The German Emperor is not of that class. He loves his job. In his first proclamation to his people he declared that he had taken over the government “in the presence of the King of kings, promising God to be a just and merciful prince, cultivating piety and the fear of God.” He has proclaimed himself to be, as did Frederick the Great and his grandfather before him, the servant of his people. Certainly no one in the German Empire works harder, and what is far more difficult and far more self-denying, no one keeps himself fitter for his duties than he. He eats no red meat, drinks almost no alcohol, smokes very little, takes a very light meal at night, goes to bed early and gets up early. He rides, walks, shoots, plays tennis, and is as much in the open air as his duties permit.
It is not easy for the American to put side by side the attitudes of a man, who is the autocratic master and at the same time declares himself to be the first servant of his people. Perhaps if it is phrased differently it will not seem so contradictory. What this Emperor means, and what all princes who have believed in their right to rule meant, was not that they were the servants of their people, but the servants of their own obligations to their people, and of the duties that followed therefrom. If in addition to this the claim is made by the sovereign, that his right to rule is of divine origin, then his service to his obligations becomes of the highest and most sacred importance.
We should not allow our democratic prejudices to stifle our understanding in such matters. We are trying to get clearly in perspective a ruler, who claims to rule in obedience to no mandates from the people, but in obedience to God. We could not be ruled by such a one in America; and in England such a ruler would be deemed unconstitutional. It is elementary, but necessary to repeat, that we are writing of Germany and the Germans, and of their history, traditions, and political methods. We are making no defence of either the German Emperor or the German people; neither are we occupying an American pulpit to preach to them the superiority of other methods than their own. My sole task is to make clear the German situation, and not by any means to set up my own or my countrymen’s standards for their adoption. I am not searching for that paltry and ephemeral profit that comes from finding opportunities to laugh or to sneer. I am seeking for the German successes, and they are many, and for the reasons for them, and for the lessons that we may learn from them. Any other aim in writing of another people is ignoble.
This attitude of the ruler will be as incomprehensible to the democratic citizen as alchemy, but, in order to draw anything like true inferences or useful deductions, in order to understand the situation and to get a true likeness of the ruler, one must take this utterly unfamiliar and to us incomprehensible claim into consideration, and acknowledge its existence whether we admit the claim as justifiable or not. The relation of such a ruler to his people is like that of a Catholic bishop to his flock. The contract is not one made with hands, but is an inalienable right on the one hand, and an undisseverable tie upon the other. Bismarck wrote on this subject: “Für mich sind die Worte, ‘von Gottes Gnaden,’ welche christliche Herrscher ihrem Namen beifügen, kein leerer Schall, sondern ich sehe darin das Bekenntniss, des Fürsten das Scepter was ihnen Gott verliehen hat, nur nach Gottes Willen auf Erden führen wollen.”
On several occasions the German Emperor has made it unmistakably clear that this is his view of the origin and sanctity of his responsibilities. “If we have been able to accomplish what has been accomplished, it is due above all things to the fact that our house possesses a tradition by virtue of which we consider that we have been appointed by God to preserve and direct, for their own welfare, the people over whom he has given us power.” These words are from a speech made in 1897 at Bremen. In 1910, at Königsberg, he declares: “It was in this spot that my grandfather in his own right placed the royal crown of Prussia upon his head, insisting once again that it was bestowed upon him by the grace of God alone, and not by parliaments and meetings and decisions of the people. He thus regarded himself as the chosen instrument of heaven, and as such carried out his duties as a ruler and lord. I consider myself such an instrument of heaven, and shall go my way without regard to the views and opinions of the day.”
Prince Henry of Prussia, the popular, and deservedly popular, sailor brother of the Emperor, has signified his entire allegiance to this doctrine by saying that he was actuated by one single motive: “a desire to proclaim to the nations the gospel of your Majesty’s sacred person, and to preach that gospel alike to those who will listen and to those who will not.”
This language has a strange and far-away sound to us. It is as though one should come into the market-place with the bannered pomp of Milton’s prose upon his lips. The vicious would think it a trick, the idle would look upon it as a heavy form of joking, the intelligent would see in it a superstition, or a dream of knighthood that has faded into unrecognizable dimness. Some men, on the other hand, might wish that all rulers and governors whatsoever were equally touched with the sanctity of their obligations.
It is somewhat strange in this connection to remember, that we all wish to have our wives and daughters believers; that we all wish to bind to us those whom we love with more sacred bonds than those which we ourselves can supply. We are none of us loath to have those who keep our treasures, believe in some code higher than that of “honesty is the best policy.” As Archbishop Whately said: “Honesty is the best policy, but he who is honest for that reason is not an honest man.”
Far be it from me to appear as an advocate of the divine right of kings; but I am no fit person for this particular task if I have only a sniff, or a guffaw, as an explanation of another’s beliefs. History sparkles with the lives of men and women, who proclaimed themselves messengers and servants of God, obedient to him first, and utterly and courageously negligent of that feline commodity, public opinion. Every man, even to-day,
“Who each for the joy of the working, and each in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are,”