IX.
It was not to be expected that the Conservatives would accept this defeat without any thought of seeking revenge. The aristocracy who direct the party had supported all the costly proposals for augmenting the military forces, in order to ensure Germany’s triumph in the next war. Their sins now recoiled upon their own heads. From this time forth, the landowners would suffer the common lot of taxpayers, and in the grim struggle that they wage with such amazing vigour against an ungenerous soil, would no longer be able to devote the entire surplus of their income to the improvement of their farms. Their rout was due to the growth of the Socialist vote, to the place won in the Reichstag by Social Democracy, whose magnetic force was attracting both the Christian Democrats of the Centre and the more advanced Liberals. The problem now before them was this: should they submit to the domination of the Left, or should they counteract it, and endeavour to build a dam, once for all, against those Socialist floods that threatened to sap the very foundations of the monarchy?
If we bear in mind the views that the Conservative party has in common with the military aristocracy, making the two bodies scarcely distinguishable; its ascendancy over the Imperial Government, whose Chancellors, like Bülow, have called themselves Conservatives by blood and tradition; its influence at Court; the dictatorial spirit of its chiefs, actuated by the most diverse motives, Prussian patriotism, class cohesion, material interests; and finally, the short space of time that elapsed between the passing of the 1913 finance bill and the declaration of war on Russia—if we bear all this in mind, we shall come to the conclusion that the squirearchy took every advantage of that narrow interval, brought great pressure to bear upon the Sovereign, and decided him to precipitate the course of events.
The somewhat forced enthusiasm with which the introduction of the Defence Levy was hailed in Berlin drawing-rooms was speedily quenched after the Reichstag vote, and black looks appeared on all sides as the first term for payment drew near. The growing burdens exacted by the army and navy now made their weight felt everywhere, and caused a general demand for some limit to the constant advance of armaments and taxation. Yet the people saw no chance of relief except as the result of a war. “... That the outbreak of hostilities may be looked upon as a deliverance,” says the secret report already quoted. This was the idea that was gradually making its way into the German mind. On the day after mobilization, while having a talk with the Bavarian minister, I expressed my surprise at the fact that the war-demonstrations of the previous evening had been noisier in Munich than in Berlin. “Isn’t it perfectly natural?” he replied. “We are crushed by a weight of taxation, ordinary and extraordinary. The moment seems favourable. France and Russia are not ready. The Bavarians think it better that war should come than that the present intolerable state of things should continue.”
Not only did the military clique make capital of this discontent for the furtherance of their ends, but, we may surmise, the Conservatives exploited it for a political purpose which is not hard to guess. A successful war was the only way of stopping the downward rush of the Empire along the democratic slope, and of regaining the mastery of the Reichstag for the moderate parties. A victorious monarch, invested with a halo of dazzling glory by his subjects throughout all Germany, could allow himself anything. Was it not after a series of military triumphs that Bismarck had overcome the last resistance of the separatists? But the great man had made the mistake—a mistake for which his successors paid dear—of introducing universal suffrage for the elections to the Reichstag. Little by little, the popular vote was threatening to bring forth a hideous monster, a Parliament in which the majority would be led by the advocates of a social revolution. The Conservatives, in spite of a promise made by the Emperor, had managed to prevent an electoral reform for the Prussian Chamber of Deputies. We shall hardly overrate the daring of their leaders, if we credit them with the design of inducing William II., after the victory, to modify the 1871 constitution in a reactionary spirit.
A certain country, not strong enough to earn the respect of the Imperial Government, had shown that it is possible to mitigate the evils attendant on universal suffrage by means of minority representation, compulsory polling, and plural voting. In Germany, a reform involving one of these methods, or applying some other powerful brake to the electoral car, would have been easy to introduce at an auspicious moment. Even under a constitutional government, the bulk of the German nation, with many of its cravings satisfied, and with a long vista of world-wide supremacy and economic affluence before its eyes, would have offered no resistance to the Hohenzollern who returned from abroad with the laurels of a conqueror.
This, I admit, is a mere hypothesis, but there is nothing improbable in it for one who knows the pugnacious bent of Prussian Conservatism.
Yet every medal has its reverse, even the one stamped in advance with the effigy of William II., Emperor of Europe. If Germany emerges humbled and weakened for many a long year from a conflict in which the best-laid plans of victory will have been wrecked by unforeseen elements, the scaffolding of her ambitions will come down with a crash. When its rulers are called to account for their overweening confidence, the German people—if we exclude the chance of a revolution, an idea for which this country of innate discipline has little taste—will probably demand a limitation of the Emperor’s power in the form of a parliamentary system of real political liberty. In 1913, Count von Schwerin-Lowitz, President of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, said, in a Conservative meeting at some rural centre, that the Prussians, having been accustomed for centuries to feel themselves ruled by the iron hand of their kings, and being quite satisfied with their admirable officials, would never adapt themselves to the unstable guidance of a full parliamentary system. That may be: but Prussia proper—the Prussia that has known this “iron hand” for centuries—is not such a very large part of Germany. Of course, Parliamentarism, like every human institution, has its faults, great or small according to the temperament of the race concerned. Yet these faults, even in their worst form, seem trifling in comparison with the disasters of a European war, caused by the whim, the ambition, or the bad statesmanship of an autocrat. Few men will have done more harm to the monarchical principle than William II., who poses as its champion and knight-errant. Fortunately, the King of the Belgians, face to face with this Cæsar born out of his time, has shown how a really modern king may typify the soul of his people, a people resolved to fight to the death in order to preserve its independence.
In countries with parliamentary institutions, the sovereign has to reckon first and foremost with the feelings of the great mass, and with a more active, more potent, and more enlightened public opinion. With all due deference to German scribes, we may say that a world-war of conquest and pillage would have been so unpopular in France and in England, that in neither of those lands of freedom would the Government have set such a war in motion. I feel convinced that the Germans, delivered from the shackles of their present constitution, and governed no longer by officials, but by responsible ministers owing their position to popular suffrage, would return to their better nature, to an ideal of progress on peaceful lines.