Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View

by Price Collier

Of course, in every nation its affairs are, and must be, conducted by officials. That is as true of America as of Germany. The fundamental difference is that with us these official persons are executive officers only, the real captain is the people; while in Germany these official persons are the real governors of the people, subject to the commands of one who repeatedly and publicly asserts that his commission is from God and not from the people. This puts whole classes of the community permanently into uniform, and the wearers of these uniforms are almost afraid to laugh, and would consider it sacrilege to romp.

Caution is a very puny form of morality. “He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” It is as true politically as of other spheres of life that “he or she who lets the world or his own portion of it choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.” Thus writes John Stuart Mill, and what else can be said of the political activities of the Germans? What journalist or what patriot indeed can take seriously a majority that has no power? What people can call itself free to whom its rulers are not responsible? The Social Democrats, at the moment of writing, have won one hundred and ten seats in the Reichstag, but the army and navy estimates are beyond their reach, the taxes are fixtures, a constitution is a dream, and if they are cantankerous or truculent the Reichstag will be dismissed by a wave of the hand. Say what one will, they are a mammillary people politically, and the strongest party in the Reichstag is merely an energetic political mangonel. Their leaders moult opinions, they do not mould them, and could not translate them into action if they did.

Not since 1874 has there been a Reichstag so strongly radical, but nothing will come of it. The Reichskanzler, Doctor von Bethmann-Hollweg, did not hesitate to take an early opportunity, after the opening of the new Reichstag, to state boldly that the issue was Authority versus Democratization, and that he had no fear of the result. It is customary for the newly elected Praesidium, the president and two vice-presidents of the Reichstag, to be received in audience by the Emperor. On this occasion the Socialists forbade their representative to go, and the Emperor, therefore, refused to receive any of them. As usual, they played into his hands. Hans bleibt immer Hans, and on this occasion his vulgar hack of good manners only brought contumely upon the whole Reichstag, and left the Emperor as the outstanding dignified figure in the controversy. Such behavior is not calculated to invite confidence, and not likely to induce this enemy-surrounded nation to put its destinies in such hands, not at any rate for some time to come. “Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.”

Intellectually Germany is a republic, and we Americans perhaps beyond all other peoples have profited by her literature, her philosophy, her music, her scientific and economic teaching. We have kneaded these things into our political as well as into our intellectual life. “Intellectual emancipation, if it does not give us at the same time control over ourselves, is poisonous.” And who writes thus? Goethe! But the intellectual freedom of Germany has done next to nothing to bring about political or, in the realm of journalism, personal self-control.

It is a strange state of affairs. Intelligent men and women in Germany do not realize it. Not once, but many times, I have been told: “You foreigners are forever commenting upon our bureaucracy, our officialdom, but it is not as all-powerful as you think. We have plenty of freedom!” These people are often themselves officials, nearly always related to, or of the society, of the ruling class. The rulers and the ruling class have naturally no sense of oppression, no feeling that they are unduly subject to others, since the others are themselves. I am quite willing to believe of my own and of other people’s personal opinions that they are not dogmas merely because they are baptized in intolerance. I must leave it to the reader to judge from the facts, whether or no the Germans have a political autonomy, which permits the exercise and development of political power. A glance at the political parties themselves will make this perhaps the more clear.

The official organization of the conservative party, may be said to date back to the founding of the Neue Preussische Zeitung in 1848, and the organization of the party in many parts of Germany. Earlier still, Burke was the hero of the pioneers of this party, whose first newspaper had for editor, no less a person than Heinrich von Kleist, and whose first endeavors were to support God and the King, and to throw off the yoke of foreign domination.

In 1876 was formed the Deutsch-Konservativ party supporting Bismarck. “Königthum von Gottes Gnaden” is still their watchword, with opposition to Social Democracy, support of imperialism, agrarian and industrial protection, and Christian teaching in the schools, as the planks of their platform. They also combat Jewish influence everywhere, particularly in the schools. Allied to this party is the Bund der Landwirte and the Deutscher Bauernbund. In the election of 1912 they elected forty-five representatives to the Reichstag, a serious falling off from the sixty-three seats held previous to that election. The Free Conservative portion of the Conservative party, is composed of the less autocratic members of the landed nobility, but there is little difference in their point of view.

The Centrum, or Catholic party, is in theory not a religious party; in practice it is, though it does not bar out Protestant members who hold similar views to their own. Its political activity began in 1870, and the first call for the formation of the party came from Reichensperger in the Kölnischer Volkszeitung. The famous leader of the party, and a politician who even held his own against Bismarck, was the Hanoverian Justizminister, Doctor Ludwig Windthorst. The stormy time of the party was from 1873 to 1878, when Bismarck attempted to oppose the growing power of the Catholic Church, and more particularly of the Jesuits. The so-called May laws of that year forbade Roman Catholic intervention in civil affairs; obliged all ministers of religion to pass the higher-schools examinations and to study theology three years at a university; made all seminaries subject to state inspection; and gave fuller protection to those of other creeds. In 1878 Bismarck needed the support of the Centrum party to carry through the new tariff, and the May laws, except that regarding civil marriage, were repealed. The party stands for religious teaching in the primary schools, Christian marriage, federal character of empire, protection, and independence of the state. More than any other party it has kept its representation in the Reichstag at about the same number. In 1903 they cast 1,875,300 votes and had 100 members. In 1907 they had 103 members, and in the last election of 1912 they won 93 seats. Even this Catholic party is now divided. Count Oppersdorff leads the “Only- Catholic” party, against the more liberal section which has its head-quarters at Cologne, where the late Cardinal Fisher was the leader. At the session of the Reichstag in 1913, when the question of the readmission of the Jesuits was raised, the Centrum party even sided with the Socialists in the matter of the expropriation law for Posen, in order to annoy the chancellor for his opposition to themselves. Such political miscegenation as this does not show a high level of faith or of policy.

It may be of interest to the reader to know that in 1903 the population of Germany was 58,629,000, and the number qualified to vote 12,531,000; in 1907 the population was 61,983,000, and the number qualified to vote, 13,353,000; in 1912 the population was 65,407,000, and the qualified voters numbered over 14,000,000, of whom 12,124,503 voted. In 1903 there were 9,496,000 votes cast; in 1907, 11,304,000. The German Reichstag has 397 members, or 1 representative to every 156,000 inhabitants; the United States House of Representatives has 433 members, or 1 for every 212,000 inhabitants; England, 670 members, or 1 for every 62,000; France, 584, or 1 for every 67,000; Italy, 508, or 1 for every 64,000; Austria, 516, or 1 for every 51,000.

Despite the fact that the Conservative and the Catholic parties have much in common, and are the parties of the Right and Centre: these names are given the political parties in the Reichstag according to their grouping on the right, centre, and left of the house, looking from the tribune or speaker’s platform, from which all set speeches are delivered, they are often at odds among themselves, and Bismarck and Bülow brought about tactical differences among them for their own purposes. Their programme may be summed up as “As you were,” which is not inspiring either as an incentive or as a command.