The Versailles Masterpiece
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The Kaiser’s crown at last, and how and why; herein, we sum up the very flower of our great man’s genius; and mark it well!
¶ The very name “Kaiser” brings up memories of the Middle Ages, thence backward to the days of imperial Cæsar. Kaiser, at best, is but Cæsar, rewritten.
Yet Bismarck was at great pains to make clear that the substitution of Kaiser for King of Prussia involved no restoration of ancient imperial institutions.
¶ The use of Kaiser, as the title for the new monarch, had behind it a deep, almost religious purpose, in conformity with the sense of nationality and brotherhood to which through long and painful development the German states had at last attained. Bismarck calls the return of the title “a political necessity, making for unity and centralization.”
¶ “I was convinced,” he says, “that the pressure solidifying our imperial institutions would be more permanent the more the Prussian wearer of the imperial title should himself avoid that dangerous striving on the part of our dynasty to flaunt its own pre-eminence in the face of other dynasties. King William I was not free from this inclination ... to call forth a recognition of the superior prestige of Prussia’s crown, over the Kaiser’s title.”
¶ The Kaiser idea is simple: He is the sworn servant “of” the people, but his terms are his own, viz., all is “for” the people, but not “through” the people.
Such in a few words is the Bismarckian conception of a strong ruler.
¶ It was not, then, to be “an expanded Prussia,” but a German Empire. And the Kaiser’s powers are hence the legal functions of an imperial organ, attached by the organic law of the Empire to the Prussian crown.
Thus Germany is a true state, but not a monarchy; sovereignty does not rest with the Kaiser, but with the totality of the allied governments. And in turn the old states became provinces of the Empire; and the Kaiser exercises his powers in the name of the Empire.
¶ However, it must be recalled that Bismarck always detested political and social conformity, trampled conformity under foot, and with wild voice ridiculed conformity—especially when conformity meant to yield to the peasants a constructive share in the governments of the thirty-nine clashing German states. That is to say, his idea of freedom was to make the State paramount, guiding, directing and if need be disciplining the people.
¶ Memories fasten themselves on us, at this moment, memories of the old days of struggle for nationality.
It was on Bismarck’s advice that, although Frederick William IV was bitten by the ambition to become ruler of United Germany, yet when the democratic Frankfort Diet offered him the crown, he did indignantly refuse; and many years later, his successor—that old man with the wonderful history!—William I, after the victories of Sedan and Gravelotte, was mightily afraid that the Berlin Parliament, representing democratic conformity, would offer him the honor of Emperor before that gift could be bestowed by the princes themselves.
¶ Ludwig of Bavaria in his letter to William, urging the imperial title, Kaiser, or German Emperor, uses these words: “I have proposed to the German princes to join me in urging Your Majesty to assume the title, German Emperor, in connection with the exercise of the prædial rights of the Federation.” But it was Bismarck’s masterpiece of politics, equal to his stroke of Holstein, that sent to the King of Bavaria the proper diplomatic advices, to be acted upon by the South German princes and returned to the supposedly surprised William, urging on him to become German Emperor.
¶ In spite of Bismarck’s fine hand, Bavaria at first refused to accept the Iron Chancellor’s advices. There is light on this topic in Herr Ottokar Lorenz’s “Foundation of the German Empire,” making clear among other facts that “the German eagle had a narrow escape from dying in the egg.” Twice negotiations were broken off; finally, when the King of Bavaria tried to get his countrymen behind him in the plan to proclaim William of Prussia, German Emperor, at Versailles, “it was only after some hesitation and much regret.”
It took the Bavarian Landtag a month to make up its mind! To read the heated discussions is to destroy the legend that the proclamation of the Kaiser was by spontaneous demand.
¶ But we must not press these things too far. The fact that King William had to fight for the magnificent honor he had won for himself and his country, is merely to say that men are men; nor should we ever forget that nothing creates so much jealousy as prosperity.
¶ Herr Bismarck had the cleverness to win, at last, and after that there is little to be added.
For that matter, the much-lauded revolt of the American colonists against Britain was originally not endorsed by over one-third of the inhabitants. Yet, with the final victory, like a pack the colonists went over to the winning side, saying, “We told you so.”
¶ We have nothing but praise for the way in which Bismarck created his Versailles masterpiece. That there was a political squabble behind the curtain, in Bavaria, was to be expected.
