 |
[Footnote 1: Expansion of England, p. 59.]
It is obvious therefore that the attempt of the diplomatists in 1814 to ignore both historical and religious differences and to combine Holland and Belgium into a single State was doomed at the outset. Fifteen years of constant friction were followed in 1830 by a rising in Brussels against "Dutch supremacy," which quickly spread to the rest of Belgium. The Great Powers, recognising the inevitable, interfered on behalf of Belgium, she was declared a neutral State, separate from Holland, and took to herself a king in the person of Leopold I. It is, however, highly significant that directly the Dutch menace was removed from Belgium the internal cleavage of nationality began to be felt. "In 1815 the differences between Flemish and Walloon were to a large extent concealed beneath a veneer of French culture and French manners. Among the upper and commercial classes no language but French was ever spoken; and in their dislike of Dutch supremacy the Flemish Belgians took a sort of patriotic pride in their borrowed speech, and for a time relegated their native tongue to the level of a rustic patois."[1] And yet, on the other hand, "the separation of Belgium from Holland had no sooner taken place than the newly aroused national spirit began to show itself among the Flemish-speaking part of the people by a revival of interest in their ancestral Teutonic language.... King William I.'s attempt to make Dutch the official language had met with universal opposition; but as early as 1840 a demand was put forward for the use of the Flemish tongue (which is closely akin to the Dutch) on equal terms with French in the Legislature, the Law Courts, and the Army. As the years passed by, the movement gathered ever-increasing numbers of adherents, and the demand was repeated with growing insistence."[2] In 1897 the Flemish party attained its ambition, and Flemish became the official language of the country, side by side with French. The remarkable thing about this Teutonising movement is that its mainstay has always been the extreme Catholic party, which on religious grounds had been the most violent opponent of the attempted Teutonification by the Dutch. The opposition between Flemish and Walloon, indeed, became so marked in recent years that many feared that the Belgian nation was about to split into two. Germany has, however, postponed this national calamity for generations if not for ever, and the Belgium which arises like a phoenix from the ashes of this third attempt at Teutonification will, we cannot doubt, be a Belgium indissolubly knit together by common memories of a glorious struggle for freedom and cemented by the blood and tears of the whole population. Germany, like Napoleon a century ago, will call many nations into being; the first and not the least of her creations is a transfigured and united Belgium.
[Footnote 1: Cambridge Modern History, vol. x. p. 521.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid. vol. xi. p. 693.]
As a frontier State, a link between the Latin and Teutonic races to both of which her peoples are akin, Belgium offers an extremely interesting study of the national idea at work. The peoples of Germany and France, which have been perpetually at war with each other since the times of Julius Caesar, have almost always met on her fair and prosperous plains to fight their battles, since she is geographically the gateway from one to the other. Neither could afford to let the other occupy her territory, and so she has won her independence as a State; both have constantly threatened her existence in times past, and so have forced upon her bi-lingual population that consciousness of common interests which if strong enough may become as firm a basis for national unity as actual community of nationality.
It should be noticed further that it has become the practice in recent times to guarantee the neutrality of small frontier States like Belgium which lie at the mercy of their greater neighbours, a practice intended not only to preserve the integrity of such States but also to prevent the frequent occurrence of war by closing, as it were, the military gate between the hostile countries.[1] It remains to be seen whether the violation of these principles by Germany has the effect of strengthening them in the future, rather than the reverse. In any case, we may expect to see attempts to apply the same principles to other parts of Europe. Already the northern and southern ends of the frontier between Germany and France are neutralised by the existence of Belgium and Switzerland; why, it may be asked, should not the whole frontier be treated in the same way by neutralising the disputed territory of Alsace-Lorraine? Perhaps, too, a neutral Poland would form a useful buffer between Germany and Russia. Such neutralisation, it should be noted, need not necessarily carry with it independence. Poland and Alsace-Lorraine might form part of Russia and France respectively, and still be neutralised by a guarantee of other powers. A precedent exists for this in the terms of the cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece in 1864, while Savoy, though a province of France, is technically neutralised territory.[2] Cases like these, however, it must be admitted, are extremely anomalous and could hardly stand the strain of a serious war. But, then, as recent experience has shown us, not even independent neutralised States are safe when all Europe is aflame. The truth is that the whole conception of neutrality implies the existence of some power above and beyond the State, it may be simply a group of powerful States who are able to impose their will upon the rest of Europe, it may be a general Congress, like the Congress of Vienna. Since the Concert of Europe disappeared and gradually gave place to the two opposing alliances of great powers, there has been no such authority in the civilised world. The results are before us in the ruined cities and starving population of violated Belgium.
[Footnote 1: The neutralisation of sovereign States is very recent in origin. Switzerland and Luxembourg are the only other instances. The former was neutralised in 1815, the latter in 1867.]
[Footnote 2: Cambridge Modern History, xi. 642. See for the whole question of neutralised States, Lawrence, Principles of International Law, Sec.Sec. 246-248.]
As independent States, therefore, small nations can only survive, in the long run, if their neutrality is permanently guaranteed by some international authority, which is itself permanently capable of enforcing its decrees upon recalcitrant States. Sovereignty and independence, however, are not, as we have seen, essential to full nationhood, provided the nation possesses a certain amount of "home-rule" and regards the government under which it lives as a true expression of its genius and will. For example, from 1809 till the setting in of Russian reaction in 1899, the Finnish nation enjoyed all the privileges of complete nationhood except actual sovereignty. There is, therefore, a future for small nations, either as autonomous proteges of great powers, like Russia, or as partners in some commonwealth of nations, like the British Empire.
