William of Germany

by Stanley Shaw

A similar lesson is taught by the Emperor's speeches. In England the King rarely speaks in public, and then with well-calculated brevity and reserve. In five words he will open a museum and with a sentence unveil a monument. The Emperor's speeches fill four stout volumes—and he is only fifty-four. The speeches deal with every sort of topic, and have been delivered in all parts of the Empire—now to Parliament, now to his assembled generals, now at the celebration of some national or individual jubilee, now at the dedication of a building or the opening of a bridge. The style is always clear and logical, in this respect contrasting favourably with the German style of twenty years ago, when the language wriggled from clause to clause in vermiform articulations until the thought found final expression in a mob of participles and infinitives. Metaphors abound in the speeches, some of them slightly far-fetched, but others of uncommon beauty, appropriateness, and pith. There is no brilliant employment of words, but not seldom one comes across such terse and happy phrases as the famous "We stand under the star of commerce," "Our future lies on the water," "We demand a place in the sun."

On the English reader the speeches will be apt to pall, unless he is thoroughly saturated with Prussian historic, military, and romantic lore and can place himself mentally in the position of the Emperor. The tone, never quite detached from consciousness of the imperial ego, hardly ever descends to the level of familiar conversation nor rises to heights of eloquence that carry away the hearer. With three or four exceptions, there is no argumentation in the speeches, for they are not meant to persuade or convince, but to enjoin and command. They do not contain any of the important and interesting facts and figures of which, nevertheless, the Emperor's mind must be full, and they are wanting in wit and humour, though nature has endowed the Emperor with both.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that they are the speeches of an Emperor, not of a statesman. The speeches have no political timeliness or object save that of rousing and directing imperial spirit among the people by appeals to their imagination and patriotism. Had the Emperor been actuated by the spirit of a Minister or statesman, he would have been far more alive to the fact than he appears to have been, that every word he uttered would instantly find an echo in the Parliament, Press, and Stock Exchange of all other countries.

The Emperor's fundamental mistakes, as disclosed by his speeches, appear to an Englishman to have been in assuming when they were made that the Empire was in a less advanced stage of consolidation and settlement than it in fact was, and in underrating the intelligence, knowledge, and patriotism of his people. From this point of view his early speeches in particular sound jejune or superfluous. What would the Englishman say to a king who began his reign by a series of homilies on Alfred the Great or Elizabeth or Queen Victoria; by using strong language about the Labour party or the Fabian Society; by appeals to throne and altar; by describing to Parliament the chief duties of the monarch; by recommending the London County Council to build plenty of churches; by calling journalists "hunger-candidates"; by frequent references to the battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar? Yet, mutatis mutandis, this is not so very unlike what the young Emperor did, and not for a year or two, but for several years after his accession. To an Englishman such addresses would appear rather ill-timed academic declamation.

Yet there was much, and perhaps is still much, to account for, if not quite justify, the Emperor's rhetoric. The peculiarity of Germany's monarchic system placed, and places, the monarch in a patriarchal position not very different from that of Moses towards the Israelites—a leader, preacher, and prophet. Again, the Empire, when the Emperor came to the throne, was not a homogeneous nation inspired by a centuries-old national spirit, but suffered, as it still in a measure suffers, from the particularism of the various kingdoms and States composing it: in other words, from too local a patriotism and stagnation of the imperial idea. Thirdly, the Empire had no navy, while an Empire to-day without a navy is at a tremendous and dangerous disadvantage in world-politics, and the mere conception that a navy was indispensable had to be created in a country lying in the heart of Europe and with only one short coast-line.

The Englishman is as loyal to his King as the German is to his Emperor, and England, as little as Germany, is disposed to change from monarchy to republicanism. But the Englishman's political and social governor, guide, and executive is not the King, but the Parliament; because while in the King he has a worthy representative of the nation's historical development and dignity, in the Parliament he sees a powerful and immediate reflection of himself, his own wishes, and his own judgments. Moreover, with the spread of democratic ideas, the position of a monarch anywhere in the civilized world to-day is not what it was fifty years ago. The general progress in education since then; the drawing together of the nations by common commercial and financial interests; the incessant activity of writers and publishers; the circulation and power of the Press—themselves almost threatening to become a despotism—such facts as these tend to change the relations between kings and peoples. Monarchs and men are changing places; the ruler becomes the subject, the subject ruler; it is the people who govern, and the monarch obeys the people's will.