¶ Tell me, did you ever achieve any success that you did not have to go out and fight for?
It is an amiable fiction that men “recognize” each other’s work, in politics, and “urge” on them rulership over nations. They, too, have to get out and fight for it!
¶ This necessity for turbulent striving to carry out political ideas was especially true of Germany during the period of which we write. Complex conditions long made National Unity a profound problem, not only in politics but in human nature.
¶ All manner of blacklegs were at work with here and there an honest man; national oratory was at once visionary, ludicrous and tragical; fanatics of the bomb, the knife and the poison-cup for years were abroad in the land. These situations, growing from times past, compel you to hold with Bismarck that ultimate appeal to the sword was after all the only hope for a new Germany.
¶ Bismarck did it grossly, but at least he went through with it—call it militarism or what you please.
¶ For that matter, neither Britain, France, Belgium, (nor the United States with her 186-odd variants of Christianity in her 186-odd religious sects), grew out of political cynicism, least of all out of some aloof system of esoteric idealism.
¶ The King of Britain owes his crown to the sword; the President of France his high office to the sword; the Belgian King traces his legitimacy to revolution; likewise, to revolution the President of the United States owes his right to rule during his brief hour of official authority.
¶ But what would you in this imperfect world?
German Unity sprang from the needs of human hearts—fighting bravely for what they hold important!—even as you fight for your rights, or consent to remain a slave. And Germans never will be slaves.
¶ Therefore, know it now and be done with it, or make the most of it if you are inclined to snarl at realities: The Kaiser’s crown came by the sword. Surely, you did not expect that it fell from Heaven? As long as men are men, they must fight for what they achieve; and the German Empire is no exception;—nor is there any good reason to expect that history can possibly be other than the record of human nature, in action.
¶ Up to his downfall in 1890, Bismarck was an uncompromising Royalist, scoffed at the common people as a source of political sovereignty.
¶ No man knows what is, ultimately, for the glory of God; but when in bitter retirement, thrown off by the grandson of William I, Bismarck, replying to the old dispute about the interior causes of the Franco-Prussian war, to which William owes his title German Emperor, it is a fact that Bismarck proceeded to weaken the royalist tradition by forcing the government to produce the Ems dispatch; and it was then made clear to the common people that there was behind it all the under-play of politics, thus dispelling the religious and patriotic glamour that the war had been entered upon to protect the Fatherland against the land-lust of Napoleon the Little.
Had now the military right been used not to express the will of God, but the ends of human expediency?
¶ Bismarck certainly knew all this before the great war, but for reasons of political expediency suppressed the facts till in a moment of indignation he dropped the mask and called on all honest men to know the truth.
Bismarck, twenty years before, had with equal indignation set up before the Prussians that their King had been grossly insulted, and that Napoleon wanted the left bank of the Rhine.
¶ But let us forget all this, in a broad acknowledgment of the fact that human beings at various times, for their own ends, do indeed wear various masks; and let us not keep up the fight forevermore;—but here and now let us grant to Bismarck final absolution, not claiming for him the perfection of the demigod.
¶ After all is said, history is not the record of some far-off manifest destiny, but instead is merely the sordid story of human nature in action, reciting at best the littleness that appertains to men’s ways, with now and then the unrealized expression of some fleeting larger hope.
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His Versailles masterpiece reduced to its final analysis, in terms of human nature; wherein it is made clear that Bismarck knew his German peasant as well as his Prussian King.
¶ The core of human interest around which Bismarck shaped his stupendous politico-military drama, in order that, in the end, William might become German Emperor, was neither an appeal to parliaments nor to armies, but a reply to a peculiar psychological something in the Teuton character that makes respect for the strong hand.
It is only in the largest way that this fact may be made clear. It escapes categorical statement;—and can best be glimpsed behind the history of events, from the psychological rather than the physical side.
¶ Bismarck manipulated an invisible but very real human force, made it the breath of life for his plans!
¶ That he warped on the Nineteenth Century the old Holy Roman Empire conception of Divine-right is an amazing politico-military fact.
It was only after many brilliant achievements that, at the height of his power, Cæsar linked himself with the gods. Cæsar’s earlier life knew no such pretensions, but as he climbed the dizzy heights of fame, at last the day came when his kinship with the immortal gods themselves alone satisfied his inordinate ambitions; and from that time forth Divine-right became an established fact in the theological-political code of kings; and thus on, down through the Middle Ages, until the French Revolution destroyed confidence in the old-line absolute monarch, as vicegerent of Christ on this earth.