But there is yet another consideration to be faced. Why, it is asked, should we trouble ourselves about the preservation of small nationalities at all? "The State is power," and it is only the really powerful State, therefore, that can and ought to survive. There is something laughable in the idea of a small State; it is weakness trying to pose as strength. And as for nations which have lost their independence and have bowed to the yoke of the conqueror, their fate is incorporation. How can they hope or expect to retain their separate existence and their peculiar culture when they have surrendered the power upon which these privileges depend? "No nation can permit the Jews to have a double nationality"; and the same applies to Poles, Finns, Alsatians, Irishmen, and Belgians.[1] This is the point of view of Bernhardi, Treitschke, and the German Government. This is the theory which is said to justify the practice of Prussianisation, Russianisation, Magyarisation, and so on. It raises the whole question of the value and significance to civilisation of the existence of small nations. Treitschke, of course, and his school are convinced that they possess neither value nor significance. In small States there is developed that beggarly frame of mind which judges the State by the taxes that it raises; there is completely lacking in small States the ability of the great State to be just; all real masterpieces of poetry and art arose upon the soil of great nationalities—such are a few of Treitschke's dogmatic utterances on this subject.[2] But it is not merely the Germans who think small beer of small nationalities. Listen to Sir John Seeley: "The question whether large states or small states are best is not one which can be answered or ought to be discussed absolutely. We often hear abstract panegyrics upon the happiness of small states. But observe that a small state among small states is one thing, and a small state among large states quite another. Nothing is more delightful to read of than the bright days of Athens and Florence, but those bright days lasted only so long as the states with which Athens and Florence had to do were states on a similar scale of magnitude. Both states sank at once as soon as large country states of consolidated strength grew up in their neighbourhood. The lustre of Athens grew pale as soon as Macedonia arose, and Charles V. speedily brought to an end the great days of Florence. Now if it be true that a larger type of state than any hitherto known is springing up in the world, is not this a serious consideration for those states which rise only to the old level of magnitude?"[3] The answer to which is, "Yes, indeed, if the good old plan That he should take who has the power, And he should keep who can
is to be the guiding principle in European politics of the future." But surely Sir John Seeley's argument, though undoubtedly telling as regards the sovereign independence of small States, tells for and not against the preservation of small nations. Was it to the interest of the world as a whole that Athens and Florence should be crushed? Is it not true, in spite of Treitschke, that the great things of earth have been the product of small peoples? We owe our conceptions of law to a city called Rome, our finest output of literature and art to small communities like Athens, Florence, Holland, and Elizabethan England, our religion to an insignificant people who inhabited a narrow strip of land in the Eastern Mediterranean. And small nations are as valuable to the world to-day as they have ever been. Denmark has enriched our educational experience by the establishment of her famous high schools, which we can hardly imagine her doing had she been a province of Prussia; Norway has given us the greatest of modern dramatists, Henrik Ibsen; and Belgium has not only produced Maeterlinck and Verhaeren, but is industrially the most highly developed country on the continent. The world cannot afford to do without her small peoples, who must be either independent or autonomous if they are to find adequate expression for their national genius, if they are to obtain proper conditions in which "to live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of all." Can we guarantee to them this freedom? That is one of the great questions which this war will settle.[4]
[Footnote 1: See Selections from Treitschke, translated by A.L. Gowans, pp. 17-20, 58-61.]
[Footnote 2: See Selections from Treitschke, pp. 17-20, 58-61.]
[Footnote 3: The Expansion of England, p. 349. See also p. 1, "Some countries, such as Holland and Sweden, might pardonably regard their history as in a manner wound up."]
[Footnote 4: See J.M. Robertson, Introduction to English Politics, pp. 251-390; Mr. H.A.L. Fisher's pamphlet on The Value of Small States, in which, however, the distinction between states and nations is not made clear; and the article on "Nationalism and Liberalism" in The Round Table, December 1914.]
Sec.5. The National Idea in Italy: The Ideal Type.—Let us now turn to Italy, a country which has in the past been as much of a European Tom Tiddler's ground as Belgium, though for rather different reasons. Italy is inhabited by a race speaking a common language and observing a common religion, she has historical memories as glorious as those of any other country in the world, and her natural boundaries are almost as well-defined as those of Great Britain; yet it was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that she managed to become a nation. The chief reason why she remained a "geographical expression" long after England, France, and Spain had acquired national unity was the fact that she was until comparatively recent times an example of the less containing the greater. Throughout the Middle Ages she was a suburb, not a country. Rome was the capital of the world, Italy only its environs. Moreover, since all roads lead to Rome, and the lord of Rome was the master of Europe, the roads Romeward were worn by the tramp of the armies of all nations. Thus Italy was constantly subject to invasion, and the state-systems with which the Congress of Vienna resaddled her in 1814 were little more than relics of past military occupations of her soil by foreign armies. The main problem, therefore, in the making of modern Italy was how to get rid of the heavy burden of the past, how to deal with Rome and all that Rome stood for.
The problem would have been insoluble had not the prestige of Rome declined considerably since the Middle Ages, a prestige which sprang from the fact that she was the capital of two Empires—the spiritual Empire of the Papacy, and the secular Empire founded by Charles the Great. The former had suffered from the Reformation and the rise of the great Protestant nations, the latter had been growing feebler and feebler for centuries, until it was abolished as an institution by Napoleon. Yet Italy in 1814 still lay helpless and divided at the feet of Rome. The Pope held under his immediate sway a large zigzag-shaped territory running across the centre from sea to sea, and, as spiritual leader of half Europe, he could at any moment summon to his assistance the Catholic chivalry of the world. "The Roman emperor" no longer existed, but "the Austrian emperor" was another title for the same man, holding much the same territory; and the fact that he had renounced his vague suzerainty over the rest of Europe did not prevent him exercising a very real suzerainty in Italy, not merely over the eastern half of the Lombard Plain which definitely belonged to Austria, but also over the other States of the peninsula which were, in theory at least, independent. The kingdom of the two Sicilies in the South, the grand duchy of Tuscany on the West, and the smaller duchies of Parma, Modena, and Lucca were only stable in so far as Austria bolstered up their corrupt and unpopular governments. Even the Papal States themselves, equally undermined with corruption and unpopularity, ultimately rested upon the same support. Thus Austria represented for Italy all that evil past of which she wanted to be rid: the foreign yoke against which her newly conscious spirit of nationality revolted, the dynastic frontiers which were abhorrent to her desire for unity, the absolute regime under which her soul, after feeding on the principles of the French Revolution, lay gagged and bound. The first step to be taken towards the creation of Italy was the expulsion of the Austrians.
This fact in itself purified the struggle for Italian freedom and raised Italian nationalism to heights of nobility and heroism almost unparalleled in history. The nation had not merely to be unified, but delivered, and delivered from the oppression of that power which was the mainstay of reaction in Europe. Nor was it simply a question of national freedom; Austria had declared war upon individual and constitutional liberty also, and used all her power to suppress them wherever they dared to raise their head. From beginning to end of her fight for national existence, Italy never forgot that she was also fighting for individual liberty, or ceased to be conscious that the downfall of Austria in Italy would mean the downfall of reaction in Europe. The banner which Mazzini raised in 1831 had the words "Unity and Independence" on the one side and "Liberty, Equality, and Humanity" on the other. Italy was indeed greatly blessed, inasmuch as in seeking her own deliverance she could not help bursting the bands of brass which bound the whole world in captivity.
