CHAPTER X
THE LITTLE KAISERS
As the king idea seems inseparably connected with war there is no country in the world where kings and princes have been held in such great account as in the Central Empires.
I believe there are only two Christian kings in the world—the kings of Italy and of Montenegro—who are not by blood related to some German or Austrian royalty.
For remember that while we think of Germany as ruled by the Kaiser and while it is his will that is certainly imposed upon the whole of that territory which does not exist politically or even geographically but which we call Germany, there are houses of royalty in it almost as numerous as our big corporations. There are the three kings of Bavaria, Würtemburg and Saxony, grand dukes and dukes, and princes, all of them taking themselves very seriously and all of them residing in their own domains; jealously keeping away from the Emperor's court and jealously guarding every remnant of rule which the constitution of the German Empire has bequeathed to them.
Once I asked one of these princelings what his older brother, the reigning prince, did with his time in the small provincial town which is the capital of the principality. The brother looked at me with real surprise in his eyes and answered, "Why he reigns!"
Before the constitution of the German Empire, many of these poverty-stricken little courts were centres of kindly amusement, even of intellectual life.
The court of the Grand Duke Charles-Augustus, of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach at Weimar where Goethe resided and where he was entrusted with responsible state duties, was renowned in Europe as a literary centre.
Many of these princelings, however ridiculous their courts may have seemed, exercised despotic power. To-day the inhabitants of the two Mecklenburg duchies are protected by neither constitution nor bill of rights. The grand duke's power is absolute and he can behead at will any one of his subjects in the market-place or torture him to death in the dungeons of the castle and is responsible to God alone.