¶ However, that Otto von Bismarck, the blond Pomeranian giant, warped on the Nineteenth Century the Imperial Cæsarian idea of the Divine-right of kings is not the final fact of his work. The inner fact is that he urged the King’s authority as a foil against the mob-idea of the French Revolution. The liberty-crazed masses needed a strong hand at this time.
¶ What made possible the coming of the Empire was not, after all, traceable entirely to the political side of Bismarck’s hotly contested struggles.
The innate craving of the German people for a strong ruler has a subtle inner meaning, too easily overlooked.
¶ In the final analysis, Bismarck’s position expresses Prussian sense of National security in a powerful war lord, rather than supports the conception of master and man. His was not the position of lord and servant; rather it means a manly, intelligent admission of the necessity of a strong central authority in the nation.
¶ By the force of years of tedious repetitions, building on the plain laws of mental suggestion, Bismarck at last created certain dominating ideas; but the germ of these ideas already existed in Prussia’s consciousness.
The Prussian character supporting Divine-right represents a singular compound of cadet, blind confidence in aristocratic leadership, religious radicalism, worship of ancestors approximating the Chinese sentiment, and finally, a racial psychology of rulership, based on the rattan of Frederick the Great. On this total combination, the astute Bismarck played for thirty long years, warring for his lord and master, the Hohenzollerns.
A careful reading of Bismarck’s speeches, letters, dispatches, will show that whatever political expediency he may at various times have followed, and however often he may have changed front, there is still in his great labor a tireless repetition of ideas commanding respect for vested authority, for ancestry, for a ruling class as against the ruled, and always for absolute dog-like obedience to some central commanding power.
¶ The psychological something on which Bismarck builded his German Empire is Bismarck’s recognition of the peculiarities of his German peasant, as well as of his Prussian King. We come now to some great central racial facts.
Bismarck’s unending eulogies of military glory, now extolled in the high language of a victorious commander-in-chief, again as a drill-sergeant sharply criticising the squad, are not to be dismissed as the expressions of one in large authority, speaking from the steps of the throne.
Bismarck’s work would have failed had he not linked it to some secret craving of the Teutonic heart, far deeper than conquering the jealousies, intrigues and selfishness that compose the long story of the rise of the German Empire.
¶ Historians may talk as much as they please about Bismarck’s executive and administrative genius, but these, great as they are, are overshadowed by his power of political spirit-healing, as it were; through practice of his peculiar psychotherapy he cured sick Germany of many of her ills; at the same time bringing about German brotherhood in a way that added to the great glory of Prussia.
¶ Appealing to the solemn religious side of Prussian character that expresses itself in upholding authority, in church or state, Bismarck incessantly lauds the descendants of noble families, and sets up that Prussian military aristocracy alone reared up Prussian political legitimacy.
He presents likewise the idea that the supreme quality of German manhood is courage; and to Bismarck’s mind the sovereign German virtue is revealed in strong-willed eager soldiers.
While in these lofty moods, Bismarck displays enormous family pride for his beloved aristocrats of Brandenburg, is never weary of telling of their military prowess.
He avows on many occasions his life-long regret that he did not enter the army as a career, instead of taking up the civil service; he digs into his family records and proudly numbers each Bismarck who carried arms, even down to distant cousins, and is never so happy as when telling of Bismarcks on many blood-drenched fields.
Above all else, he everlastingly insists that behind his demands for his King is the direct will of God.
¶ There is not the slightest doubt that as time passed and Bismarck kept telling over and over for years that the King represented God’s will on this earth, true Prussians came at last to believe it more and more; for the reason that it was in their blood to believe, as it is the nature of a bull-dog to fight, a glutton to eat, a thief to steal, the sun to shine.
¶ Bismarck called on heaven to send its avenging lightnings on the heads of those who deserted their monarch, to their perpetual dishonor; could think of no crime more monstrous than ingratitude to his King, especially to a king by the grace of God.
And Bismarck declared again and again, as his deepest conviction, that the Prussian crown was encircled by a heavenly aureole. In short, Bismarck revived in its purest and most uncompromising form the doctrine of Divine-right.
