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One could easily write a chapter on Weimar and its self-satisfied social and literary activities. There were three hundred or more capitals of like complexion and isolation: some larger, some smaller, none perhaps with such a splendid literary setting, but all indifferent with the indifference of distant relatives who seldom see one another, when the French Revolution exploded its bomb at the gates of the world’s habits of thought.

No intelligent man ever objected to the French Revolution because it stood for human rights, but because it led straight to human wrongs. The dream was angelic, but the nightmare in which it ended was devilish. The French Revolution was the most colossal disappointment that humanity has ever had to bear.

More than the demagogue gives us credit for, are the great majority of us eager to help our neighbors. The trouble is that the demagogue thinks this, the most difficult of all things, an easy task. God and Nature are harsh when they are training men, and we, alas, are soft, hence most of our failures. Correction must be given with a rod, not with a sop. There lies all the trouble.

The political and philanthropic wise men were setting out for the manger and the babe, their eyes on the star, laden with gifts, when they were met by a whiff of grape-shot from the guns commanded by a young Corsican genius. The French Revolution found us all sympathetic, but making men of equal height by lopping off their heads; making them free by giving no one a chance to be free; making them fraternal by insisting that all should be addressed by the same title of, “citizen,” was soon seen to be the method of a political nursery.

It was no fault of the French Revolution that it was no revolution at all, in any political sense. Men maddened by oppression hit, kick, bite, and burn. They are satisfied to shake the burden of the moment off their backs, even though the burden they take on be of much the same character. “It is perfectly possible, to revive even in our own day the fiscal tyranny which once left even European populations in doubt whether it was worth while preserving life by thrift and toil. You have only to tempt a portion of the population into temporary idleness, by promising them a share in a fictitious hoard lying in an imaginary strong-box which is supposed to contain all human wealth. You have only to take the heart out of those who would willingly labor and save, by taxing them ad misericordiam for the most laudable philanthropic objects. For it makes not the smallest difference to the motives of the thrifty and industrious part of mankind whether their fiscal oppressor be an Eastern despot, or a feudal baron, or a democratic legislature, and whether they are taxed for the benefit of a corporation called Society or for the advantage of an individual styled King or Lord,” writes Sir Henry Maine. In short it matters not in the least what you baptize oppression, so long as it is oppression, or whether you call your tyrant “Jim” or “My Lord,” so long as he is a tyrant. Many people are slowly awakening to the fact in England and in America, that plain citizen “Jim” can be a most merciless tyrant in spite of his unpretentious name and title. No royal tyrant ever dared to attempt to gain his ends by dynamiting innocent people, as did the trades-unionists at Los Angeles, or to starve a whole population as did the trades-unionists in London. We have not escaped tyranny by changing its name. The idea of the Contrat Social and of all its dilutions since, has been that individuals go to make up society, and that society under the name of the state must take charge of those individuals. The French Revolution was a failure because it fell back upon that tiresome and futile philosophy of government which had been that of Louis XIV. Louis XIV took care of the individual units of the state by exploiting them. He was a sound enough Socialist in theory. France gained nothing of much value along the lines of political philosophy.

Whether it is Louis XIV who says “l’état c’est moi” or the citizens banded together in a state, who claim that the functions of the state are to meddle with the business of every man, matters little. It is the same socialistic philosophy at bottom, and it has produced to-day a France of thirty-eight millions of people pledged to sterility, one million of whom are state officials superintending the affairs of the others at a cost, in salaries alone, of upward of five hundred million dollars a year.

In no political or philosophical sense was the French Revolution a revolution at all. It was a change of administration and leaders, but not a change of political theory. The French Revolution put the state in impartial supremacy over all classes by destroying exemptions claimed by the nobility and the clergy, and thus extended the power of the state. The English Revolution without bloodshed reduced the power of the state, not for the advantage of any class, but for individual liberty and local self-government. We Americans are the political heirs of the latter, not of the former, revolution.

Germany was stirred slightly to hope for freedom, but stirred mightily to protest against anarchy later. These were the two influences from the French Revolution that affected Germany, and they were so contradictory that Germany herself was for nearly a hundred years in a mixed mood. One influence enlivened the theoretical democrat, and the other sent the armies of all Europe post-haste to save what was left of orderly government in France.

But Prussia was not what she had been under Frederick the Great. Frederick was more Louis XIV than Louis XIV himself. The economic and political errors of the French Revolution found their best practical exponent in Frederick the Great. In the introduction to his code of laws we have already mentioned are the words: “The head of the state, to whom is intrusted the duty of securing public welfare, which is the whole aim of society, is authorized to direct and control all the actions of individuals toward this end.” Further on the same code reads: “It is incumbent upon the state to see to the feeding, employment, and payment of all those who cannot support themselves, and who have no claim to the help of the lord of the manor, or to the help of the commune: it is necessary to provide such persons with work which is suitable to their strength and their capacity.”

When Frederick died he left Prussia in the grip of this enervating pontifical socialism, which always everywhere ends by palsying the individual, and through the individual the state, with the blight of demagogical and theoretical legislation. The fine army grew pallid and without spirit, the citizens lost their individual pride, the nation as a whole lost its vigor, and when Napoleon marched into Berlin, he remarked that the country hardly seemed worth conquering.

The century from the death of Frederick the Great, in 1786, to the death of William the First, in 1888, includes, in a convenient period to remember: the downfall of Frederick’s patriotic edifice; the apathy and impotency that followed upon the breaking up of the bureaucracy he had welded into efficiency; the shuffling of the German states by Napoleon as though they were the pack of cards in a great political game; a revival of patriotism in Prussia after floggings and insults that were past bearing; the jealousies and enmities of the various states, the betrayal of one by the other, and finally the struggle between Austria and Prussia to decide upon a leader for all Germany; and at last the war against France, 1870–71, which was to make it clear to the world that Germany had been Prussianized into an empire.

