It was whispered, though the correspondence never came to light, that at one period during the past year some sharply-worded notes passed between the German government and our own. What the cause of the sharply-worded notes may have been remains a diplomatic secret. The only thing significant about the matter is that the whisper took shape about a month after the arrest and imprisonment of Archbishop Ledochowski, who had the immortal honor of being the first of the German bishops to surrender the liberty of his person for his faith in this strife. That imprisonment called forth an unanimous condemnation from the American press—not the sectarian press of any creed—that did it honor, and led one to hope that such a thing as principle still existed on the earth, and that genuine homespun American love of liberty was not a meaningless thing.
To the charge of necessary disloyalty to the ecclesiastical laws of Prussia, Catholics will perforce plead guilty—the same Catholics who before the passing of those laws never dreamed of or were accused of disloyalty to the state. Those laws are an insult to the age and to all time. There is not a line of them that does not betray the steel of the executioner, red almost with the blood of his victim. The spirit of Brennus is abroad. The scales of justice show a sadly uneven balance; but the sword of the barbarian tossed in ends all disputes and argument.
Our modern Brennus has struck his blows so rapidly and truly that the world still stares at him in dazed wonder. Success has waited on his footsteps, and men who worship success are not yet sufficiently masters of themselves to measure that success aright. They are afraid to question the actions of a man who seems to strike with the inerrancy of fate. Prince Bismarck had certainly the world on his side; and if the world begins now to fall away from him and recoil, to recover its senses a little, and to question the right and wrong of his actions, he has none but himself to blame.
The signs of the past year tell us that the recoil is beginning to set in. The elections early in the year went against the government. The Catholics gained a large majority on their former number even in Prussia itself. Alsace-Lorraine returned its members simply to protest against annexation, while the socialists were strengthened also. The government still holds a strong majority, it is [pg 564] true; but the falling away from its standard within four years of its mightiest triumphs was so significant of what was likely to ensue should the government persevere in its policy, that the first thing taken into consideration immediately after the elections was the restricting of the franchise to such voters as it was felt would return a safe and sure majority for the government. Next to this came measures for the restriction of the liberty of the press, which by the efforts of the Catholic party were defeated.
The obvious question will force itself on the mind: Why should a government so strong and mighty, so beloved of the people, as we are always assured, tremble at the popular voice and at the criticism of a newspaper? The answer is easy. The army bill followed. The government required a peace-effective voted once for all of four hundred and one thousand men. That army was to stand, and, once the bill was passed, parliament was to have no further voice in the matter, whether in regard to payment of the bills or in regulating the number of men. That was to pass completely out of its hands.
For once even the “blustering majority” did not save the government. The terrible danger of the scheme was obvious. The mere presence of so tremendous a standing army was a standing menace not only to the country and its liberties, but to its neighbors. It did not breathe the spirit of peace and rest in the government, and of proper regard for a country already worn and disturbed by three harassing wars occurring in quick succession; while the taking out of the hands of the Houses the control over so large an item of the public funds as was embraced in the bill, was a blow at their privileges to which not even faith in absolutism could blind them. A storm was at once raised. The government staked its existence on the measure. Marshal Moltke rose up in the House, and made a speech in defence of it that will be remembered. He spoke of the alarm caused by Germany to its neighbors. He told them that what they had gained in a few months it would take them fifty years to keep and secure. It was necessary that, though they might not draw the sword, their hand should be for ever on the hilt. He assured them that, after all, wars undertaken and carried through by regular armies were the swiftest and therefore the cheapest. An important consideration that last. As a final argument the veteran told them that “a standing army was a necessity of the times, and he could not but ask the House to devote the figure of four hundred and one thousand rank-and-file as a peace-footing once for all.” A peace-footing! But even the marshal's seductive eloquence could not move them.
Prince Bismarck fell sick and retired to Varzin. The Emperor's birthday came round, and the generals of his empire came to congratulate him. He assured them that he would dissolve parliament rather than alter the bill. But his imperial majesty forgot that there were more kingdoms than Prussia concerned in his measures now, and that the dissolution that once before served the King of Prussia sufficiently well might, in the disturbed state of affairs, prove a dangerous experiment to the Emperor of Germany. Finally, as is known, somewhat better counsels prevailed, and a compromise was effected, which limited the figure to three hundred and eighty-five thousand men for seven years. This was a severe check to the government, while it was a lesson to the people to distrust rulers who, in the light of their own schemes, considered the empire as a mere instrument, forgetting wholly that they were for the empire, not the empire for them.
