Germany before the war

by baron Beyens

This ministerial figure represents the Emperor in the Reichstag and assumes the responsibility for the acts of the Government. This nominal responsibility is entirely unlike that of a minister in a parliamentary country; for it does not bind him at all in relation to Parliament, but only in relation to his master, and also, in a certain measure (whatever some may allege), to public opinion. The Chancellor, however, holds a plurality of dignities and functions. He is Jack-of-all-trades to the monarchy: President of the Prussian Ministry, President of the Bundesrat, and Imperial Minister for Foreign Affairs. These complex duties might well prove too exacting for a genuine statesman; how much more so for a mere politician! Owing to the difference of spirit between the Prussian Chamber of Deputies and the Reichstag, he has to appear before the former in the stern guise of a rigid Conservative, while in the latter his face wears a more attractive mask, being set off with a tinge of Liberalism. The Chancellor is thus compelled, by the very nature of his functions, to be an opportunist in internal politics.

The Bundesrat, composed of representatives sent to it by the individual States, is a pliable tool in the hands of the Emperor and the other German rulers, who themselves obey the Imperial will. It shares the legislative power with the head of the Empire and with the Reichstag.

Bismarck held that the best way of uprooting the particularism of the small States and clearing the ground for final unification was to invite all citizens of twenty-five years and upwards to elect representatives for the central Parliament. The Reichstag, chosen by universal suffrage, is the popular assembly, the real mouthpiece of public opinion. Its powers are limited to voting upon the budget and upon laws for the Empire, which must be taken as meaning laws of national interest.[6] This democratic Parliament, however, controls, so far as it can, the administration of public affairs. Its best weapon of defence against the arbitrary power of the Crown is the opposition it can raise to any Government proposals for expenditure or taxation. It has often used this weapon; but if it presses its opposition too far, it runs the risk of being dissolved by a mere decree of the Emperor’s, to make room for an assembly that will prove more open to compromise.

By the side of the Empire are the federal States and the three free cities, which possess local executives and Diets. In order to furnish these States with the means of a separate existence, Bismarck, while instituting a special budget for the Empire, left to them the revenue obtained from direct taxes. The Imperial budget draws its nutriment from the customs, the excise, and the postal service. The amount derived from these sources being insufficient, it also receives the “matricular contributions” (Matrikularbeiträge), paid by each State on a scale that keeps the balance of the budget properly adjusted.

II.

Prince von Bülow, in his Imperial Germany, asserts that the German race, although richly endowed with great qualities, has no talent for politics. This charge is quite unfair, the real motive for it being the dread with which a Prussian statesman views the prospect of a parliamentary system. The Germans are late-comers in the field of political life. Those of the South entered it much earlier than the Prussians; Bavaria received a written constitution from its ruler in 1818, Baden in the same year, Würtemberg in 1819, and Hesse-Darmstadt in 1820. It was not till 1850 that Frederick William IV., impelled by the sanguinary riots in Berlin two years earlier, granted his people the constitution promised by his father a few weeks before Waterloo. Even to-day, popular representation as it exists among the Germans is in many ways incomplete. In this respect they are a backward people—they, who pride themselves on marching in the forefront of civilization. They look from afar at the little nations, which they despise, boldly advancing on the road of parliamentarism, of progress in the sphere of political institutions, the road that England, as pioneer, has opened up for other countries. Yet there is nothing to prove that, if they were given the chance, they would not shake off their political torpor and set out upon that road with admirable results.

Under the present constitution, the political parties in the Reichstag have no hope of ever securing the reins of power. The Chancellor and his underlings, the Secretaries of State, are functionaries who cannot be removed, so long as it pleases the Emperor to keep them in office. When the popular assembly formally records its lack of confidence in them, the vote is like a harmless shower of rain, from which they can shelter themselves under the cloak of the constitution. If these hostile downpours came very often, indeed, the Emperor would have to take notice of them and to effect a change in the high executive staff, but he would not on that account draw his ministers from the parliamentary majority. The party chiefs, never having the responsibility of power, are far less keen for the interests of the State than for those of their party. In a theoretical, doctrinaire fashion, they defend the political programme comprising all the demands which they and their predecessors have artistically put together, a nosegay with whose delusive fragrance they charm their electors from time to time; but they know perfectly well that this ideal programme can never be carried out. Some, as skilled tacticians and leaders of men, like Windthorst and Bebel, have displayed talents of the first order. Why should it be impossible to find, among the various party leaders, the stuff of which good parliamentary ministers are made? We have never seen them put to the test, but we can very well imagine Herr Bassermann at the head of a Liberal Ministry or Herr Spahn in a coalition Conservative Cabinet, a “blue and black”[7] Cabinet, such as has been tried in Holland.

A remark one cannot help making is that the Imperial Parliament does not contain a Prussian majority, a fact which increases the difficulties of the Government’s task in no small degree. Prussia achieved German unity by the sword; it is by far the most populous of the German States, for in 1913 its inhabitants numbered 40,000,000 out of a total of 67,000,000. Nevertheless, Prussia proper is confined to the right bank of the Elbe. The rest of the mighty Hohenzollern kingdom is merely Prussianized, a group of provinces incorporated by conquest, and in each province the old particularist spirit still survives. A great national Prussian party will probably never come into being. It has been said with justice that in the Reichstag the parties, generally speaking, have remained separatist, in so far as they are identified with separate regions. The Conservatives embody the reactionary tendencies inherent in the Protestant population of the eastern marches; the deputies of the Centre represent the Catholic masses of the west, the Liberals the commercial and manufacturing towns. The Socialists alone succeed in spreading, like a sheet of oil, all over the domains of the older parties.

Other reflections occur to the mind of one who is confronted with this motley Diet of federal partners. First of all, this: that the Government, in its relations with the Reichstag, would gain in prestige, in influence, and in freedom of action, if it were not so liable to confuse the Imperial Diet with that of Prussia, if the Prussian minister were not constantly peeping out behind the mask of the Imperial Chancellor. Secondly, that the Reichstag seems inevitably destined to play a more important part on a stage that is really parliamentary. The structure reared by Bismarck, although it has been in existence for forty-four years, still has a look of incompleteness. It seems to need finishing touches from the hand of a workman more Liberal than the Iron Chancellor, one who can adapt himself better to modern requirements.