Frederick William II, the nephew of Frederick the Great, who succeeded him, was King of Prussia from 1786 to 1797. Frederick William III, his son, and the husband of the beautiful and patriotic Queen Louisa, was King of Prussia from 1797 to 1840. Frederick William IV, a loquacious, indiscreet, loose-lipped sovereign, of moist intellect and mythical delusions, was King of Prussia from 1840 to 1857, when his mental condition made his retirement necessary, and he was succeeded by his brother, Frederick William Ludwig, first as regent, then as king in 1861, known to us as that admirable King and Emperor, William I, who died in 1888.

Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of these sovereigns, to those of us who look upon Germany to-day as autocratically governed in fact and by tradition, is their willing surrender to the people, on every occasion when the demand has been, even as little insistent as the German demand has been. In the case of Frederick William IV, his claim, at least in words, upon his divine rights as a sovereign was the mark of a wavering confidence in himself. He was not satisfied with a rational sanction for his authority, but was forever assuring his subjects that God had pronounced for him; much as men of low intelligence attempt to add vigor to their statements by an oath. “I hold my crown,” he said, “by the favor of God, and I am responsible to Him for every hour of my government.” Much under the influence of the two scholars Niebuhr and Ranke, he hated the ideas of the French Revolution, and dreamed of an ideal Christian state like that of the Middle Ages. He was caricatured by the journals of the day, and laughed at by the wits, including Heine, and pictured as a king with “Order” on one hand, “Counter-order” on the other, and “Disorder” on his forehead.

Though Frederick William II marched into France in 1792, to support the French monarchy, neither his army nor his people were prepared or fit for this enterprise, and he soon retired. In 1793, Prussia joined Russia in a second partition of Poland, but in 1795, angry with what was considered the double dealing of Austria and Russia, Prussia concluded a peace with France, the treaty of Basle was signed in 1795, and for ten years Prussia practically took no part in the Napoleonic wars.

Napoleon took over the lands on the left bank of the Rhine, took away the freedom of forty-eight towns, leaving only Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, and in 1803 he took Hanover. Later, in 1805, Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden aided Napoleon to fight the alliance against him of Austria, England, Russia, and Sweden. In that same year the Electors of Würtemberg and Bavaria were made kings by Napoleon. In 1806 Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and Hessen seceded from the German Empire, formed themselves into the Confederation of the Rhine, and acknowledged Napoleon as their protector. In 1806 Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, resigned, and there was neither an empire nor an emperor of Germany, nor was there a Germany of united interests.

In 1806 Frederick William III, driven by the grossest insults to his country and to his wife, finally declared war against France; there followed the battle of Jena, in which the Germans were routed, and in that same year Napoleon marched into Berlin unopposed. In 1807 the Russian Emperor was persuaded to make peace, and Prussia without her ally was helpless. The Peace of Tilsit, in July, 1807, deprived Prussia of the whole of the territory between the Elbe and the Rhine, and this with Brunswick, Hessen-Cassel, and part of Hanover was dubbed the Kingdom of Westphalia, and Napoleon’s youngest brother Jerome was made king. The Polish territory of Prussia was given to the Elector of Saxony, who was also rewarded for having deserted Prussia after the battle of Jena by being made a king. Prussia was further required to reduce her army to forty-two thousand men.

It is neither a pretty nor an inspiriting story, this of the mangling of Germany by Napoleon; of the German princes bribed by kingly crowns from the hands of an ancestorless Corsican; but it all goes to show how far from any sense of common aims and duties, how far from the united Vaterland of to-day, was the Germany of a hundred years ago. It adds, too, immeasurably to the laurels of the man who produced the present German Empire out of his own pocket, and stood as chief sponsor at its christening at Versailles in 1871.

This Prussia that sent twenty thousand troops to aid Napoleon against Russia, and which during the retreat from Moscow went over bodily to the enemy; this Prussia whose vacillating king simpered with delight at a kind word from Napoleon, and shivered with dismay at a harsh one; this army with its officers as haughty as they were incapable, and its men only prevented from wholesale desertion by severe punishment, an army rotten at the core, with a coat of varnish over its worm-eaten fabric; this Prussia humiliated and disgraced after the battle of Jena, in 1806, in seven years’ time came into its own again. Vom Stein, Scharnhorst, the son of a Hanoverian peasant, and Hardenberg put new life into the state. At Waterloo the pummelled squares of red-coats were relieved by these Prussians, and Blücher, or “Old Marschall Vorwärts” as he was called, redeemed his countrymen’s years of effeminate lassitude and vacillation.

“Such was Vorwärts, such a fighter,

Such a lunging, plunging smiter,

Always stanch and always straight,

Strong as death for love or hate,

Always first in foulest weather,

Neck or nothing, hell for leather,

Through or over, sink or swim,

Such was Vorwärts-here’s to him!”

Napoleon goes to Saint Helena and dies in 1821. What he did for Germany was to prove to her how impossible was a cluster of jealous, malicious provincial little state governments in the heart of Europe, protecting themselves from falling apart by the ancient legislative scaffolding of the Holy Roman Empire. He squeezed three hundred states into thirty-eight, and the very year of Waterloo, on April the 1st, a German Napoleon was born who was to further squeeze these states into what is known to-day as the German Empire.

The Congress of Vienna was a meeting of the European powers to redistribute the possessions, that Napoleon had scattered as bribes and rewards among his friends, relatives, and enemies, so far as possible, among their rightful owners.

From the island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany, Napoleon looked on while the allies quarrelled at this Congress of Vienna. Prussia claimed the right to annex Saxony; Russia demanded Poland, and against them were leagued England, Austria, and France, France represented by the Mephistophelian Talleyrand, who strove merely to stir the discord into another war. In the midst of their deliberations word came that the wolf was in the fold again. Napoleon was riding to Paris, through hysterical crowds of French men and women, eager for another throw against the world, if their Little Corporal were there to shake the dice for them. He had another throw and lost. The French Revolution in 1789, followed by the insurrection of all Europe against that strange gypsy child of the Revolution, Napoleon, from 1807–1815, ended at last at Waterloo. This lover, who won whole nations as other men win a maid or two; this ruler, who had popes for handmaidens and gave kingdoms as tips, who dictated to kings preferably from the palaces of their own capitals; this fortunate demon of a man, who had escaped even Mlle. Montausier, was safely disposed of at Saint Helena, and the ordinary ways of mortals had their place in the world again.