It is not possible here to tell the glorious story of the resurrection of Italy, or even to say anything of the three heroes at whose hands she received her freedom—Cavour who gave her the service of his brain, Mazzini who devoted to her the love and passion of his great heart, and Garibaldi who fought for her with the strength of his own right arm. It must suffice to indicate very briefly the various stages in the development of her national idea, and the manner in which she finally realised it. Liberal principles took root in Italy at the time of the French Revolution, and the first glimmerings of nationalism were due to Napoleon, who bundled the princes out of the peninsula and even for a time exiled the Pope himself. But it was constitutional rather than national freedom which seemed most urgent to the generation which succeeded Napoleon. The Carbonari, as the early Italian revolutionaries were called, confined themselves almost entirely to the demand for a constitution in the various existing States, and though they eagerly desired the expulsion of Austria, they did so not because she prevented Italian unity, but because she forbade political reform. Their risings, therefore, local and disunited in character, were bound to fail; the first fifteen years after the Congress of Vienna were occupied by a series of attempts to substitute a constitutional for an absolute regime in different parts of Italy, attempts which Austria crushed with a heavy hand.
The period which followed, 1830-1848, belongs to Mazzini and his "Young Italy" party. His task was to fire Italy for the first time with the ideal of national unity and independence. The conception of unity was a difficult one for Italians to grasp; all history seemed to fight against it. There were, for example, not only the traditions connected with Rome to be reckoned with, but there was also the difference between north and south, and, perhaps most important of all, the local spirit of independence associated with the great cities like Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples, etc. Thus, over against Mazzini's ideal of a single unified State there arose the counter-ideal of a federal system. In this, however, later events proved Mazzini to be right. Where he failed in foresight was in regard to the constitutional character of the State he dreamed of. He wished not only to abolish all existing frontiers in Italy, but to do away with all existing state-systems. The only Italy he could conceive was a republic, and Italy was not ripe for a republic, which was, for the rest, a form of government too much bound up with the disruptive traditions of the City-States to be acceptable.[1] But if Italy was not to be a republic, she must be a monarchy, and where could she find a prince to put at the head of her united State? Clearly, she would accept no one who was not the declared enemy of Austria and the declared friend of constitutional reform. For a month or so in 1846 it seemed that the Pope himself might be prevailed upon to undertake the role; and the elevation of Pius IX. to the Chair of St. Peter was greeted with wild enthusiasm in Italy because he was believed to be a Liberal. These hopes proved illusory, however, and so the eyes of all patriots turned more and more in the direction of Piedmont.
[Footnote 1: It is noticeable that Greece also played with the idea of a republic at first and eventually selected a monarchical form of government. As a matter of fact, not a single nation-State, formed in Europe since the Congress of Vienna, has adopted the republican principle.]
This principality, which was part of the kingdom of Sardinia, ruled over by the semi-French house of Savoy, shared the northern plain of Italy with Austria, and at first showed neither anti-Austrian nor Liberal proclivities. Victor Emmanuel came back smiling in 1814, saying that he had been asleep for fifteen years; the old regime was restored as though the Revolution had never been; and a rising of the Carbonari in 1821 was suppressed with the aid of Austrian troops. But in 1831 a king, Charles Albert, came to the throne, who realised that it was the mission of his house to drive the Austrians from Italy, and who was enlightened enough to begin to institute reforms, as unostentatiously as possible, so as not to attract the unwelcome attention of Vienna. Then came the great outburst of 1848, which was the culmination of Mazzini's propaganda for the past sixteen years. At first all went well. The Austrian army was almost expelled from the peninsula; constitutions were granted in Rome, Naples, Tuscany, and Piedmont; Venice and Rome declared themselves republics. But no real scheme for all Italy emerged; the Mazzinians were heroic but unpractical; and next year Austria returned once more, dealt as before piecemeal with the revolted provinces, and finally crushed the hopes of Italy again at the battle of Novara. Yet all was not lost. The republican dreams of Mazzini were, it is true, at an end. But Piedmont had stepped into Mazzini's shoes; she had championed the cause of freedom against Austria; and, when the latter reasserted her sway, she alone of the various States refused to abrogate the newly-acquired constitution.
Thus began the third period in the emancipation of Italy, the period of Cavour, who became head of the Piedmontese cabinet in 1850. His aim was first to make Piedmont the model State and champion of all Italy. He believed fervently in liberty—"Italy," he said, "must make herself by means of liberty, or we must give up trying to make her"—and he was at the same time one of the ablest and most practical statesmen who have ever guided the destinies of a nation. In ten years he made the State of the north-west an oasis of freedom and good government which attracted the best intellects of Italy to its service, and henceforth Piedmont became the centre of Italian aspirations. A new propaganda movement was set on foot, called the National Society, which rejected both federalism and republicanism and declared in favour of a united Italy under the crown of Victor Emmanuel of Savoy; and when the chance of French support came in 1858, Cavour felt it was time to act. This time the end crowned the work. Austria was deprived of everything but Venice; Tuscany and Romagna declared for incorporation by plebiscite; Garibaldi conquered Sicily and the south; and by the end of 1860 the King of Sardinia was king of practically the whole of Italy. All that still remained to be won was Venice, which Austria ceded in 1866; Rome, which the French had occupied in the name of the Pope, and were forced to evacuate in 1870; and the Italia Irredenta of to-day, viz. the Trentino, Trieste, and Istria, which may be recovered as a result of the present war. It is worthy of note also that the trans-Alpine provinces, Savoy and Nice, which had been part of the dominions of the Sardinian kingdom, were ceded to France in 1858-1859 as a return for her aid, thus rounding off the western frontier of the new kingdom of Italy so as to correspond fairly closely with the boundary of nationality.
The foundation of modern Italy shows us the "national idea" at its best; it was accomplished by noble means and by noble minds; and the latter, in their perpetual struggle against the forces of reaction, were never allowed to forget the claims of individual as well as of national freedom. Three tests of true nationhood, it will be remembered, were suggested at the beginning of this chapter: a state-frontier co-extensive with the nationality-frontier, a unitary state-system, and a form of government recognised by the inhabitants as an expression of their general will. Italy fulfils all these conditions; for, though the first has not yet been perfectly realised as regards Italia Irredenta, the exception is after all a trifling one. Thus the development of the national idea in Italy is almost a model of what such a development should be, and we have dwelt somewhat at length upon it for that very reason. The work of Mazzini and Cavour provides us with a standard of comparison which should be found very useful in dealing with the national idea in other countries.