Such is not the view of the German Emperor nor of the German people. To both the monarch is no "shadow-king," as both are fond of calling the King of England, but an Emperor of flesh and blood, commissioned to take the leading part in decisions binding on the nation, responsible to no one but the Almighty, and the sole bestower of State honours. There are, it is true, three factors of imperial government constitutionally—the Emperor, the Federal Council, and the Imperial Parliament; but while the Council has only very indirect relations with the people, the Parliament, a consultative body for legislation, is not the depositary of power or authority, or an assembly to which either the Emperor, or the Council, or the Imperial Chancellor is responsible. It must be admitted that, while such is the constitutional theory, the actual practice is to a considerable extent different. The Emperor is no absolute monarch, even in the domain of foreign affairs, as he is often said to be, but is influenced and guided, certainly of late years, both by the Federal Council and by public opinion, the power of which latter has greatly augmented in recent times. Whether the Reichstag really represents public opinion in the Empire is a moot-point in Germany itself. It can hardly be denied that it does so, at least in financial matters, since with regard to them it has all the powers, or almost all, possessed by the English House of Commons in this respect. Where its powers fail, it is said, is in regard to administration; for though it deliberates on and passes legislation, it is left by the Constitution to the Emperor and his Ministers to issue instructions as to how legislation is to be carried into effect. The result is to throw excessive power over public comfort and convenience into the hands of the official class of all degrees, which naturally employs it to maintain its own dignity and privileged position.

Towards one class of the population, and that a highly important and exceptional one, the Emperor's attitude of unprejudiced goodwill has never varied. Israelites form only a small proportion—about 1 per cent.—of the whole people, and are to be found in very large numbers only in Berlin and Frankfurt; but to their financial and commercial ability Germany owes a debt one may almost describe as incalculable. There is a strong national prejudice against them in all parts of the Empire, as there probably is in all countries, and it must be admitted that the manners and customs of the lower-class Jew, his unpleasant and insistent curiosity, his intrusiveness where he is not desired, his want of cleanliness, his sharpness at a bargain, his oily bearing to those he wishes to propitiate and his ruthless sweating of the worker in all fields when in his power, are all disagreeable personal qualities. There is also, as a concomitant of the nation's growth in wealth of every sort, and mostly perhaps to be found in the capital a class of Jewish parvenu, remarkable for snobbishness, ostentation, and affectation.

But one must distinguish; and of a large percentage of the educated class of Jew in Germany it would be difficult to speak too highly. Germans may be the "salt of the earth," as the Emperor once told them they were, but Jewish talent can with quite as much, perhaps more, justice be called the salt of German prosperity. And not alone in the region of finance and commerce. Some of the best intellect, most of the leading enterprise in Germany, in all important directions, is Jewish. Many of her ablest newspaper proprietors and editors are Jews. Many of her finest actors and actresses are Jews and Jewesses. Many of her cleverest lawyers, doctors, and artists are Jews. The career of Herr Albert Ballin, the Jewish director of the Hamburg-Amerika line, the Emperor's friend, to whom Germany owes a great deal of her mercantile marine expansion, is a long romance illustrative of Jewish organizing power and success.

The Emperor's friendship for Herr Ballin is obviously not entirely disinterested, but the interest at the root of it is an imperial one. In this spirit he cultivates to-day, as he has done since he took over the Empire, the society of all his subjects, German or Jew, who either by their talents or through their wealth can contribute to the success of the mighty task which occupies his waking thoughts, and for all one knows, his sleeping thoughts—his dreams—as well. Accordingly, the wealthy German is quite aware that if he is to be reckoned among the Emperor's friends he must be prepared to pay for the privilege, since the Emperor is neither slow nor shy about using his influence in order to make the more fortunate members of the community put their hands deeply into their pockets for national purposes. A little time ago he invited a number of merchant princes and captains of industry, as American papers invariably call wealthy Germans, to a Bier-abend at the palace. When the score or so of guests were seated, he announced that he was collecting subscriptions for some public object—the national airship fund, perhaps—and sent a sheet of paper to Herr Friedlander Fuld, the "coal-king" of Germany, to head the list. Herr Fuld wrote down £5,000, and the paper was taken back to the Emperor. "Oh, this will never do, lieber Fuld," he exclaimed, on seeing the amount. "At this rate people will be putting down their names for £50. You must at least double it." And Herr Fuld had to do so. A few weeks afterwards there was another invitation to the palace, and the same sort of scene took place. A little later still Herr Fuld got a third invitation, and as an imperial invitation is equivalent to a command, he had to go. When he arrived he noticed his fellow-industrials looking uneasy, not to say sad. The Emperor noticed it too, for his first words were: "Dear gentlemen, to-night the beer costs nothing."