German Culture Past and Present

by Ernest Belfort Bax

Again, although I am very far from wishing to attribute the crimes and horrors committed by the German army during the present war to the whole German nation, or even to the rank and file of those composing the army, yet there is no doubt that some blame must be apportioned at least to the latter. The contrast is striking between the conduct of the German troops during the present war and that of 1870, when they could declare that they were out "to fight French soldiers and not French citizens." Such were the military ethics of bygone generations of German soldiers. They certainly do not apply to the German army of to-day. The popularity of such writers as Von Treitschke and Bernhardi, respecting which so much has been written, is indeed significant of a vast change in German moral conceptions. The practical influence of Nietzsche, who—with his corybantic whirl of criticism on all things in heaven above and on the earth beneath, a criticism not always coherent with itself—can hardly be termed a German Chauvinist in any intelligible sense, has, I think, been much exaggerated. The importance of his theories, considered as an ingredient in modern German Chauvinism, is not so considerable, I should imagine, as is sometimes thought.

We come now to the movement already alluded to as a set-off and, within certain boundaries at least, a counteractive of the degeneracy exhibited in the German character since the foundation of the present Imperial system. The rise and rapid growth of the Social Democratic movement is perhaps the most striking fact in the recent history of Germany. The same may be said, of course, of the growth of Socialism everywhere during the same period. But in Germany it has for a generation past, or even more, occupied an exceptional position, alike as regards the rapidity of its increase, its direct influence on the masses, and its party organization. Modern Socialism, as a party doctrine, is, moreover, a product of the best period of nineteenth-century German thought and literature. Its three great theoretical protagonists, Marx, Engels, and their younger contemporary, Lassalle, all issued from the great Hegelian movement of the first half of the nineteenth century. Their propagandist activity, literary and otherwise, was in the German language. The analysis of the present capitalist system, forming the foundation of the demand for the communization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, as resulting in a human society as opposed to a class society, and ultimately in the extinction of national barriers in a world-federation of socialized humanity—these principles were first appreciated, as a world-ideal, by the proletariat of Germany, and they have unquestionably raised that proletariat to an intellectual rank as yet equalled by no other working-class in the world.

It must be admitted, however, that with the colossal growth of the Social Democratic party in Germany in numbers and the introduction into it of elements from various quarters, a certain deterioration, one may hope and believe only temporary, has become apparent in its quality. This applies, at least, to certain sections of the party. A sordid practicalism has made itself felt, due to a feverish desire to play an important rôle in the detail of current politics. Personal ambition and the mechanical working of the party system have also had their evil influence in the movement in recent years. Nevertheless, we have reason to believe that the core of the party is as sound and as true to principle as ever it was, and that on the restoration of international peace this will be seen to be the case. What interests us, however, specially, at the moment of writing, is the lamentable, yet undeniable, fact that German Social Democracy has, on this occasion, disastrously failed to prevent the outbreak of war, notwithstanding the vigour of its efforts to do so during the last week of July; and still more that it has failed up to date to stem the rising flood of militarism and jingoism in the German people. That before many months are over the scales will fall from the eyes of the masses of Germany I am convinced, and not less that a revolutionary movement in Germany will be one of the signs that will herald the dawn of a better day for Germany and for Europe. But meanwhile we must hold our countenances in patience.

If we inquire the cause of the degeneracy we have been considering in the German character since the war of 1870 and the creation of the new empire—apart from those economic causes of change common to all countries in modern civilization—the answer of those who have followed the history of the period can hardly fail to be—Bismarck and Prussia. We have already seen in the short historical sketch given in the last chapter how the robber hand of Prussia, in violation of all national treaty rights, had gradually succeeded in annexing wellnigh all the neighbouring German territories. But, notwithstanding this, the greater part of Germany still remained outside the Prussian monarchy. The policy of Bismarck was first of all to cripple the rival claimant for the hegemony of Central Europe, Austria. Her complete subjugation being unfeasible, she had to be shut up rigorously to her immediate dominions on the eastern side of Central Europe, in order to leave the path clear for Bismarck, by war or subterfuge, to absorb, under a system of nominally vassal States, the whole of the rest of Germany into the system of the Prussian monarchy.

Now, as we know, from its very foundation the Hohenzollern-Prussian monarchy has always been a more or less veiled despotism, based on working through a military and bureaucratic oligarchy. The army has been the dominant factor of the Prussian State from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards. Prussia has been from the beginning of its monarchy the land of the drill-sergeant and the barracks. It is this system which the Junker Bismarck has riveted on the whole German people, with what results we now see. Badenese, Würtembergers, Franconians, Hanoverians, the citizens of the former free cities no less than the already absorbed Westphalians, Thuringians, Silesians, Mecklenburgers, were speedily all reduced to being the slaves of the Prussian military system and of the Prussian military caste. The naïve German peoples, as already pointed out, accepted this Prussian domination as the realization of their time-honoured patriotic ideal of German unity.