The Congress of Vienna reassembled, and the readjustment of the map of Europe began over again. Prussia is given back what had been taken away from her. A German confederation was formed in 1815 to resist encroachments, but with no definite political idea, and its diet, to which Prussia, Austria, and the other smaller states sent representatives, became the laughing-stock of Europe. Jealous bickerings and insistence upon silly formalities paralyzed legislation. Lawyers and others who presented their claims before this assembly from 1806–1816 were paid in 1843! The liquidation of the debts of the Thirty Years’ War was made after two hundred years, in 1850! The laws for the military forces were finally agreed upon in 1821, and put in force in 1840!

There were three principal forms of government among these states: first, Absolutist, where the ruler and his officials governed without reference to the people, as in Prussia and Austria; second, those who organized assemblies (Landslände), where no promises were made to the people, but where the nobles and notables were called together for consultation; and third, a sort of constitutional monarchy with a written constitution and elected representatives, but with the ruler none the less supreme. One of the first rulers to grant such a constitution to his people was the Grand Duke who presided over the little court at Weimar.

The mass of the people were wholly indifferent. The intellectuals were divided among themselves. The schools and universities after 1818 form associations and societies, the Burschenschaft, for example, and in a hazy professorial fashion talk and shout of freedom. They were of those passionate lovers of liberty, more intent on the dower than on the bride; willing to talk and sing and to tell the world of their own deserts, but with little iron in their blood.

When a real man wants to be free he fights, he does not talk; he takes what he wants and asks for it afterward; he spends himself first and affords it afterward. These dreamy gentlemen could never make the connection between their assertions and their actions. They were as inconsistent, as a man who sees nothing unreasonable in circulating ascetic opinions and a perambulator at the same time. They were dreary and technical advocates of liberty.

At a great festival at the Wartburg, in 1817, the students got out of hand, burned the works of those conservatives, Haller and Kotzebue, and the Code Napoleon. This youthful folly was purposely exaggerated throughout Germany, and was used by the party of autocracy to frighten the people, and also as a reason for passing even severer laws against the ebullitions of liberty. At a conference at Carlsbad in 1819 the representatives of the states there assembled passed severe laws against the student societies, the press, the universities, and the liberal professors.

From 1815–1830 the opinions of the more enlightened changed. The fear of Napoleon was gradually forgotten, and the hatred of the absolutism of Prussia and Austria grew.

In 1830 constitutions were demanded and were guardedly granted in Brunswick, Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse-Cassel. In 1832 things had gone so far that at a great student festival the black, red, and gold flag of the Burschenschaft was hoisted, toasts were drunk to the sovereignty of the people, to the United States of Germany, and to Europe Republican! This was followed by further prosecutions. Prussia condemned thirty-nine students to death, but confined them in a fortress. The prison-cell of the famous Fritz Reuter may be seen in Berlin to-day. In Hesse, the chief of the liberal party, Jordan, was condemned to six years in prison; in Bavaria a journalist was imprisoned for four years, and other like punishments followed elsewhere. It was in 1857, when Queen Victoria came to the throne, that Hanover was cut off from the succession, as Hanover could not descend to a woman. The Duke of Cumberland became the ruler of Hanover, and England ceased to hold any territory in Europe.

From 1839–1847 there was comparative quiet in the political world. The rulers of the various states succeeded in keeping the liberal professorial rhetoric too damp to be valuable as an explosive.

Interwoven with this party in Germany, demanding for the people something more of representation in the government, was a movement for the binding together of the various states in a closer union. In 1842 when the first stone was laid for the completion of the Cologne Cathedral, at a banquet of the German princes presided over by the King of Prussia, the King of Würtemberg proposed a toast to “Our common country!” That toast probably marks the first tangible proof of the existence of any important feeling upon the subject of German unity.

At a congress of Germanists at Frankfort, in 1846, professors and students, jurists and historians, talked and discussed the questions of a German parliament and of national unity more perhaps than matters of scholarship.

In 1847 Professor Gervinus founded at Heidelberg the Deutsche Zeitung, which was to be liberal, national, and for all Germany.

I should be sorry to give the impression that I have not given proper value to the work of the German professor and student in bringing about a more liberal constitution for the states of Germany. Liebig of Munich, Ranke of Berlin, Sybel of Bonn, Ewald of Göttingen, Mommsen in Berlin, Döllinger in Munich, and such men as Schiemann in Berlin to-day, were and are, not only scholars, but they have been and are political teachers; some of them violently reactionary, if you please, but all of them stirring men to think.

No such feeling existed then, or exists now, in Germany, as animated Oxford some fifty years ago when the greatest Sanscrit scholar then living was rejected by a vote of that body, one voter declaring: “I have always voted against damned intellect, and I trust I always may!” A state of mind that has not altogether disappeared in England even now. Indeed I am not sure, that the most notable feature of political life in England to-day, is not a growing revolt against legislation by tired lawyers, and an increasing demand for common-sense governing again, even if the governing be done by those with small respect for “damned intellect.”

The third French revolution of 1848 set fire to all this, not only in Germany but in Austria, Hungary, Roumania, and elsewhere. We must go rapidly through this period of seething and of political teething. The parliament at Frankfort with nothing but moral authority discussed and declaimed, and finally elected Archduke John of Austria as “administrator” of the empire. There followed discussions as to whether Austria should even become a member of the new confederation. Two parties, the “Little Germanists” and the “Pan Germanists,” those in favor of including, and those opposed to the inclusion of Austria, fought one another, with Prussia leading the one and Austria, with the prestige of having been head of the former Holy Roman Empire, the other.

