People are flattered when a king who is a king unbends to them, but if he looks like a carter they experience no pride in seeing him drive the chariot of State as if it were a cart.
The Court of Bavaria, which had slightly retrieved its former position before 1914, fell between Scylla and Charybdis when the Crown Prince of Bavaria and the Man of Berlin played with the thunderbolts of war. The Wittelsbachs vanished like smoke in the defeat of Prussian ambitions.
They might still have been at Munich if they had furthered legitimate Bavarian ambitions, and judged them from the exclusive point of view of the political and religious needs of their country.
It must be recollected, however, that the German thrones were threatened. Neither the rigid discipline of Berlin, the go-as-you-please rule of Munich, nor the mixed systems which existed between these two extremes could have kept up the anachronism of worn-out forms which the people instinctively rejected by paying more attention year by year to Socialism and Republicanism.
The German kings have vanished. It is not impossible that they may return; if not the same, others, perhaps better qualified to rule. Nations are restricted in their choice as to the methods of government. Monarchy is the form which pleases them, or rather which they tolerate, more often than any other. Monarchy originates from the family principle, which is an eternal principle. The true king is a father. Monarchy may be reborn in Germany and elsewhere, but its powers will be modified and restricted by the times. As it existed in Germany it has been condemned to extinction by reason of its archaism.
The Church alone has the privilege of not becoming obsolete, by the constant return of mankind to an immutable doctrine. Monarchies become obsolete owing to men of the same blood, the same name and the same race who aspire to exist uninfluenced by the constant changes of the conditions of life. When they fall exhausted, then comes the time of the Republic. But because the family principle is the foundation of social existence, and because a Republic favours the individual rather than the family, the Republic in its turn disappears and Monarchy reappears. Such is the way of the world.
Germany would be the first to admit this if she possessed any philosophical sense whatever. It is a popular legend that Germany possesses the philosophical spirit, and nothing is more invincible than a legend. But, as a matter of fact, there is no nation on earth at once more metaphysical and less philosophical than the German nation. Metaphysics alone help her people to dream and to accept these dreams for realities. In no way does it lead them to a condition of wise clear-sightedness.
The German nation has fallen into the pit dug for it by Imperial Prussia. Every Court, important or otherwise, was convinced that Berlin and the Hohenzollerns would be masters of the hour.
Certain showy Monarchies, feeling the pressure of a rather frock-coated Socialism, have tried to accommodate themselves to Social Democracy as Social Democracy adapts itself to them.
Nevertheless, one saw some maintaining their traditional ceremonial undisturbed.