Sec.6. The National Idea in Germany: a Case of Arrested Development.[1]—Nothing, for example, could be more instructive, both as a study in nationalism and as an aid to the understanding of the present situation in Europe, than a comparison between the making of modern Italy and the making of modern Germany. At first sight the German Empire, with its marvellous progress, its vast resources, and its world-wide ambitions, would appear to be an even more successful example of national development than the kingdom of Italy. Its demand for "a place in the sun," its hustling diplomacy, its military spirit, its obvious intention to expand territorially, if not in Europe itself then in Asia or Africa, are all taken as symptoms of this success. No doubt there is a certain amount of truth in this view. The truculence of German foreign policy is to be partly attributed to that form of swollen self-consciousness and self-complacency to which all nations are subject more or less, and which is most likely, one would suppose, to be found in countries where a nationality had recently succeeded in making itself into a nation. The natural instinct to regard one's own nation as the peculiar people of God and to look down on other nations as "lesser breeds without the law" is a phenomenon which must be constantly reckoned with in any comprehensive treatment of nationalism. Every nation has its own variety of it; in England it is Jingoism, in France Chauvinism, in Italy Irredentism, in Russia Pan-Slavism, and so on. These are instances of over-development of the national idea, due either to some confusion between race and nationality, or to simple national megalomania, which usually subsides after a healthy humiliation, such as we suffered in England, for example, in the Boer War or as Russia suffered in her struggle with the Japanese.
[Footnote 1: The student is advised to read the chapter on Germany before beginning this section.]
Yet a careful examination of the German body-politic will reveal symptoms unlike those to be found in any other nation. German nationalism is over-developed in one direction because it is under-developed and imperfect in other directions. Apply our three tests to the German nation, and it will be found to fail in them all. National boundary and State frontier do not coincide because there are still some twelve million Germans living outside Germany, in Austria-Hungary;[1] Germany is a State, but not a unitary State, for she still retains the obsolete "particularism" of the eighteenth century, with its petty princes and dynastic frontiers; and lastly, the government of Germany cannot claim to express the general will, while more than a third of the voters in the empire are sworn to overthrow the whole system at the earliest opportunity. The German nation, in fact, is suffering from some form of arrested development, and arrested development, as the criminologists tell us, is almost invariably accompanied by morbid psychology. That Germany at the present moment, and for some time past, has been the victim of a morbid state of mind, few impartial observers will deny. It has, however, not been so generally recognised that this disease—for it is nothing less—is due not to any national depravity but to constitutional and structural defects, which are themselves the result of an unfortunate series of historical accidents. Let us look a little closer into this matter, considering the three defects in German nationalism one by one, and using the story of Italy as an aid to our investigation.
[Footnote 1: There are also Germans living in Switzerland, the Baltic Provinces of Russia, and the United States of America; but these may be regarded as lost to the German nation as the French Canadians are lost to France.]
First, then, why was it that, while the unification of Italy led to the inclusion of the whole Italian nationality within the State frontiers, with the trifling exceptions above referred to, the unification of Germany was only brought about, or even made possible, by the exclusion of a large section of the nationality? Germany, like Italy, was hampered by traditions inherited from the mediaeval Roman Empire, represented by an ancient capital which stood in the path of unity. Why was it that, while Italy could not and would not do without Rome, Germany was compelled to surrender Vienna and to exclude Austria? The answer is: because the unification of Germany was only possible through the instrumentality of Prussia, which would not brook the rivalry of Austria, and therefore the latter had to go. The problem of the making of Germany as it presented itself to the mind of Bismarck was first of all a problem as to which should be supreme in Germany, Prussia or Austria; in other words Bismarck cared more for the aggrandisement of Prussia than for the unity of Germany.[1] To the mind of Cavour the problem of the unification of Italy presented itself in a totally different light. For him there was no question of the aggrandisement of Piedmont, though he no doubt felt pride in the thought that the House of Savoy was to possess the throne of Italy. Austria was expelled from Italy in 1860, not that Piedmont might take her place as ruler of the peninsula, but that Piedmont might disappear in the larger whole of an emancipated Italy. Austria was expelled from Germany in 1866 in order that Prussia might rule undisturbed. Thus, though the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was an essential step in the foundation of the modern German State, its motives and results were not in the least comparable to those which inspired and followed the Italian War of Liberation in 1859-60. In the first place the Austrians were not foreigners but Germans, whom it was necessary for reasons of State not of nationality to place outside the rest of Germany. Germany had, in fact, to choose between national unity and State unity; and she chose the latter, partly because Prussia really decided the matter for her, partly because she realised that the establishment of a strong German State was the essential prelude to the creation of a strong united nation. Austria had to be shut out in 1866 in order that she might be received back again at some later date on Germany's own terms. In the second place Austria was in no sense the oppressor of Germany as she had been of Italy. She was simply the presiding member of the German Confederation who, as the rival of Prussia, as the inheritor of the mediaeval imperial tradition, as the ruler of millions of non-Germanic people, would have rendered the problem of German unification almost insoluble. It was therefore necessary to get rid of her as gently and as politely as possible. After the crushing victory at Koeniggraetz, Bismarck treated Prussia's ancient foe with extraordinary leniency; for he had already planned the Dual Alliance in his mind; knowing as he did that, though in Germany Austria might be an inconvenient rival to Prussia, in Europe she was the indispensable ally of Germany. And so, though the ramshackle old German imperial castle was divided in two, and the northern portion, at any rate, brought thoroughly up to date, the neighbours still lived side by side in a "semi-detached" kind of way. It would be a mistake then to call the war of 1866 a war of deliverance. Indeed, since the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig, Germany has had no such war. That is in a great measure her national tragedy. Italian nationalism was spiritualised by the very fact that it had to struggle for decades against a foreign oppressor, and the foundations of her unity were laid on the heroic memories of her efforts to expel the intruder. This spiritualisation, these heroic memories were Germany's also in 1813-14, but the opportunity of unification was allowed to slip by, and when the task was performed fifty years later it was through quite other means and in a very different spirit. And yet, though there was no one to expel, Germany could only hope to attain unity by fighting. In 1848 she made an attempt to do so by peaceable means, and a national Parliament actually assembled at Frankfurt to frame a constitution for the whole country. But the attempt, noble as it was in conception, proved a dismal failure, and it became clear that national unity in Germany was to be won "not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and iron." The words are Bismarck's, and the task was his also. Set them beside the words of Cavour about Italy and liberty, quoted above, or compare the harsh unscrupulous spirit of the great German master-builder with the spirit of Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi, and you get a measure of the difference between the developments of the national idea in Germany and in Italy. Yet Bismarck's famous sentence expressed the truth of the matter for Germany. Austria had been put outside the German pale, and Germany north of the Main had accepted unity under the hegemony of Prussia, but there still remained the four great States of South Germany to bring in. They had been the allies of Austria in 1866, and Prussia, had she willed it, might have incorporated them by conquest. But Bismarck saw that they must put themselves willingly under Prussia if the German Empire was to be a stable concern; he therefore left them alone to think it over for a while. Sooner or later they would have to come in, since now that Austria had been excluded there remained only the choice between dependence on France and union with Prussia. Bismarck deliberately played upon South Germany's fear of France, and Napoleon III's restless foreign policy admirably seconded his efforts. But a war was necessary to bring matters to a head. The opportunity came in 1870, and Bismarck was able to make it appear a war not of his own choosing. The Southern States threw themselves into the arms of Prussia; France was crushed, and Alsace-Lorraine annexed; the German Empire was proclaimed, and modern Germany came into being. There had been no foreigner to expel from German soil, but Bismarck found that an attack upon France served his purpose equally well.