In 1849 Austria withdrew altogether and the King of Prussia was elected Emperor of Germany, but refused the honor on the ground that he could not accept the title from the people, but only from his equals. There followed riots and uprisings of the people in Prussia, Saxony, Baden, and elsewhere throughout Germany. The Prussian guards were sent to Dresden to quell the rioting there and took the city after two days’ fighting. The parliament itself was dispersed and moved to Stuttgart, but there again they were dispersed, and the end was a flight of the liberals to Switzerland, France, and the United States. We in America profited by the coming of such valuable citizens as Carl Schurz and many others. There were driven from Germany, they and their descendants, many among our most valuable citizens. The descendant of one of the worthiest of them, Admiral Osterhaus, is one of the most respected officers in our navy, and will one day command it, and we could not be in safer hands. In 1849 the German Federal fleet was sold at auction as useless; Austria was again in the ascendant and German subjects in Schleswig were handed over to the Danes.

In 1850 both the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria called congresses, but Prussia finally gave up hers, and the ancient confederation as of before 1848 met as a diet at Frankfort and from 1851–1858 Bismarck was the Prussian delegate and Austria presided over the deliberations.

A factor that made for unity among the German states was the Zollverein. From 1818–1853 under the leadership of Prussia the various states were persuaded to join in equalizing their tariffs. Between 1834–5 Prussia, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Saxony, Baden, Hesse-Nassau, Thuringia, and Frankfort agreed upon a common standard for customs duties, and a few years later they were joined by Brunswick, Hanover, and the Mecklenburgs. German industry and commerce had their beginnings in these agreements. The hundreds of different customs duties became so exasperating that even jealous little governments agreed to conform to simpler laws, and probably this commercial necessity did more to bring about the unity of Germany than the King, or politics, or the army.

With the struggles of the various states to obtain constitutions we cannot deal, nor would it add to the understanding of the present political condition of the German Empire.

Prussia, after riots in Berlin, after promises and delays from the vacillating King, who one day orders his own troops out of the capital and his brother, later William I, to England to appease the anger of the mob, and parades the streets with the colors of the citizens in revolt wrapped about him; and the next day, surly, obstinate, but ever orating, holds back from his pledges, finally accepts a constitution which is probably as little democratic as any in the world.

Of the sixty-five million inhabitants of the German Empire, Prussia has over forty millions. The Landtag of Prussia is composed of two chambers, the first called the Herrenhaus, or House of Lords, and the second the Abgeordnetenhaus, or Chamber of Deputies. This upper house is made up of the princes of the royal family who are of age; the descendants of the formerly sovereign families of Hohenzollern- Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen; chiefs of the princely houses recognized by the Congress of Vienna; heads of the territorial nobility formed by the King; representatives of the universities; burgomasters of towns with more than fifty thousand inhabitants, and an unlimited number of persons nominated by the King for life or for a limited period. This upper chamber is a mere drawing-room of the sovereign’s courtiers, though there may be, and as a matter of fact there are at the present time, representatives even of labor in this chamber, but in a minority so complete that their actual influence upon legislation, except in a feeble advisory capacity, amounts to nothing. In this Herrenhaus, or upper chamber, of Prussia there are at this writing among the 327 members 3 bankers, 8 representatives of the industrial and merchant class, and 1 mechanic; 12 in all, or not even four per cent., to represent the industrial, financial, commercial, and working classes. Even in the lower chamber, or Abgeordnetenhaus, there are only 10 merchants, 19 manufacturers, 7 labor representatives, and 1 bank director, or 37 members who represent the commercial, manufacturing, and industrial interests in a total membership of 443.

In the other states of Germany much the same conditions exist. In Bavaria, in the upper house, or Kammer der Reichsräte, there is no representative, and in the lower house of 163 members only 29 representatives of the industrial world.

In Saxony, the most socialistic state in Germany, the upper chamber with 49 members has 5 industrials; the lower chamber with 82 members has 40 representatives of commercial, industrial, and financial affairs.

In Würtemberg, in the upper chamber with 51 members there are 3 industrials; and in the second chamber with 63 members there are 17 industrials.

In Baden, of the 37 members of the upper house there are 6 industrials; of the 73 members of the lower house there are 23 representatives of commerce and industry.

This condition of political inequality is the result of the maintenance of the old political divisions, despite the fact that in the last thirty years the whole complexion of the country has changed radically, due to the rapid increase of the city populations representing the industrial and commercial progress of a nation that is now the rival of both the United States and Great Britain. In more than one instance a town with over 300,000 inhabitants will be represented in the legislature in the same proportion as a country population of 30,000. Stettin, for example, with a population of 245,000, which is a seventh of the total population of Pomerania, has only 6 of the 89 provincial representatives. Further, the three-class system of voting in Prussia and in the German cities, is a unique arrangement for giving men the suffrage without either power or privilege. According to this system every male inhabitant of Prussia aged twenty-five is entitled to vote in the election of members of the lower house. The voters, however, are divided into three classes. This division is made by taking the total amount of the state taxes paid in each electoral district and dividing it into three equal amounts. The first third is paid by the highest tax-payers; the second third by the next highest tax-payers, and the last third by the rest. The first class consists of a comparatively few wealthy people; it may even happen that a single individual pays a third of the taxes in a given district. These three classes then elect the members of an electoral college, who then elect the member of the house. In Prussia it may be said roughly that 260,000 wealthy tax-payers elect one-third; 870,000 tax-payers elect one-third, and the other 6,500,000 voters elect one-third of the members of the electoral college, with the consequence that the 6,500,000 are not represented at all in the lower house of Prussia. In order to make this three-class system of voting quite clear, let us take the case of a city where the same principle may be seen at work on a smaller scale. In 1910, in the city of Berlin, there were:

931 voters of the first class paying 27,914,593 marks of the total tax.

32,131 voters of the second class paying 27,908,776 marks of the total tax.

357,345 voters of the third class paying 16,165,501 marks of the total tax.

