128, 147-155 constitution of, 134, 142, 145, i8g rural labor laws in, 148, 149, 243 electoral reform, 149; Roman Catholics in, 201, 204, 205; Poles in, 235-265; cities of, 270, 275- 277, 279, 285, 286, 288, 290-292 ; schools of, 320, 322, 323, 334, 337, 342, 346-351, 355-358: press of, 361, 383- Prussian Diet (cf. Landtag), 53, loi, 119, 127, 156, 167, 190, 147. public lecture courses, 312. Puster Valley, 237 . Queen Victoria, 53, 65, in. Raczynski, Count, 242. Radical-commercial group, 120, 121. Radical party, 53, 61, 118, 119, 124, 125, 129, 133, 145, 153, 157, 165, 166, 172, 173, 195, 276, 290, 356, 377- Ratisbon, 274. Ratsherr, 281. Ratzel, Friedrich (1844-1904), 273. Realgymnasium, 331, 339. Realschule, 327, 328, 331, 332, 339, 340. reciprocity treaties, 152, 153. Reform Gymnasium, 331. Reichsanzeiger, 370. Reichspartei, 120, 156. Reichsrat, 38. Reichstag, military bills in, 10, 11; anti-British debates, 64; criticizes German diplomacy, 75 ; powers of, 101-104; criticizes the Emperor, 111-113; party formation in, 116- 133; parliamentary weakness of, 133-138; influenced by industrial interests, 165-167 ; Social Democrats in, 191 ; Roman Catholic party in, 202 ; takes revenue away from cities, 293- Reichstag building, 308. "reinsurance agreement," 31. religious instruction in schools, 353- 356. "reptile funds," 368. Residenz, 288. Renter's Bureau, 73, 363, 371. Reutter, Colonel, 229, 230. revanche, 7. revisionists, Social Democratic, 178, 188, 198. Revue des deux Mondes, 360. Rheinwestfalische Zeitung, 378. Rhine, 22, 122, 155, 221, 269, 272, 275, 350. Rhineland, 81, 144, 154, 159, 277, 280. Rhine League of Cities, 274. Rhine Palatinate, 362. 398 INDEX Rhine Province, i6o, 276. Rhine- Westphalian district, 166, 167, 271, 300. Richelieu, 43. Richter, Eugene (1838-1906), 117, 124, 133. Riga, 237. river tolls, 155. Roberts, Earl (1832-1915), 112. Robespierre, 51. rolnik, 253. Roman Catholic Church, 117, 197, 200, 201-216, 246. Rome, 30, so, 74, 363, 367, 368. Roon, Count Albrecht von (1803-79), 13- Rostock, 350. Royal Colonization Commission, 247, 249, 252. Royal Decree of 1900, 331. Ruhr, 161, 194, 189. rural communes, 276. rural labor laws, 148, 149, 265. Russia, 7, II, 27, 28, 30-37, 39-41, 54, 81, 200, 239, 240, 264, 323, 369. Russian Poland, 240, 241, 244, 260. Russo-Japanese War, 33, 37, 62, 264. Ruthenians, 38, 39, 263. Ryswick, peace of, 219. Saar, 231. Saarbriicken, 160. Sachsenganger, 244, 252. Sadowa, 7. Saloniki, 36. Samoa, 74, 85. Sanjak of Novibazar, 36. Sarajevo, 40, 69. Savoy, 29. Saxony, S3, 81, 159, 161, 245, 271, 272, 279, 285, 292, 327, 334, 339, 345, 347, 348. Scheidemann, Philip (1865- ), 135, 136, 191- Schiller, 309, 315. Schlafstelle, 304. Schleswig-Holstein, 117, 123, 221, 225, 264, 270, 281. SchmoUer, Gustav von (1838- ), 271, 301. school boards, 337, 338. School Conference of 1890, 331, 334. school strike, Polish, 258, 259. school synods, 341. Schopenhauer, 385. Schul-Pforta, 340. Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, 141, 186, 188. Schwetz on the Vistula, 257. "scrap of paper," 70. Scutari, 45. secondary schools, 321, 326, 327, 338, 341, 343, 344, 347, 35i- Second Balkan War, 26. Sedan, 4. semi-official press, 370-373. Septermat, 10, 205, 209, 217. Serbia, 19, 34, 35, 38, 45, 68, 373. Sesenheim, 218. Settlement Law, 254. Sevastopol, 7. Seven Years' War, 32, 51. Sheik of Koweit, 94, 95. Shuster, Morgan (1877- ), 94. Sick Insurance Act, 181. Sieges-Allee, 308. Silesia, 117, 121, 123, 159, 211, 213, 238, 241, 248, 254, 257, 270, 272, 317. Simplicissimus, 381. simultan schools, 352, 355. "sixteen to ten" policy, 67. six-year schools, 327, 328. Slovaks, 38. Slovenes, 38. Social Democratic Workingmen's party, 179. Social Democrats, anti-national atti- tude of, 60, 61, 86, 97, 116; attack the crown, 107, 108, iii, 135, 138, 157, 191, 192; attack the Prussifin constitution, 134, 189-191 ; attract radical spirits, 119, 195-196; his- tory and growth of, 118, 177-183; antagonize all other parties, 130, 131, 171, 172, 188, 195-197; participate in government of smaller states, 141 ; enter Prussian Landtag, 145, 189- 191 ; support labor interests in parliament, 167-169, 192-199; dis- cipline and doctrinarianism, 184, 185; gradual modification of pro- gram, 185-189; begin to develop a national spirit, 197-199. INDEX 399 socialism, 177. socialists of the chair, 177. Socialist-Proletarian group, 120, 121. Society of Jesus, 208, 238. sokol, 253. Solifemo, 28. Solomon Islands, 86. Sorbs, 