¶ In an age seemingly out of touch with this iron-bound mold of the Feudal past, Bismarck would have failed miserably were it not that he touched a responsive side of Prussian character—dog-like loyalty to authority, compounded of military glory and a pale shimmering ghost of religious aspiration.
The governing fact of the whole situation was psychological rather than physical; and all this stupendous cannonading at Gravelotte, Sedan, Koeniggraetz, and the magnificent drama in the Hall of Mirrors, were after all merely so many evidences that Bismarck better than all the tribe of his objectors knew the psychological core of Prussian character.
¶ Bismarck brought down the wrath of God on those rival leaders who dared to be disloyal to his Divine-right King, and flew into frenzy at the very thought that a genuine Prussian should expect wisdom from the common people. Behind all this, was always the solid appeal to Prussian military-cadet idea of loyalty and strong politico-religious instincts.
¶ Manipulating this psychological side, invisible yet very real, Bismarck shows his genius as a constructive statesman. Without this intuitive touch of Prussian consciousness, all the lustre that Bismarck ultimately shed on the Imperial crown would have been impossible.
¶ Thus, we behold Otto von Bismarck, the rude, blond, Pomeranian giant—in spite of his coarse speeches, his brawls, his political card-stacking, his enormous egotism, his passionate seeking after power—play with Shakespearian subtlety on the strings of human passion.
There is no larger character-side to our Bismarck; so study it well and reflect on its wide meaning.
¶ We are not here to say what Bismarck should or should not have done, but we make up our mind about him by what he did do.
¶ He had peculiar ideas of religion, pleasure, duty, and certainly he had his own idea of what was best for Prussia, and finally for Germany.
¶ He bartered his immortal time for a King’s crown and an Emperor’s glory, guns, swords, forts, marchings up and down the land.
¶ He bartered his time in angry disputes with his fellow-man, for prisons, broken homes, murders, tears for 80,000 widows and orphans.
¶ He bartered his time for magnificent spectacles such as the coronation of William I in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, a palace outrivaling any creation of man since the days of Nebuchadnezzar.
¶ He bartered his time for grand balls for aristocrats in silk coats and ladies in diamonds and satin gowns.
¶ He bartered his time that a certain space in Europe be made over to his own liking. Other kings and emperors with equal logic wished to have this space made over in a way that seemed as good as the one Bismarck had in mind, but Bismarck regarding it as a calamity that other plans should come to pass, fought bitterly with sword and cannon to back his individual opinion against all who disputed with him.
¶ He bartered his time that a certain part of the map be marked with one name instead of thirty-nine names, as had been the case when he came to power as a young man in the politics of Prussia.
¶ And finally he bartered his immortal time in a thirty-years’ gladiatorial fight that in the end millions of Germans might feel the tingle of blood-brotherhood. How he faced the long, heart-breaking battle, therein we find the true measure of our great Bismarck! Thus his work, as an individual, is absorbed in the larger life of the German Empire. These National services make Bismarck one of the immortals; and his name will be remembered affectionately by Germans for thousands of years.
¶ The present review of German origins, through Bismarckian genius, is concerned largely with the form of government established.
The collective efficiency of the Bismarckian idea, as worked out in the German Constitution, promptly ascertains the will of the people, and carries out that will.
¶ The Kaiser, through the Chancellor, has the selection of all important public officials, and as King of Prussia appoints Prussian administrative officials; and in turn, the various kings choose the various public servants in their respective kingdoms. All hold office during good behavior, or for life; instantly responsive to the will of the Kaiser, or to the Bundesrath. The state officials are thus “the fingers of the Kaiser,” working the duties of the Empire, free from the petty molestations that assail even the most trustworthy and patriotic American office-holders.
¶ In simple terms of parallel, the much-lauded American Commission System, for the government of cities, was borrowed from the Kaiser.
The Commission System delegates the power to a committee of five, who pass and execute the laws.
This is precisely the principle laid down by the Bundesrath, in which body is united executive, legislative and judicial functions. It is a fact that the cities most efficiently managed, in the United States (1915), are under the Commission System, that is to say, the German conception of responsible politico-civic authority.