Roughly the voters in the first class each paid $7,500; those in the second class $218; those in the third class $11. The 931 voters elected one-third, 32,131 voters elected one-third, and 357,345 elected one-third of the town councillors. In this same year in Berlin there were:

521 persons with incomes between $25,000 and $62,500.

139 persons with incomes between $62,500 and $125,000.

22 persons with incomes between $125,000 and $187,500.

19 persons with incomes between $187,000 and $250,000.

19 persons with incomes of $250,000 or more. Or 720 persons in Berlin in 1912 with incomes of over $25,000 a year, and they are practically the governors of the city.

As a result of these divisions according to taxes paid, of the 144 town councillors elected, only 38 were Social-Democrats, though Berlin is overwhelmingly Social-Democratic, and consequently the affairs of this city of more than 2,000,000 inhabitants are in the hands of 33,062 persons who elect two-thirds of the town councillors.

In the city of Düsseldorf there were, excluding the suburbs, 62,443 voters at the election for town councillors in 1910. The first class was composed of 797 voters paying from 1,940 to 264,252 marks of taxes; 6,645 voters paying from 222 to 1,939 marks; and 55,001 voters paying 221 marks or less. These 7,442 voters of the first and second classes were in complete control of the city government by a clear majority of two-thirds.

It is this three-class system of voting that makes Prussia, and the Prussian cities as well, impregnable against any assault from the democratically inclined. In addition to this system, the old electoral divisions of forty years ago remain unchanged, and consequently the agricultural east of Prussia, including east and west Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Posen, and Silesia, with their large landholders, return more members to the Prussian lower house than the much greater population of western industrial Prussia, which includes Sachsen, Hanover, Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, Hohenzollern, Hessen-Nassau, and the Rhine. Further, the executive government of Prussia is conducted by a ministry of state, the members of which are appointed by the King, and hold office at his pleasure, without control from the Landtag.

How little the people succeeded in extorting from King Frederick William IV in the way of a constitution may be gathered from this glimpse of the present political conditions of Prussia.

The local government of Prussia is practically as centralized in a few hands as the executive government of the state itself. The largest areas are the provinces, whose chiefs or presidents also are appointed by the sovereign, and who represent the central government. There are twelve such provinces in Prussia, ranging in size from the Rhineland and Brandenburg, with 7,120,519 and 4,093,007 inhabitants respectively, to Schleswig-Holstein, with 1,619,673.

Each province is divided into two or more government districts, of which there are thirty-five in all. At the head of each of these districts is the district president, also appointed by the crown.

In addition there is the Kreis, or Circle, of which there are some 490, with populations varying from 20,000 to 801,000. These circles are, for all practical purposes, governed by the Landrath, who is appointed for life by the crown, and who is so fully recognized as the agent of the central government and not as the servant of the locality in which he rules, that on one occasion several Landräthe were summarily dismissed for voting against the government and in conformity to the wishes of the inhabitants of the circle in which they lived! Though the Landrath is nominated by the circle assembly for appointment by the crown, he can be dismissed by his superiors of the central hierarchy. As his promotion, and his career in fact, is dependent upon these superiors, he naturally sides with the central government in all cases of dispute or friction.

Further, and this is important, all officials in Germany are legally privileged persons. All disputes between individuals and public authorities in Germany are decided by tribunals quite distinct from the ordinary courts. These courts are specially constituted, and they aim at protecting the officials from any personal responsibility for acts done by them in their official capacity.

In America, and I presume in Great Britain also, any disputes between public authorities and private individuals are settled in the ordinary courts of justice, under the rules of the ordinary law of the land. This super-common-law position of the Prussian official is a fatal incentive to the aggravating exaggeration of his importance, and to the indifference of his behavior to the private citizen. There may be officials who are uninfluenced by this sheltered position, indeed I know personally many who are, but there is equally no doubt that many succumb to arrogance and lethargy as a consequence.

How thoroughly Prussia is covered by a network of officialdom, is further discovered when it is known, that the entire area of Prussia is some twenty thousand square miles less than that of the State of California. The whole Prussian doctrine of local self-government, too, is entirely different from ours. Their idea is that self-government is the performance by locally elected bodies of the will of the state, not necessarily of the locality which elects them. Local authorities, whether elected or not, are supposed to be primarily the agents of the state, and only secondarily the agents of the particular locality they serve. In Prussia, all provincial and circle assemblies and communal councils, may be dissolved by royal decree, hence even these elected assemblies may only serve their constituencies at the will and pleasure of the central authority.

It would avail little to go into minute details in describing the government of Prussia; this slight sketch of the electoral system, and of the centralization of the government, suffices to show two things that it is particularly my purpose to make clear. One is the preponderating influence of Prussia in the empire, due to the maintenance of power in a single person; and the other is to show how ridiculously futile it is to refer to Prussia as an example of the success of social legislation. The state ownership of railroads, old-age pensions, accident and sickness insurance, and the like are one thing in Prussia which is a close corporation, and quite another in any community or country under democratic government. What takes place in Prussia would certainly not take place in America or in England. To draw inferences from a state governed as is Prussia, for application to such democratic communities as America or England, is as valuable as to argue from the habits of birds, that such and such a treatment would succeed with fish.

It was with this autocratic Prussia at his back, that the greatest man Germany has produced, succeeded in bringing about German unity and the foundation of the German Empire. As the representative of Prussia in the Diet, as her ambassador to Russia, and to France, he gained the insight into the European situation which led him to hold as his political creed, that only by blood and iron, and not by declamations and resolutions, could Germany be united.