[Footnote 1: Perhaps it would be fairer to say that he was incapable of distinguishing between them. See his Reflections, i. pp. 315, 316.]
Germany was made by a war of aggression, resulting in territorial expansion at the expense of another nation; Italy by a war of liberation, driving the alien from her soil. And the subsequent history of the two nations is eloquent of this difference in their origins. Since 1860 Italy has in the main occupied herself with domestic reforms, with the working out of the "social idea" which had had to wait upon the realisation of the "national idea." She has had, it is true, her "adventures," more especially in Africa, and her Jingoism, which has taken the natural form of Irredentism or the demand for the recovery of Italian provinces still left in Austrian hands; but she has never threatened the peace of Europe, or sought power at the expense of other nationalities. Since 1870, on the other hand, Germany has had to sit armed to defend the booty taken from France. "We have earned in the late war respect, but hardly love," said General von Moltke soon after the conclusion of peace. "What we have gained by arms in six months we shall have to defend by arms for fifty years." At the beginning of 1914 more than forty out of the fifty years named by Moltke had passed by and the situation had undergone no material change. "The irreconcilability of France," writes the late Imperial Chancellor of Germany, "is a factor that we must reckon with in our political calculations. It seems to me weakness to entertain the hope of a real and sincere reconciliation with France, so long as we have no intention of giving up Alsace-Lorraine. And there is no such intention in Germany."[1] The annexation of two small provinces has thus made a permanent breach between two great nations, a breach which has poisoned the whole of European policy during the past half century, which has widened until it has split Europe into two huge armed camps, and which has at last involved the entire world in one of the most terrible calamities that mankind has ever known.
[Footnote 1: Imperial Germany, von Buelow, p. 69.]
Why did Bismarck annex Alsace-Lorraine? To strengthen, he said, the German frontier against France. But there was another reason. Fear of France had brought the Southern States into the Empire; fear of France should keep them there. The permanent hostility of France was necessary to assure the continuance of Prussia's position as the supreme military power in Germany. And so the plundered provinces became the very corner-stone of the German imperial system. There is surely something very strange about all this. Why should it be necessary to retain the loyalty of nearly half Germany by what practically amounts to terrorisation? The answer is that Germany is not a single national State but a number of dynastic States, federated together under the control of one predominant partner. In other words, the problem of Alsace-Lorraine has led us to the consideration of the second flaw in the development of the national idea in Germany.
The union of Italy meant a clean sweep of all the old dynastic frontiers and States which had strangled the country for so long; the union of Germany, on the contrary, riveted these obsolete chains still more firmly than ever on the country's limbs. Bismarck claimed that this was necessary, inasmuch as the Germans, unlike all other nations, were more alive to dynastic than to national loyalty; that, in short, Germany was not really ready in 1870 for true unity.[1] The chief reason, however, for the retention of the old frontiers was that they suited the aims of Prussia. The reformers of 1848, as Professor Erich Marcks somewhat naively says, "had wanted to place Prussia at the head, but only as the servant of the nation; Prussia was also to cease to be a State by itself, a power on its own account. She was to create the nation's ideal—complete unity—and then to merge herself in the nation. But Prussia would not and could not do this. She was far too great a power herself; she could very well rule Germany, but not serve."[2] Both Germany and Italy at first played with the idea of a Confederation, but each was eventually forced to look to one of its existing States to give it the unity it desired. There was only one possible choice for each: for Germany, Prussia; for Italy, Piedmont; but while Piedmont was content to serve, Prussia was too proud to do anything but rule. The dynastic State frontiers were therefore retained because Prussia refused to sacrifice her own State frontiers. The "unification of Germany," in short, was an episode in the gradual expansion of the Prussian dynastic State, which had begun far away back in the thirteenth century.[3] It assumed the air of a national movement, because Prussia cleverly availed herself of the prevailing nationalistic sentiment for her own ends. The German Empire is therefore something unique in the annals of the world; it is at once a nation-State, like Italy, France, and Great Britain, and also a military Empire, like Rome under Augustus, Europe under Napoleon, Austria under Joseph II., i.e. a State in which the territory that commands the army holds political sway over the rest of the country. It is not mere accident of geographical proximity, or even the kinship between Austrians and Germans, which has led to the long and unshakable alliance of Germany with the Hapsburg dominions. They are associated by common political interests and by similarity of political structure. Each stands for the supremacy of one dynastic State over a number of subordinate States or nationalities.
[Footnote 1: The chapter entitled "Dynasties and Stocks" in the Reflections should be carefully studied on this point. Bismarck was obviously uncomfortable about the old frontiers.]
[Footnote 2: Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century, p. 104.]
[Footnote 3: See Chap. III. p. 95.]
Her common nationality leads us to forget that the German Empire should more rightly be called the Prussian Empire.[1] Nor is there any reason at all why the Empire of Prussia should stop its process of expansion at the national boundaries; it has indeed already stepped beyond them, into Poland in the east, into Denmark in the north, into France in the west. Why should not the process be carried farther still and Germany become in Europe, nay, in the world, what Prussia is in Germany? By preserving her identity as a State, and by establishing her hegemony, Prussia, in the name of the national idea of Germany, has been able to spread her own ideals throughout the Empire, in other words to undertake that Prussianisation of Germany which is the most striking fact in her history since 1870. Piedmont was swallowed up in Italy, Germany has been swallowed up in Prussia; she has become the sharer of her victories and the accomplice of her crimes. And so under the tutelage of the spirit of Bismarck the docile German people have adopted the Prussian faith; and the policy of aggression and conquest once entered upon, there was no drawing back. Bismarck fed the youthful nation upon a diet of blood and iron, and its appetite has grown by what it fed on. The success of 1870 turned the nation's head; the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine gave it the first taste of conquest. Germany began to imagine that German character and German culture possessed some magical and unique quality which would alone account for this success. Dreams of a European Empire, of infinite expansion, of world-power, floated before the national consciousness. The German people were no longer content, to use Mazzini's words, "to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their stone also to the pyramid of history"; they now craved to impose their idea upon the world at large, and to place their stone on the top of the pyramid. Modern Germany is an example of nationalism "gone wrong," just as Napoleon was an example of democratic individualism "gone wrong." The Man of Destiny has been followed by the Nation of Destiny, the "super-man" by the "super-nation." Both have had to face a world in arms arrayed against them.
[Footnote 1: German writers are fond of calling it "Prussia-Germany" (Preussen-Deutschland), a phrase of Treitschke's.]