There are many matters in the internal history of Germany during the past year that deserve to be dwelt upon particularly and at length, but a few of which only can be glanced at here. The desire to expand and strengthen itself abroad is natural, and it is strange that the government organs should be so anxious to disavow so praiseworthy an object, provided the motives that urge it are good. It is strange, at the same time, to see how it continues its repressive emigration laws; how anxious so mighty an empire is to keep all its children at home, where they may be serviceable in the Landsturm; and how anxious those children are to get away and come out to us here, leaving behind them and surrendering forever all the glory and the promise of the newly-founded empire. It is strange, also, to note to what little tricks so great a government can descend in its self-imposed conflict with its Catholic subjects; as, for instance, the forged Papal decree respecting the future election of the Sovereign Pontiff that found its way into the columns [pg 565] of the Cologne Gazette at so opportune a moment as the eve of the German elections. Simultaneously with its appearance we were reminded of the significant declaration of Prince Bismarck in the German parliament, June 9, 1873: “If the message is brought to us that a new Pope has been elected, we shall certainly be entitled to investigate whether he has been duly, properly, and legitimately elected”; that is to say, whether the veto of the head of the Holy Roman Empire—who of course is the Emperor William—and of the other powers possessing a veto whom the German government might influence, has been exercised. “Only if we are satisfied on these heads will he be able to claim in Germany the rights belonging to a Roman Pope.”
Out of consideration for Prince Bismarck we pass over those fierce parliamentary storms where his keen opponents, Von Windthorst and Von Mallinkrodt, twitted the Chancellor himself with having been actually guilty of the disloyalty to Prussia and the German soil which he falsely attributed to the Catholics. The prince, amid thunders of applause, charged them with malicious lying; but the charge, though momentarily effective, was not a happy one, as the disclosures of Gen. Della Marmora subsequently showed. Italy was threatened in consequence of Della Marmora's indiscretion, but the threat proved ineffectual. The general said his say, and the lie was stamped on its author. Prince Bismarck's popularity was on the wane, if not in Germany itself, certainly in a very large circle outside of Germany where he had hitherto been worshipped as one who with some justice described himself as “the best-hated man in Europe.” Then, fortunately for himself, as fortunately as a scene in a drama, came the Deus ex machinâ in the pistol of Kullmann to relieve him from his momentary misfortunes. Prince Bismarck was not the man to miss so fine an opportunity of turning to account the insane attempt of the son of a madman on his life, and we were flooded with the time-honored taunts of means to ends because a man of notoriously bad and violent character, who happened to have been present at some Catholic meetings, committed the wicked and utterly unjustifiable act of firing a pistol at the Chancellor. There are some two hundred million Catholics in the world; there are in Germany fourteen or fifteen, in Prussia alone eight millions, of the same creed. Of all these millions one man, of wicked antecedents and insane descent, is found to commit an act abhorrent to the Catholic conscience all the world over, and at once the universal conscience of that mighty multitude is with a benignant generosity centred in the person of this wretch, who, whether, as many believed, a dupe of the government tools or a dupe of his own disordered intellect, was equally a wretch. Why not turn the argument the other way? Why not wonder at the sublime patience of the people who see the sacred persons of their bishops and priests dragged from the altar-steps, stripped of their goods, and buried in fortresses, for the crime of violating laws that were made to be violated, without moving a hand to prevent such constant outrages, because the teachings of those disloyal priests and bishops, of that arch-foe to German nationality, the Pope, never cease to forbid armed resistance to the most oppressive laws that were ever framed? Two or three officials have been sent alone among a vast multitude of Catholics to drag before their very eyes the priest whose Mass they have just attended, from the altar of Christ to a prison—for what possible purpose but to provoke bloodshed and insurrection? Happily, the people were still by the efforts of the clergy restrained from putting themselves at the mercy of a government that knows no mercy; but who shall say how long that patience will endure? And this is the government whose sole aim is the unity and consolidation of Germany and the happiness of every section of its people!
As the Von Arnim case is still pending, it is useless to conjecture what the documents may contain whose possession prompted Prince Bismarck to arrest and confine in a common prison the man who next after himself stood the foremost in the German nation. The arrest to the world at large showed more forcibly than anything that has yet taken place to what lengths the chief of the Prussian government can go; how easily he can trample under foot every tradition of civilization and every feeling of humanity to crush a foe or sweep from his path a possible danger to himself. It is probable that the documents turn chiefly on his foreign policy, and would stamp in indelible characters that policy, which it needs no [pg 566] writing to tell us threatens not only the church, but the peace of Europe, and, through Europe, of the world, perhaps for centuries to come. Such disclosures would in the eyes of outraged Germany and Europe necessitate his deprivation of a power he has so fatally abused.