“During the time I was in office,” he writes, “I advised three wars, the Danish, the Bohemian, and the French; but every time I have first made clear to myself whether the war, if successful, would bring a prize of victory worth the sacrifices which every war requires, and which now are so much greater than in the last century. … I have never looked at international quarrels which can only be settled by a national war from the point of view of the Göttingen student code; … but I have always considered simply their reaction on the claim of the German people, in equality with the other great states and powers of Europe, to lead an autonomous political life, so far as is possible on the basis of our peculiar national capacity.” In 1863 he writes to von der Goltz, then German ambassador in Paris: “The question is whether we are a great power or a state in the German federation, and whether we are conformably to the former quality to be governed by a monarch, or, as in the latter case would be at any rate admissible, by professors, district judges, and the gossips of the small towns. The pursuit of the phantom of popularity in Germany which we have been carrying on for the last forty years has cost us our position in Germany and in Europe; and we shall not win this back again by allowing ourselves to be carried away by the stream in the persuasion that we are directing its course, but only by standing firmly on our legs and being, first of all, a great power and a German federal state afterward.”

After Napoleon and the interminable elocutionary squabbles of the German states, first, for constitutional rights, and, second, for some basis of unity among themselves, which were the two main streams of political activity, there were three main steps in the formation of the now existing empire: first, in 1866, the North German Confederation under the presidency of Prussia and excluding Austria; second, the conclusion of treaties, 1866–1867, between the North German Confederation and the south German states; third, the formal union of the north and south German states as an empire in 1871.

Although the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist legally in 1806, it is to be remembered that as a fiction weighing still upon the imagination of German politicians, it did not wholly disappear until the war between Prussia and Austria, for then Prussia fought not only Austria but Bavaria, Würtemberg, Saxony, Hanover, Nassau, Baden, and the two Hesse states, and at Sadowa in Bohemia the war was settled by the defeat of the Austrians before they could be joined by these allies, who were disposed of in detail. Frankfort was so harshly treated that the mayor hanged himself, and the Prussianizing of Hanover has never been entirely forgiven, and the claimants to the throne in exile are still the centre of a political party antagonistic to Prussia. The taking over of north Schleswig, of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Nassau by Prussia after the Austrian war was according to the rough arbitrament of conquest. “Our right,” replied Bismarck to the just criticism of this spoliation, “is the right of the German nation to exist, to breathe, to be united; it is the right and the duty of Prussia to give the German nation the foundation necessary for its existence.” In taking Alsace-Lorraine from France, Bismarck insisted that this was a necessary barrier against France and that Germany’s possession of Metz and Strassburg were necessities of the situation also.

The history of German unity is the biography of Bismarck. Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was born in Schönhausen, in that Mark of Brandenburg which was the cradle of the Prussian monarchy, on the first of April, 1815. His grandfather fought at Rossbach under the great Frederick. He was confirmed in Berlin in 1831 by the famous pastor and theologian, Schleiermacher, and maintained all his life that without his belief in God he would have found no reason for his patriotism or for any serious work in life.

He matriculated as a student of law and science at Göttingen in May, 1832, and later at Berlin in 1834. He was a tall, large-limbed, blue-eyed young giant, the boldest rider, the best swordsman, and the heartiest drinker of his day. He is still looked upon in Germany as the typical hero of corps student life, and his pipe, or his Schläger, or his cap, or his Kneipe jacket is preserved as the relic of a saint. His was not the tepid virtue born of lack of vitality. One has but to remember Augustine and Origen and Ignatius Loyola, to recall the fact that the preachers of salvation, the best of them, have generally had themselves to tame before they mastered the world.

This youth Bismarck must have had some vigorous battles with Bismarck before he married Johanna Friederika Charlotte Dorothea Eleanore von Puttkamer, July 28, 1847, much against the wishes of her parents, and settled down to his life-work. As was said of John Pym, “he thought it part of a man’s religion to see that his country was well governed,” and his country became his passion. Like most men of intense feeling, he loved few people and loyally hated many. More men feared and envied him than liked him. His wife, his sister, his king, a student friend, Keyserling, and the American, Motley, shared with his country his affection. Germany might well take it to heart that it was Motley the American who was of all men dearest to her giant creator. The same type of American would serve her better to-day than any other, did she only know it! In 1849 he was elected to the Prussian Chamber. In 1852 a whiff of the old dare-devil got loose, and he fought a duel with Freiherr von Vincke.

In 1852 he is sent on his first responsible mission to Vienna, and found there the traditions of the Metternich diplomacy still ruling. What Napoleon had said of Metternich he no doubt remembered: “Il ment trop. Il faut mentir quelquefois, mais mentir tout le temps c’est trop!” for he adopted quite the opposite policy in his own diplomatic dealings.

In 1855 he became a member of the upper house of Prussia, and in 1859 is sent as minister to St. Petersburg. In May, 1862, he is sent as minister to Paris, and learns to know, and not greatly to admire, the third Napoleon and his court.

On the 23d of September, 1862, he is appointed Staats-minister, and a week later thunders out his famous blood-and-iron speech. On October the 8th, 1862, he is definitely named Minister President and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

William I had succeeded his brother as king. He was a soldier and a believer in the army, and wished to spend more on it, and to lengthen the time of service with the colors to three years. The legislature opposed these measures. A minister was needed who could bully the legislature, and Bismarck was chosen for the task. He spent the necessary money despite the legislative opposition, pleading that a legislature that refused to vote necessary supplies had ipso facto laid down its proper functions, and the king must take over the responsibilities of government that they declined to exercise. The cavalry boots were beginning to trample their way to Paris, and to the crowning of an emperor.

In February, 1864, Prussia and Austria together declare war upon Denmark over the Schleswig-Holstein succession. They agree to govern the spoils between them, but fall out over the question of their respective jurisdiction, and the Prussian army being ready, and the Moltke plan of campaign worked out, war is declared, and in seven weeks the Treaty of Prague is signed, in 1866, by which Austria gives up all her rights in Schleswig-Holstein, and abandons her claim to take part in the reorganization of Germany. The North German Confederation is formed to include all lands north of the Main; Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, the Hesse states, Nassau, and Frankfurt-am-Main become part of Prussia; and the south German states agree to remain neutral, but allies of Prussia in war.

On the 11th of March, 1867, a month after the formation of the Confederation of the North German States, Bismarck proclaims with pride in the new Reichstag: “Setzen win Deutschland, so zu sagen, in den Sattel! Reiten wird es schon können!”