Thus the national idea in Germany has been cramped, contorted, and perverted by the Prussian system and the dynastic frontiers. Had the dreams of 1848 been realised, there might have been no Franco-German War, no Alsace-Lorraine question, no war of 1914. And what of our third test of nationhood? Do the people of Germany feel that their government adequately expresses their general will, that it is truly representative, by which is not necessarily meant that it is democratic in form?[1] There is no doubt that in 1848 the educated classes of Germany did actually desire a democratic form of polity. In that year Germany was as liberal as Italy; she also had risings in almost every State, not excluding Prussia itself, which were everywhere answered with promises of a "constitution." But when reaction came in Germany, as in Italy, Prussia did not, like Piedmont, stand out for freedom and make itself the model State of Germany; on the contrary she reverted to her old military absolutism at the first opportunity. And so the dreams of German liberty, like the dreams of complete German unity, disappeared before the stern necessity of accepting the supremacy of a politically reactionary State; and the Prussianisation which followed did much to neutralise altogether the liberalising influences of the south. It is therefore possible to maintain that the political institutions of Germany have come to represent more and more the genius and will of the population. "The Germany of the twentieth century," maintains a recent writer, "is not two but one. The currents have mingled their waters, and the Prussian torrent now has the depth and volume of the whole main-stream of German thought."[2]
[Footnote 1: e.g. Russia has a representative government in this sense, though she is without "representative institutions" in the democratic sense.]
[Footnote 2: Round Table, Sept. 1914, p. 628.]
It may be so; it may be that the Germany of Goethe, Schiller, and Beethoven has been absorbed by the Germany of Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon; but it must not be forgotten at the same time that, since their day, yet another Germany has come into being, the Germany of Marx, Engels, and Bebel, a Germany which is represented by more than a third of the voters in the Empire. The old line of cleavage had barely closed up when a new and much more fundamental schism appeared in the State, that between imperialism and social democracy. The existence of this tremendous revolutionary force in Germany, determined to overthrow the militarist regime of Prussia and to re-establish the State on a democratic basis, is an unanswerable proof that the government of the Empire is not in any true sense representative. Prussia has in this direction also impeded the development of the national idea and given mechanical unity at the expense of spiritual unity. It has created a vast political party of irreconcilables in the country, men who have been led to feel that they have neither part nor promise in the national life, and who therefore elect to stand outside it. "Our Social Democratic party," writes von Buelow, "lacks a national basis. It will have nothing to do with German patriotic memories which bear a monarchical and military character. It is not like the French and Italian parties, a precipitate of the process of national historical development, but since its beginning it has been in determined opposition to our past history as a nation. It has placed itself outside our national life."[1] And again: "In the German Empire, Prussia is the leading State. The Social Democratic party is the antithesis of the Prussian state."[2] Nevertheless, the Imperial Government, not finding it possible to suppress the social democrats, does its best to employ them for its own ends. It uses them in fact as it uses irreconcilable France, namely, for the purpose of terrorisation, since it has discovered that the spectre of socialism is as effective to keep the middle classes loyal as the spectre of French revenge is to keep the Southern States loyal. But it also hopes in time to eradicate socialism from the State. "A vigorous national policy" Prince von Buelow declares to be "the true remedy against the Social Democratic Movement"; and though he makes no specific mention of war, it is obvious that a war like that in which Germany is at present engaged is the most vigorous form a national policy could possibly take. Was the outbreak of war last August in part occasioned by the desire on the side of the German Government to win over the workers of Germany? If so, it had yet another spectre ready to its hand for the purpose—the spectre of Russia.
[Footnote 1: Imperial Germany, p. 184.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid. p. 186.]
In any case, with Germany in this condition, Europe could hardly have avoided a great war at some time or other; and 1914 follows naturally, almost inevitably, from 1870. The unification of 1870 was far from complete. The German national idea still awaits development in the direction of racial unity, political unity, and constitutional freedom. It is Prussia that bars the way in all these directions, Prussia, which, in itself not a nation but a military bureaucracy, a survival of the old territorial dynastic principle which the world has largely outgrown, has stamped its character and system upon the German people. "Prussia," says one of its apologists, "has put an iron girdle round the whole of German life."[1] But in the end life proves itself stronger than iron bands. Germany was bound to make another attempt to reach complete nationhood. She is doing so now. Prussia fights for conquest, for world-power, and makes docile Germany imagine that she is fighting for these also; but what Germany is really fighting for, blindly and gropingly, is freedom and unity. She has indeed "to hack her way through." But it is not, as she supposes, hostile Europe which hems her in and keeps her from her "place in the sun"; it is the Prussian girdle and the Prussian chains which hamper the free movements of her limbs and hold her close prisoner in the shadow of the Hohenzollern castle. The overthrow of Prussia means the release of Germany; and France, who gave Germany greatness in 1870, may with the help of the Allies be able in the near future to give her an even greater gift, the gift of liberty.
[Footnote 1: Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century, p. 106.]
Sec.7. The Map of Europe, 1814-1914.—We have now watched the national idea at work in the three western countries of that Central European area which the Congress of Vienna left unsettled in 1814, and in a later chapter we shall see the same principle acting in the two great divisions of South-East Europe, Austria-Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula. Let us, then, use this opportunity to pause for a moment, take a general survey of the map, and consider in broad outline what has actually been accomplished during the past century and what still remains to do.
From 1814 to 1848, exhausted by the effort of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and disillusioned by reactionary statesmanship, the larger nations slumbered: but Belgium and Greece secured their present liberties, and outside Europe the national movement spread throughout the South American Continent. Then came 1848, the "wonderful year" of modern history. "There is no more remarkable example in history of the contagious quality of ideas than the sudden spread of revolutionary excitement through Europe in 1848. In the course of a few weeks the established order seemed everywhere to be crumbling to pieces. The Revolution began in Palermo, crossed the Straits of Messina, and passed in successive waves of convulsion through Central Italy to Paris, Vienna, Milan, and Berlin. It has often been remarked that the Latin races are of all the peoples of Europe most prone to revolution; but this proposition did not hold good in 1848. The Czechs in Bohemia, the Magyars in Hungary, the Germans in Austria, rose against the paralysing encumbrance of the Hapsburg autocracy. The Southern Slavs dreamed of an Illyrian kingdom; the Germans of a united Germany; the Bohemians of a union of all the Slavonic peoples of Europe. The authority of the Austrian Empire, the pivot of the European autocracy, had never been so rudely challenged, and if the Crown succeeded in recovering its shattered authority it was due to the dumb and unintelligent loyalty of its Slavonic troops."[1]
[Footnote 1: H.A.L. Fisher, The Republican Tradition in Europe, p. 193.]