The fact of their subservience was emphasized in every way. The law of lèse-majesté (majestätsbeleidigung), by which all criticism of the despotic head of the State or his actions is made a heinous criminal offence, to which severe penalties are attached, it is not too much to say is a law which brands the ruler who accepts it as a coward and a cur, and the Legislature which passes it as a house, not of representative citizens, or even subjects for that matter, but of representative slaves. It must not be forgotten that the law in question strikes not only at public expressions of opinion in the press or on the platform, but at the most private criticism made in the presence of a friend in one's own room. The depths of undignified and craven meanness to which a monarch is reduced by being thus protected from criticism by the police-truncheon and the gaoler struck me especially as illustrated by the following incident which happened some years ago: Shortly after the accession of the present Kaiser, a conjurer was giving his entertainment in a Swiss town. For one of the tricks he was going to exhibit he had occasion to ask the audience to send him up the names of a few public men on folded pieces of paper. His reception of the names written down was accompanied by the "patter" proper to his profession. On coming to the name of Kaiser Wilhelm II he ventured the remark, "Ah! I'd rather it had been the poor man just dead" (meaning the Emperor Frederick), "for I'm afraid this one's not much good." Will it be believed that the whole diplomatic machinery was set on foot to induce the Swiss Government to prosecute the unfortunate entertainer, abortively of course, since it could not have been legally done? Surely the head of a State who could allow his Government to descend to such contemptible pettiness must be devoid of all sense of common self-respect, not to say personal dignity. And this is the fellow who claims to be hardly second in importance to his "dear old God"! In this connection it is only fair to recall the very different behaviour of King Edward VII when an Irish paper published not a mere criticism but an unquestionably libellous article reflecting on his private character. The police seized the copies of the paper and were prepared to take steps to prosecute, when the late King interfered and stopped even the confiscation of the paper. The least monarchical of us must, I think, admit that here we have a good illustration of the distinction between a man sure of his reputation and a cur nervously alarmed for his.

This severe law of lèse-majesté in Bismarck's Prusso-German Empire is only an illustration of the way in which the German people have been made to grovel before the Prussian jack-boot. The Prussification of Germany in matters military and in matters bureaucratic has gone on apace since 1870. Prussia, it is not too much to say, has hitherto consisted in a nation of slaves and tyrants and nothing else. It is the Prussian governing class which has everywhere and in all departments "set the pace" since the empire was established. No man known to hold opinions divergent from those agreeable to the interests of the Prussian governing class can hope for employment, be it the most humble, in any department of the public service. This is particularly noticeable in its effects in the matter of education. The inculcation of the brutal and blatant jingoism of Von Treitschke at the universities by professors eager for approval in high places has already been sufficiently animadverted upon in more than one work on modern Germany. The defeat of Prusso-German militarism will be an even greater gain to all that is best in Germany herself than it will be to Europe as a whole.

Delenda est Prussia, understanding thereby not, of course, the inhabitants of Prussian territory as such, but Prussia as a State-system and as an independent Power in Europe, must be the watchword in the present crisis of every well-wisher of Humanity, Germany included. A united Germany, if that be insisted upon, by all means let there be—a federation of all the German peoples with its capital, for that matter, as of old, at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, but with no dominant State and, if possible, excluding Prussia altogether, but certainly as constituted at present. Who knows but that a united States of Germany may then prove the first step towards a united States of Europe?

But it is not alone to the political reconstruction of Germany or of Europe that those who take an optimistic view of the issue of the present European war look hopefully. The whole economic system of modern capitalism will have received a shock from which the beginnings of vast changes may date. Apart from this, however, the avowed aim of the war, the destruction of Prussian militarism and, indirectly, the weakening of military power throughout the world, should have immediate and important consequences. The brutalities and crimes committed in Belgium and the North of France at the instigation of the military heads of this Prusso-German army do but indicate exaggerations of the military spirit and attitude generally. Von Hindenburg is not the first who has given utterance to the devilish excuse for military crime and brutality that it is "more humane in the end, since it shortens war." To refute this transparent fallacy is scarcely necessary, since every historical student knows that military excesses and inhumanity do not shorten but prolong war by raising indignation and inflaming passions. The longest connected war known to history—the Thirty Years' War—is generally acknowledged to have been signalized by the greatest and most continuous inhumanity of any on record. But whether military crime has the effect claimed for it or not, we may fain hope that public opinion in Europe will insist upon giving the "humane" commanders who "mercifully" endeavour to "shorten" war by drastic methods of this sort a severe lesson. A few such treated to the utmost penalties the ordinary criminal law prescribes to the crimes of arson, murder, and robbery would teach them and their like that war, if waged at all nowadays, must be waged decently and not "shortened" by such devices as those in question.

If the present war with all its horrible carnage issues, even if only in the beginning of those changes which some of us believe must necessarily result from it—changes economical, political, and moral—then indeed it will not have been waged in vain. With the great intellectual powers of the Germanic people devoted, not to the organization of military power and of national domination, but to furthering the realization of a higher human society; with the determination on the part of the best elements among every European people to work together internationally with each other, and not least with the new Germany, to this end, and the great European war of 1914 will be looked back upon by future generations as the greatest world-historic example of the proverbial evil out of which good, and a lasting and inestimable good, has come for Europe and the world.