237. South Africa, 57, 59, 264. South African republics, 56, 112. South German, 140, 156, 173, 189, 179, 298. South Morocco, 89. South Sea Protectorate, 86. South Seas, 85. South Slavs, 41. Southwest Africa, 54, 85, 86, 129. Sozialistische Monatshefte, 184, 186. Spahn, Peter (1846- ), 135, 136. Spain, 58, 86, 200. Sporades, 46. St. Isidore Clubs, 252. St. Petersburg, 31, 35, 74, 381. St. Privat, 23, 233. Stadtrat, 281. Stadtverordneten, 278. Stargard, 245. Statthalter, 222. Stein, Heinrich Karl, Freiherr von (1757-1831), 275. Strasburg, 4, 23, 106, 177, 226, 270, 288, 298, 300, 302, 304, 305. Strasburg University, 225. Stuttgart, 269, 280, 281, 306, 318. Styria, 38. Suddeutsche Monatshefte, 360. sugar taxes, 131. Swabian League of Cities, 274. Switzerland, 72. syndicates, 162, 165, 166. Tdgliche Rundschau, 64, 372, 374. Tangier, 17, 79. Tannenberg, 238. tariff legislation, 152, 159. tariff on foodstuffs, 152, 297, 376. Taurus mountains, 92, 93. teachers' exchange, 25. technical universities, 271, 312, 332, 333- "terrible year," 56, 217. Teutonic Knights, 237, 238, 247, 308. Tews, J. (i860- ), 347. Thaddeus of Warsaw, Jane Porter's, 235- The Man Who Was, Kipling's, 54. Thiers, Louis Adolphe (1797-1877), 3, 5, 217. Thionville, 233. third republic, 5. Thirty Years' War, 139, 219. Thorn, peace of, 238, 245. three class system, Prussian, 143, 189, 278. Three Emperors' Agreement, 27, 31. Three Years' Service Law, French, 12, 20. Thuringia, 97, 271, 272. Thyssen, August (1840- ), 163. Tiergarten, Berlin, 308, 309. Tigris, 69, 94. Togo, 85. Toul, 3, 23. Transbalkan Railway, 36. Transvaal, 56. Treitschke, Heinrich von (1834-96), 96. Treptow, 183, 187. Treves, 221. Triest, 44. Triple Alliance, 17, 28, 30, 32, 42- 48, S9, 62, 72. Triple Entente, 24, 42, 48, 62. Tripoli, 19, 42, 47, 58. Tunis, 16, 19, 30. Tyrol, 38, 44. Turin, 29, 48. Turkey, 36, 46, 58, 74, go, gi. "two for one" policy, 66. Ullstein, Louis, 380. Ulm, 302. Ultra-conservatives, 145, 148, 156. unearned increment tax, 131, 293. imiconfessional schools, 350. United States, 85, 270, 359. univeral suffrage, 102, 213.^ universities, German, 271, 312, 349. university extension, 312. Urville, 225. Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte, 360. Venetia, 28, 42, 400 INDEX "Verbotens, " 221, 287. Verdun, 13, 23, 263. Verein fiir Wohnungsreform, 301. Versailles, 6, 24, 140. veterinary schools, 271. Victor Emmanuel II (1820-78), king of Italy, 27, 30, 203. Victor Emmanuel III (1869- ), king of Italy, 45. Victoria (1840-1901), Crown Princess of Prussia, German Empress, 54. Vienna, 26, 31, 35, 237. Vigo, 323. Vionville, 23. Virchow, Rudolf (1821-1902), 204. Vistula, 33, 37, so, IS5, 238, 264. viva voce vote, 279. vocational schools, 333, 334. Volksschule, 14, 260, 311, 314, 321, 322, 326, 327, 330, 332, 333-335. 337-352, 357, 358. Vollmar, Georg Heinrich von (1850- ), 187. Vorschule, 327. Vorwdrts, Berlin, 184, 374, 376. Vosges, 4, 10, 221. Vossische Zeitung, Berlin, 375, 386, 387. vote of censure, 137. vote to the Left, 196. Wacht am Rhein, 218. Wagner, Adolf (1835- ), 177. Waldeck-Rousseau, Pierre Marie (1846- 1904), 7- Waldersee, Count Alfred von (1832- 1904), 88, 89. Walther von der Vogelweide, 207. Waltz, Jakob (Jean Jacques) (1873- ), 238. war indemnity, 3, 5. Wars of Liberation, 51. Warsaw, 235, 236, 240. Warthe, 238. Washington, 68, 74, 363, 370, 373. Waterloo, 51. Water Poles, 254. Wawrzyniak, 254. Weimar, 270, 314, 347. Weimar Volkszeitung, 193. Wends, 237. Wermuth, Adolf (1855- ), 283. Weser, 155. West Africa, 63. West Prussia, 117, 121, 123, 239, 240, 241, 243, 247, 254, 257, 263, 264. Westostlicher Divan, Goethe's, 93. Westphalia, 81, 159, 161, 206, 213, 244, 254, 255, 261, 280; treaty of, 219, 220. ^ Wetterle, Emile (1861- ), 225, 232. white slave traffic, 214. Wiesbaden, 352. Wilhelm Meister, Goethe's, 52. Wilhelm Tell, Schiller's, 59, 315. William of Wied (1877- ), Prince of Albania, 36, 46. William I (1797-1888), German Emperor, 3, 6, loi, 104, 105, 180. William II (1859- >, German Emperor, 15, 16, 32, 55, 56, 59, 85, 88, 89, 90, 105-113, 134, 136, 182, 191, 20s, 224, 229, 336, 373. Windthorst, Ludwig (1812-91), 117, 122, 202, 205, 206, 209. Wolff's Bureau, 74, 362, 363, 370, 371, 379- woman's suffrage, 198. Worth, 219. Wiirtemberg, 4, 10, 140, 141, 188, 203, 277, 279, 281, 288, 358. Wiirzburg, 270. Young Liberal Association, 172. Young Turks, 90, 93. Zabem, 136, 229. Zentralverband deutscher Industrielle, 16s. Zet, 252. Zukunft, Berlin, 24, 108. Zweckverband, 296. Zwischenrufe, 138. Printed in the United States of America. 