Many of these risings were doomed to failure, but between 1848 and 1871 the alien governments in the Italian peninsula were abolished, making way for a unitary government, in the form of a constitutional monarchy, which embraces with small exceptions the whole of the Italian population of Europe. In 1871, after three successful wars in seven years against Denmark, Austria, and France, a Federal Government was established in Germany, with the kingdom of Prussia as its leading State and the King of Prussia as its monarch, with the title of German Emperor. This was a step forward, though the new Germany was neither a unitary nor a constitutional State. The Austrian territories have also come in for their share of the general ferment, and Francis Joseph came to the throne in 1848 amid the uprisings of his subject peoples; but these were successfully tided over, though the Hungarian portion of the Austrian dominion achieved national recognition and institutions in 1867.
After 1871 the national movement moved farther east. In 1878 Roumania and Serbia, both national States, were declared sovereign powers independent of Turkey; Bulgaria achieved its recognition as a principality; and Montenegro, a small mountain community, which had never submitted to the Turks, increased its territory and became a recognised European State. In 1908 and 1910 Bulgaria and Montenegro became kingdoms like their neighbours; and in 1913, after the two Balkan Wars, all the five Balkan States—Roumania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro—obtained accession of territory, and the principality of Albania was constituted out of the Albanian portion of the old Turkish dominion. Finally, in quite another region of Europe, Norway, which had been joined in an anomalous union with Sweden since 1814, satisfied her national aspirations unopposed by becoming an independent Constitutional Monarchy in 1905.
All this represents a considerable clearing up of the Central European problem. Nevertheless, much still remains to be done. Poland is as she was in 1814, a dismembered nation. The Czechs of Bohemia, the Roumanians of Transylvania, and the Southern Slavs, not to mention other and smaller subject races, continue to demand their freedom from the joint tyranny of Vienna and Budapest. Russia has not yet solved the problem of Finland, nor England the problem of Ireland. The Turk still occupies Constantinople. And finally, the Prussianised nationalism of Germany has created new questions of nationality in Alsace-Lorraine and Schleswig. All these problems together were as so much tinder ready to take fire directly the spark fell. They were the cause of the "armed peace" of the past forty-three years; they are the cause of the war to-day. The conflagration of 1914 is a proof of a profound dissatisfaction among civilised nations with the existing political structure of the Continent. Alsatians, Poles, Czechs, Finns, Serbo-Croats, Roumanians, and the rest "still struggle for country and liberty; for a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of all." The framework of society does not fit the facts of nationality, and so the framework has gone to pieces. "The map of Europe has to be re-made. That is the key to the present movement."
BOOKS
I. NATIONALITY
MAZZINI. Essays. The Scott Library. 1s.
MAZZINI. Duties of Man, etc. Everyman Library. 1s.
Anything written by Mazzini, the prophet of the national idea, can be recommended.
LORD ACTON. History of Freedom and other Essays. 1907. 10s. net.
Contains an acute historical analysis of nationality in the nineteenth century. The conclusion reached is that "the theory of nationality is more absurd and more criminal than the theory of socialism," but though the summing up is unfavourable, the whole essay is a masterly exposition of the national idea by one of the greatest of historical students. It forms a very useful foil to Mazzini.
HENRY SIDGWICK. The Elements of Politics. 1897. 14s. net.
Chapter xiv., on "The Area of Government," contains useful paragraphs on the distinction between Nation, State, and Nationality; see esp. pp. 222-225.
SIR JOHN SEELEY. The Expansion of England. First published in 1883. 4s. net.
SIR JOHN SEELEY. Introduction to Political Science. 1896. 4s. net.
Both these books, the first in particular, are important in this connection. There is no one chapter or section devoted exclusively to the consideration of nationality, but there are constant references to the subject. The point of view is, moreover, instructive. Seeley is, perhaps, the nearest English approach to Treitschke.
J.M. ROBERTSON. Introduction to English Politics. 1900. 10s. 6d. net.
Critical from the Rationalistic as Acton is from the Catholic point of view. See esp. Part V., "The Fortunes of the Lesser European States," which after a preliminary essay on Nationality, which the author declares to be "essentially a metaphysical dream," while "the motive spirit in it partakes much of the nature of superstition," goes on to give a valuable account of the development of the "small nations," Holland, Switzerland, Portugal, etc., by way of showing their value to civilisation as a whole.
P. MILYOUKOV. Russia and its Crisis. 1905. 13s. 6d.
Chap. ii. contains some interesting matter on Nationalism, especially of course as it has been developed in Russia.
J.S. MILL. On Representative Government. 2s.
Chap, xvi., "Of Nationality as connected with Representative Government."
II. GENERAL HISTORICAL WORKS, ETC.
ALISON PHILLIPS. Modern Europe. 1815-1899. 1903. 6s. net.
An excellent general history of Europe, 1815-1899.
SEIGNOBOS. A Political History of Contemporary Europe since 1814. 2 vols. 1901. 5s. net each.
One of the best general histories of this scope available. It is a translation from the French, with good bibliographies.
Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge. 1902. 4s. 6d. net.
A series of studies, by recognised authorities, of various aspects of modern European history. Chap. ii., on "The International History of Europe during the Nineteenth Century," by the late Professor Westlake, is suggestive on the topic of nationality; chaps. v. and vi., on Germany, by a German professor, are interesting as giving the German view of unification by Bismarck; and chaps. ix. and x., on "The Struggle for Italian Unity," and "Mazzini," by Mr. Bolton King, are especially valuable.
H.A.L. FISHER. The Republican Tradition in Europe. 1911. 6s. net.
Traces the development of the republican, as distinct from the nationalist tradition, in modern Europe, and therefore forms a useful complement to other writers. Chap. ix., on "Italy," and chap. x., on "The German Revolution," are excellent accounts of "1848" in those two countries.
H.A.L. FISHER. The Value of Small States. Oxford Pamphlets. 2d.
E. LEVETT. Europe since Napoleon. 1913. Blackie. 3s. 6d.
A useful little text-book.
The Cambridge Modern History. Vols. ix., x., xi., xii. 16s. net per vol.
Indispensable for knowledge of the facts of the period.
R. NISBET BAIN. Slavonic Europe, 1447-1796. 1908. 5s. 6d. net.
Chap. xviii. gives a good account of the partitions of Poland.
BOLTON KING. A History of Italian Unity. 2 vols. 1899. 24s. net.
BOLTON KING. Mazzini. 1903. Dent, Temple Biographies. 4s. 6d. net.
BISMARCK. Reflections and Reminiscences. 2 vols. 1898. Smith Elder.
Out of print. To be bought second-hand.
BUeLOW. Imperial Germany. 1914. Cassell. 2s. net.
The last two are indispensable for a true understanding of the principles which underlie the German Empire.