¶ German thoroughness, as well as German discipline, unite to make the German system a brilliant success; but in America the German collective idea is politically offensive because of our superstition that the way of Liberty lies through incessant political changes. The American has confidence in the wisdom of large numbers, believes that by dividing the functions of government the people may be saved from themselves. One-man power is (theoretically) greatly feared, in America. Despite the fact that in all great industrial undertakings Americans appreciate the part played by personal responsibility, they are loath to admit that the principle makes for National political efficiency.
¶ One final word: Revolution means change; and in this sense the French Revolution is important. In some respects, it is still going forward. However, in 1848 the practical side of the Revolution was not understood, was therefore decried by conservative thinkers who saw in the excesses of the Commune little that heralded a better day.
¶ In France, thousands of men misinterpreted emotional zeal for human brotherhood for fitness to govern. It is the old, old story.
To come at once to the point: You must judge a nation as you do a man, not by what that man says, but by what he does. Hence, from Bismarck’s point of view, it was time to be done with the bursting of blood vessels in a frenzy about equality, and to come down to the essential facts of human nature; or if you like the words better, human ways.
It is not necessarily a mark of wisdom to issue “manifestoes against special privileges” and to set up that “all” the people are fit to rule an empire.
The very reverse is the proof of history; few men indeed there are who have the patience, the discretion and the prudence to rule over other lives.
Also, the German race asks no upstart rulers; the idea of father and child, duty, discipline and personal responsibility is deeply grounded in the German conception of an adequate State.
¶ There is small profit in using precious time denouncing Bismarck’s protest against French Constitutionalism. Let us, instead, try to understand why the old ways were cherished. And always bear in mind that the Past holds mankind in a tighter grip than the Radicals are willing to concede! There is no such thing as wiping off the slate and starting with a “new” set of ideas. The wisest man in the world cannot do that. At best, he recognizes the past, with here and there a slight variation.
Such, in short, was Bismarck’s broad and true idea of human necessity. And he planned his German Empire accordingly.
¶ Bismarck was faced by these facts: the idiomatic ways in which German people thought and acted; their tastes and ideals, not only in politics but in society, law, religion;—nay, their very dreams. Throughout, there is always a profound sense of personal responsibility to the State. The State is not to be forgotten for some spurious personal individuality.
And mark this: that for generations “events” in Germany all gave expression to certain racial habits of thought, against which all manner of Communistic uprisings were anathema.
German sense of discipline, duty and personal responsibility, in State affairs, is grounded on a high consciousness that is not satisfied with half-measures, bungling, waste, cheap politicians, and freakish legislation. The German takes himself too seriously to permit a bunko-politician to come on with faking, as a substitute for the National ideal of government.
¶ Hence, Bismarck’s Imperial democracy, with the Kaiser at its head.
¶ As between the inevitable contest between the Crowd and the Crown, springing from the inflammatory ideas of French Constitutionalism, Bismarck did not shrink; but fought it out in his own way. Our Man of Blood and Iron desired the blessings of liberty for Germany with all the strength of his powerful being; but he could not stultify his common sense by meekly conceding no essential distinction between men, in their capacity for leadership. He was, then, intent on bringing out of the German political chaos a type of democracy that may be termed Imperial as well as representative, in which the people are accorded their share, as he saw it, but always under the guidance of a strong central authority.
¶ And after all said in glorification of any special type of government, the stubborn fact remains that absolute equality, from a representative point of view, is a fiction unsupported by fact. The notorious incapacity and apathy of the masses is always, in the end, directed by central powers, exercised insidiously or openly as you please, but exercised nevertheless. In every political party we find a coterie, men of little wisdom it may be but leaders of the crowd; in every city commission is always one masterful man to whom the other members defer; in every banking house, one deciding voice; every religious organization must have a head, regardless of the number of counsellors; every ship a captain; every army a general; and, finally, in every family there should be the guidance and direction of a strong father.
¶ Is there not a ring of sincerity in Bismarck’s manly acknowledgment of the inevitable equalities in the human stuff of which governments are composed? He saw only common sense in openly protesting that in any German government big enough and enduring enough to satisfy the German conception of responsibility, in a word German thoroughness, there must be, somewhere, a master-mind.
¶ For many years, and even today, Bismarck is in some quarters regarded as the arch-enemy of the common people, but his great work has stood the acid test of time. The German Empire, builded under Bismarck’s broad ideas may be likened unto a wonderful watch, in which each part does its peculiar work without even a gambler’s chance of going wrong.