'TpHE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects A Short History of Germany By ERNEST F. HENDERSON Two Volumes. New Edition. With a New Preface and Three New Chapters Cloth, 8vo " In our opinion, for the English reader, there is no more admirable contribution to the history of Germany as a whole than in these volumes. The excellence of the text lies in its apparent freedom from prejudice. Further- more, on a thorough examination of original documents and sources, we find here the great figures in German history painted as we must believe they really were. They have been described by one who brings to his work a signal freshness, buoyancy and vivacity, crowning his past labors as an investigator. Dr. Henderson's style is vital in the best sense." It is the Outlook which thus commends an earlier edition of this standard work, a commendation which has been heartily endorsed by all students of history as well as by the general public. To his previous chapters the author has now added three new ones which bring the text down to the period prior to the beginning of the present war. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64r-66 Fifth Avenue New York The Diplomacy of the Great War By ARTHUR BULLARD Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 A book which contributes to an understanding of the war by revealing something of the diplomatic negotiations that preceded it. The author gives the history of international politics in Europe since the Congress of Berlin in 1878, and considers the new ideals that have grown up about the function of diplomacy during the last generation, so that the reader is in full possession of the general trend of diplomatic development. There is added a chapter of constructive suggestions in respect to the prob- able diplomatic settlements resulting from the war, and a consideration of the relations between the United States and Europe. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork Japanese Expansion and American Policies I By J. F. ABBOTT Of Washington University Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 Here Professor Abbott sums up dispassionately and impartially the history of the diplomatic and social rela- tions of Japan with the United States, and in particular gives the facts that will enable an American to form his own opinion as to the possibility of future conflicts be- tween these two countries. The work is neither pro-Japan nor anti-Japan, but seeks, rather, to present the case justly. The author emphasizes the importance of an in- telligent understanding of the subject, believing that in spite of the present lull owing to acute interest in Euro- pean affairs, it is yet a problem that will periodically and persistently come to the fore until it is satisfactorily solved. Professor Abbott has given careful study to Far Eastern matters for the past fifteen years, has traveled at various times throughout the Orient and previous to the Russian War was an instructor in the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York IMPORTANT NEW WORKS OF BIOGRAPHY The Life of Andrew Jackson By JOHN SPENCER BASSETT, Ph.D. With Illustrations. New Edition. Two Volumes in One Cloth, 8vo, $2.50 This is a one-volume edition of a biography that has, since its first publication several years ago, come to be regarded as one of the most faithful stories of Jackson's life and of its effect on the nation that has ever been writ- ten. Professor Bassett has not slighted Jackson's failings or his virtues ; he has tried to refrain from commenting upon his actions ; he has sought to present a true picture of the political manipulations which surrounded Jackson and in which he was an important factor. The volume contributes largely to a clearer realization not only of the character of a great man but also of the complex period in which he lived. The Writings of John Quincy Adams Volume VI. Edited by WORTHINGTON C. FORD Cloth, Bvo, $3.50 This volume brings Mr. Ford's remarkable series up to the year 1821. Mr. Adams's last dispatches from London, while minister there, deal with the matters left undeter- mined by the Treaty of Ghent and with his association with the English reformers of the day, -— c THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: crn „„«,. PreservatiooTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Crenb&rry Township, PA 16066 (T>i\ 775-?111