October 13th, 1868, Leopold von Sigmaringen, a German prince of the House of Hohenzollern, is named for the first time as a candidate for the Spanish throne. Nobody in Germany, or anywhere else, was much more interested in this candidature, than we are now interested in the woman’s suffrage or the prohibition candidate at home. But France had looked on with jealous eyes at the vigorous growth and martial successes of Prussia. It was thought well to attack her and humiliate her before she became stronger. All France was convinced, too, that the southern German states would revert to their old love in case of actual war, and side with the nephew of their former friend, the great Napoleon. The French ambassador is instructed to force the pace. Not only must the Prussian King disavow all intention to support the candidacy of the German prince, but he must be asked to humiliate himself by binding himself never in the future to push such claims.

William I is at Ems, and Benedetti, the French ambassador, reluctantly presses the insulting demand of his country upon the royal gentleman as he is walking. The King declines to see Benedetti again, and telegraphs to Bismarck the gist of the interview. Lord Acton writes: “He [Bismarck] drew his long pencil and altered the text, showing only that Benedetti had presented an offensive demand, and that the King had refused to see him. That there might be no mistake he made this official by sending it to all the embassies and legations. Moltke exclaimed, ‘You have converted surrender into defiance.’ ” The altered telegram was also sent to the Norddeutscher Allgemeine Zeitung and to officials. It is not perhaps generally known that General Lebrun went to Vienna in June, 1870, to discuss an alliance with Austria for an attack on the North German Confederation in the following spring. Bismarck knew this. This was on the 13th of July, 1870; on the 16th the order was given to mobilize the army, on the 31st followed the proclamation of the King to his people: “Zur Errettung des Vaterlandes.” On August the 2d, King William took command of the German armies, and on September 1st, Napoleon handed over his sword, and on January the 18th, 1871, King William of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of the Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles.

“It sounds so lovely what our fathers did,

And what we do is, as it was to them,

Toilsome and incomplete.”

It is easy to forget in such a rapid survey of events that Bismarck could have had any serious opposition to face as he tramped through those eight years, from 1862 to 1870, with a kingdom on his back. It is easy to forget that King William himself wished to abdicate in those dark hours, when his people refused him their confidence, and called a halt upon his endeavors to strengthen the absolutely essential instrument for Prussia’s development, the army; it is easy to forget that even the silent and seemingly imperturbable Moltke hesitated and wavered a little at the audacity of his comrade; it is easy to forget the conspiracy of opposition of the three women of the court, the Crown Princess, Frau von Blumenthal, and Frau von Gottberg, all of English birth, and all using needles against this man accustomed to the Schläger and the sword; it is easy to forget that even Queen Victoria’s influence was used against him to prevent the reaping of the justifiable fruits of victory in 1871; it is easy to forget what a bold throw it was to go to war with Austria, and to array Prussia against the very German states she must later bind to herself; it is easy to forget the dour patience of this irascible giant with the petulant and often petty legislature with which he had to deal.

I cannot understand how any German can criticise Bismarck, but there are official prigs who do; little decorated bureaucrats who live their lives out poring over papers, with an eye out for a “von” before their bourgeois names, and as void of audacity as a sheep; men who creep up the stairway to promotion and recognition, clinging with cautious grip to the banisters. One sees them, their coats covered with the ceramic insignia of their placid servitude, decorations tossed to them by the careless hand of a master who is satisfied if they but sign his decrees, with the i’s properly dotted, and the t’s unexceptionably crossed. They are the crumply officials who melted into defencelessness and moral decrepitude after Frederick the Great, and again at the glance of Napoleon, and who owe the little stiffness they have to the fact that Bismarck lived. It is one of the things a full-blooded man is least able to bear in Germany, to hear the querulous questioning of the great deeds of this man, whose boot-legs were stiffer than the backbones of those who decry him.

What a splendid fellow he was!

“Give me the spirit that, on this life’s rough sea,

Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,

Even till his sail-yards tremble and his masts do crack,

And his rapt ship run on her side so low

That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.

There is no danger to a man that knows

What life and death is - there’s not any law

Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful

That he should stoop to any other law.”

He was no worshipper of that flimsy culture which is, and has been for a hundred years, an obsession of the German. He knew, none knew better indeed, that the choicest knowledge is only mitigated ignorance. He surprised Disraeli with his mastery of English, and Napoleon with his fluency in French, both of which he had learned from his Huguenot professors. The popular man, the popular book, the popular music, picture, or play, were none of them a golden calf to him. He mastered what he needed for his work, and pretended to no enthusiasm for intellectualism as such. He knew that there is no real culture without character, and that the mere aptitude for knowing and doing without character is merely the simian cleverness that often dazzles but never does anything of importance. “Culture!” writes Henry Morley, “the aim of culture is to bring forth in their due season the fruits of the earth.” Any learning, any accomplishments, that do not serve a man to bring forth the fruits of the earth in their due season are merely mental gimcracks, flimsy toys, to admire perhaps, to play with, and to be thrown aside as useless when duty makes its sovereign demands.

Much as Germany has done for the development of the intellectual life of the world, she has suffered not a little from the superficial belief still widely held that instruction, that learning, are culture. Their Great Elector, their Frederick the Great, and their Bismarck, should have taught them the contrary by now.

The newly crowned German Emperor left Versailles on March 7th for Berlin, and on March 21st the first Diet of the new empire was opened, and began the task of adapting the constitution to the altered circumstances of the new empire.

The German Empire now consists of four kingdoms: Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Würtemberg; of six grand duchies: Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Saxe-Weimar, Oldenburg, Meeklenburg-Strelitz, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin; of five duchies: Saxe-Meinigen, Saxe-Altenburg Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Brunswick, and Anhalt; of seven principalities: Schwartzburg-Sondershausen, Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt, Waldeck, Reuss (older line), Reuss (younger line), Lippe, and Schaumburg-Lippe; of three free towns: Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck; and of one imperial province: Alsace Lorraine.

