A first-class ticket in Germany is taxed 16 per cent. on the price of the ticket; a second-class ticket, 8 per cent.; a third-class ticket, 4 per cent.; the fourth-class ticket, nothing. Crowded and uncomfortable travelling in Germany is cheap; comfortable travelling in Germany is very dear indeed. The herding of people in the fourth- class carriages in Germany resembles our cattle-cars rather than transportation for human beings. Such conditions would not be tolerated in America, but against these state-owned railways there is no redress. No luggage, except hand luggage, is carried free. Not once, but many times in Germany, my first-class ticket found me no accommodation, and often in changing from the main line to a branch line not even a first-class compartment. Shippers in the coal and iron districts, when I was there, complained bitterly that there were not enough freight-cars, that their complaints were smothered in bureaucratic portfolios, and that private enterprise in the shape of proposals to build new lines was disregarded. The tyranny of Prussia extends even into the railway field. The Oderberg-Wien line was built to avoid using the Saxon state railway lines, was a spite railway in fact. Here again there was no redress, no one to appeal to against the autocrat.
In a debate in the Reichstag, in January, 1913, there was much complaint that the Prussian government was conducting the railways with the least possible outlay, thus saving money for the state, but hampering the industrial interests of the country. It was stated that there were not enough engines or freight-cars, there was an inadequate staff, and that as a consequence, the loss to the coal industry had been $11,500,000 and to the coal-miners $3,375,000.
On the state-owned railways of the west of France the break-down is ludicrously complete, and the people are staggered by the official estimates that it will require at least $100,000,000 to put them in decent running order.
In twenty years the American railways have practically been rebuilt, with heavier rails, better bridges, more permanent stations, and so on; while twenty years ago it cost a passenger 2.165 cents to travel a mile, to-day it costs him 1.916 cents. We need a lot of bustling about abroad before we realize how much we have to be grateful for at home!
Probably the most costly and the most troublesome of Germany’s problems is her conquered provinces: Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-Lorraine, and Poland. Hanover, which was taken by Prussia and her king deposed, is nowadays a minor matter of the relations between courts, individuals, and families, which may be said to be settled by the arranged marriage between the Kaiser’s charming daughter and the heir to the Duke of Cumberland, whose ancestors were kings of Hanover.
The Danes, on the other hand, in the northern part of these provinces, still resist Prussianization. They keep to themselves and their language, send their children to school in Denmark, and resist all attempts at social and racial incorporation. They are troublesome, as an independent and surly daughter-in-law might be troublesome. Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, on the contrary, are outspoken and potentially dangerous foes in Germany’s own household.
In 1872 Bismarck said: “Alsace-Lorraine will be placed on an equality with the other German states, ... so that the people may be induced to forget, in a comparatively short time, the trouble and distress of the war and of annexation.” In 1912, a loyal Alsatian German writes: “Das Elsass, dies jungstgeborene Kind der deutschen Völkerfamilie, braucht etwas mehr Liebe.” Forty years of Prussian rule have not fulfilled the promise of Bismarck. This same Alsatian writer continues: “In short, we are approaching ever nearer to the condition of the citizens of all the other German States, as Baden, Saxony, Bavaria, where they are also not always of one mind with the higher ruling powers.” It is difficult for the American, who, no matter what particular State he lives in, is first of all a citizen of the United States, to understand this jealousy and, in some quarters, bitter dislike of Prussia. If the State of New York had sixty million of our ninety million population, and if the governor of New York were also perpetual President of the United States, commanded the army and navy, controlled the foreign policy, and appointed the cabinet ministers, who were responsible to him alone, we could get an approximate idea of how the people of Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California would feel toward New York. This is a rough-drawn comparison with the situation in Germany. If, in addition, we had the Philippine Islands where Maine is, and Cuba where Texas is, it is easy to recognize the consequent complications.
We should remember this picture in dealing with this German problem, which, at any rate, from the point of view of kindly feeling and successful adoption of these foreign peoples into the German family, has been a dire failure. The miserable failure of the Germans in Southwest Africa, their inconclusive war with the Herreros, and the absolute break-down of Prussian methods with the natives, is scarcely more typical than the failure in Alsace-Lorraine and Poland. The Prussian belief in sand-paper as an emollient must be by now rudely shaken.
At last a constitution has been given the two conquered provinces. The governor is to be advised by a parliament, but the government is not responsible to the parliament, which is composed of two houses. The upper house has thirty-six members, eighteen of whom are nominees of the Emperor and eighteen from the churches, universities, and principal cities. The lower house is to be elected by popular franchise. Three years’ residence in the same place entitles a man to a vote, but every voter over thirty-five years of age has two votes, and every voter over forty-five has three votes.
This, as an American can appreciate, has not been received with enthusiasm, and their conduct has been so provoking that the Emperor, during a recent visit, scolded the people, in an interview with the mayor of a certain town, and, what caused great amusement among the enemies of Prussia, threatened to incorporate them into Prussia, as had been done with Hanover, if they were not better behaved. This, of course, was seized upon as an admission that to be taken into the Prussian family was of all the hardships the most dreadful. The socialist journal Vorwärts spoke of Prussia as “that brutal country which thus openly confesses its dishonor to all the world.” Herr Scheidemann asked in the Reichstag, if Prussia then acknowledged herself to be a sort of house of correction, and “has Prussia, then, become the German Siberia?” In 1911 the Reichstag gave the provinces three votes in the Federal Council.