The new empire is in a sense a continuation of the North German Confederation. There are 25 states, the largest, Prussia, with a population of over 40,000,000; the smallest, Schaumburg-Lippe, with a population of a little more than 46,000 and an area of 131 square miles.

The central or federal authority controls the army, navy, foreign relations, railways, main roads, canals, post and telegraph, coinage, weights and measures, copyrights, patents, and legislation over nearly the whole field of civil and criminal law, regulation of press and associations, imperial finance and customs tariffs, which are now the same throughout Germany.

Bavaria still manages her own railways, and Saxony and Würtemberg have certain privileges and exemptions. Administration is still almost entirely in the hands of the separate states.

The law is imperial, but the judges are appointed by the states, and are under its authority. The supreme court of appeal (Reichsgericht) sits at Leipsic.

The head of the executive government is the Emperor, no longer elective but hereditary, and attached to the office of the King of Prussia. Outside of Prussia he has little power in civil matters and no veto on legislation. He is commander-in-chief of the army and of the navy; foreign affairs are in his hands, and in the federal council, or Bundesrath, he exercises a mighty influence due to Prussia’s preponderating influence and voting power. There is no cabinet, just as there is no cabinet in Great Britain, that modern institution being merely a legislative fiction down to this day. The chancellor of the empire, who is also prime minister of Prussia, with several secretaries of state, is chief minister for all imperial affairs. The chancellor presides in the Bundesrath, and has the right to speak in the Reichstag, and frequently does speak there. Indeed, all his more important pronouncements are made there. The chancellor is responsible to the Emperor alone, by whom he is nominated, and not to the representatives of the people.

The federal council, or Bundesrath, or upper chamber of the empire, consists of delegates appointed by and representing the rulers of the various states. There are 58 members. Prussia has 17, Bavaria 6, Saxony 4, Würtemberg 4, Baden 3, Hessen 3, Mecklenburg-Schwerin 2, Brunswick 2, and each of the other states 1.

This body meets in Berlin, sits in secret, and the delegates have no discretion, but vote as directed by their state governments. Here it is that Prussia, and through Prussia the Emperor, dominates. This Bundesrath is the most powerful upper chamber in the world. With respect to all laws concerning the army and navy, and taxation for imperial purposes, the vote of Prussia shall decide disputes, if such vote be cast in favor of maintaining existing arrangements. In other words, Prussia is armed in the Bundesrath with a conservative veto! In declaring war and making treaties, the consent of the Bundesrath is required. The following articles also give the Bundesrath a very complete control of the Reichstag. Article 7 reads: “The Bundesrath shall take action upon (1) the measures to be proposed to the Reichstag and the resolutions passed by the same; (2) the general administrative provisions and arrangements necessary for the execution of the imperial laws, so far as no other provision is made by law; (3) the defects which may be discovered in the execution of the imperial laws or of the provisions and arrangements heretofore mentioned.”

The Reichstag, or lower house, is elected by universal suffrage in electoral districts which were originally equal, but as we have noted are far from equal now. This house has three hundred and ninety-seven members, of whom two hundred and thirty-five are from Prussia. It sits for five years, but may be dissolved by the Bundesrath with the consent of the Emperor. All members of the Bundesrath, as well as the chancellor, may speak in the Reichstag. Nor the chancellor, nor any other executive officer, is responsible to the Reichstag, nor can be removed by its vote, and the ministers of the Emperor are seldom or never chosen from this body. This Reichstag is really only nominally a portion of the governing body. It has the right to refuse to pass a bill presented by the government, but if it does so it may be summarily dismissed, as has happened several times, and another election usually provides a more amenable body.

Of the various political parties in the Reichstag we have written elsewhere. It is, perhaps, fair to say that such powerful parties as the Socialists and the Centrum must be reckoned with by the chancellor. He cannot actually trample upon them, nor can he disregard wholly their wishes in framing and in carrying through legislation. It would be going much too far in characterizing the weakness of the Reichstag to leave that impression upon the reader. None the less it remains true that it is the executive who rules and has the whip-hand, and who in a grave crisis can override the representatives of the people assembled in the Reichstag, and on more than one occasion this has been done.

It seems highly unnecessary to announce after this description of the imperial constitution that there is no such thing in Germany as democratic or representative government. But this fact cannot be proclaimed too often since in other countries it is continually assumed that this is the case. All sorts of deductions are made, all sorts of illustrations used, all sorts of legislative and social lessons taught from the example of Germany, without the smallest knowledge apparently on the part of those who make them, that Germany to-day is no more democratic than was Turkey twenty years ago.

What can be done and what is done in Germany has no possible bearing upon what can be done in America or in England. All analogies are false, all illustrations futile, all examples valueless, for the one reason that the empire of Germany is governed by one man, who declaims his independence of the people and admits his responsibility to God alone. This may be either a good or a bad thing. Certainly in many matters of economical and comfortable government for the people- witness more particularly the development and wise control of their municipalities-they are a century ahead of us, but this is not the question under discussion. The point is, that a compact nation under strict centralized control, served by a trained horde of officials with no wish for a change, and backed by a standing army of over seven hundred thousand men, who are not only a defence against the foreigner, but a powerful police against internal revolution, cannot serve as a model in either its successes or failures for a democratic country like ours. Where in Germany legislative schemes succeed easily when this huge bureaucratic machine is behind them, they would fail ignominiously in a country lacking this machinery, and lacking these pitiably tame people accustomed to submission.

In France, for example, that thrifty and individualistic folk made a complete failure of the attempt to foist contributory old-age pensions upon them, and I doubt whether such sumptuary legislation can succeed with us. That, however, is neither here nor there. The gist of the matter is, that because such things succeed in Germany, gives not the slightest reason for supposing that they will succeed with us. If this outline of their history and this sketch of their government have done nothing else, it must have made this clear. It may also help to show how vapid is the talk about what the German people will or will not do; whether they will or will not have war, for example. We shall have war when the German Kaiser touches a button and gives an order, and the German people will have no more to say in the matter than you and I.