T.J. LAWRENCE. Principles of International Law. 1910. 12s. 6d. net.
A useful text-book. See also Cambridge Mod. Hist. vol. xii. chap. xxii.
CHAPTER III
GERMANY
"The Germans are vigorously submissive. They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear which transforms that respect into admiration."—MADAME DE STAEL (1810).
"Greatness and weakness are both inseparable from the race whose powerful and turbid thought rolls on—the largest stream of music and poetry at which Europe comes to drink."—ROMAIN ROLLAND (Jean Christophe).
Sec.1. The German State.—The German Nation is one of the oldest in Europe: the German State is almost the youngest—of the great States quite the youngest.
Englishmen sometimes wonder why there are so many Royal princes in Germany—why it is that when a vacant throne has to be filled, or a husband to be found for a princess of royal standing, Germany seems to provide such an inexhaustible choice. The reason is that Germany consisted, until recently, not of one State but of a multitude of States, each of which had a court and a dynasty and sovereign prerogatives of its own. In 1789, at the outbreak of the French Revolution, there were 360 of these States of every sort and size and variety. Some were Kingdoms, like Prussia, some were Electorates, like Hanover (under our English George III.), some were Grand Duchies, some were Bishoprics, some were Free Cities, and some were simply feudal estates in which, owing to the absence of a central authority, noble families had risen to the rank of independent powers. These families were the descendants of those "robber-barons" whose castles on the Rhine and all over South and West Germany the tourist finds so picturesque. Prince William of Wied, the first Prince of Albania, is a member of one of them, and is thus entitled to rank with the royalties of Europe: the father-in-law of ex-King Manoel of Portugal, the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a branch of the Kaiser's own family, is another familiar recent instance. And every one remembers Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the husband of Queen Victoria.
In 1789 the possibility of a German National State was so remote that Germans had not even begun to dream of one. Each little Principality was jealously tenacious of its local rights, or, as we should say, of its vested interests, as against the common interests of Germany. Most of them were narrow and parochial in their outlook; and the others, the more broad-minded, were not national but cosmopolitan in spirit. To the tradition of municipal thinking, which had lasted on uninterruptedly in the Free Cities of Germany from the Middle Ages, Germany owes the excellence of her municipal government to-day. To the broad and tolerant humanism of her more enlightened courts, such as Weimar and Brunswick, we owe the influences that shaped the work of Goethe and of Lessing, two of the greatest figures in European thought and letters.
Into these peaceful haunts of culture and parochialism Napoleon, with the armies and the ideas of Revolutionary France, swept like a whirlwind, breaking up the old settled comfortable life of the cities and countryside. One of the greatest of German writers, the Jew Heine, has described in a wonderful passage what the coming of Napoleon meant to the inhabitants of a little German Principality. It is worth transcribing at some length, for it gives the whole colour and atmosphere of the old local life in Western Germany, which has not even yet entirely passed away. The speaker is an old soldier giving reminiscences of his boyhood:
"Our Elector was a fine gentleman, a great lover of the arts, and himself very clever with his fingers. He founded the picture gallery at Duesseldorf, and in the Observatory in that city they still show a very artistic set of wooden boxes, one inside the other, made by himself in his leisure hours, of which he had twenty-four every day.
"In those days the Princes were not overworked mortals as they are to-day. Their crowns sat very firmly on their heads, and at night they just drew their nightcaps over them, and slept in peace, while peacefully at their feet slept their peoples; and when these woke up in the morning they said, 'Good morning, Father,' and the Princes replied, 'Good morning, dear children.'
"But suddenly there came a change. One morning when we woke up in Duesseldorf and wanted to say, 'Good morning, Father,' we found our Father gone, and a kind of stupefaction over the whole city. Everybody felt as though they were going to a funeral, and people crept silently to the market-place and read a long proclamation on the door of the City Hall. It was grey weather, and yet thin old tailor Kilian stood in his alpaca coat, which he kept for indoor use only, and his blue woollen stockings hung down so that his miserable little bare legs were visible above them and his thin lips were trembling, while he murmured the words of the proclamation. A veteran soldier at his side read somewhat louder, and at every few words a tear trickled down into his honest white beard. I Stood by him and cried too, and asked him why we were crying. And then he told me: 'The Elector expresses you his gratitude'—then he went on reading, and at the words 'for your loyal and trusted obedience, and releases you from your duties,' his tears broke out afresh.... While we were reading, the Elector's arms were being taken down from the City Hall, the whole place became as terrifyingly quiet as though there were going to be an eclipse of the sun, and all the City Councillors went about hanging their heads as though no one had any more use for them...
"When I woke up next morning, the sun was shining as usual, drums were beating in the streets, and when I came down to breakfast and said good-morning to my father I heard how the barber had whispered to him while he was shaving him that the new Grand Duke Joachim was to receive the homage of his subjects at the City Hall to-day, that he came of a very good family and had been given the Emperor Napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the Grenadiers, the bear-skins, the tricolour cockades, the gleaming bayonets, the merry skilful horsemen, and the huge great drum-major with his silver-embroidered uniform, who could throw his drum-stick with its gilt button up to the first floor, and his eyes up even to the girls in the second floor windows. I was pleased that we were to have soldiers billeted on us—my mother was not—and I hurried to the market-place. There everything was quite different now. The world looked as if it had had a new coat of paint. A new coat-of-arms was hanging on the City Hall, the iron railings on the balcony were covered with tapestry hangings, French Grenadiers were standing sentry, the old City Councillors had put on new faces, and were wearing Sunday clothes, and looked at one another in French and said 'Bon jour,' ladies were looking out of all the windows, curious bystanders and smart soldiers thronged the square, and I and the other boys climbed on to the big horse of the Elector's statue and looked down on the gay crowd."[1]
[Footnote 1: Heine, Collected Works, i. 228 (Book Le Grand).]
Napoleon and his French soldiers, "marching through the world with songs and shining sabres," brought the Germans more than this happy thrill of excitement and a supply of new and more elegant princes. They brought them that which gave strength to their own right arm—the spirit of Nationality. "The soul of the German people," says a recent German writer, "has always lain very deep down, and has seldom come to the surface to become the spirit of the time and to inspire the movements of the world. Hardly ever except in times of the deepest adversity has it come to the surface: but then it has claimed its rights, or rather, discovered its duties."[1] Napoleon, by humiliating her, laid bare the soul of Germany, as Germany herself has laid bare the soul of Belgium to-day. His arrogant pretensions roused the Germans as they had never been roused since the days of the Reformation; while at the same time his attempts to secure the support of the bigger German principalities by enlarging them at the expense of the smaller, simplified the map and laid the foundations of a United Germany. The thinkers and dreamers of Germany, stung at last into a sense of political reality, awoke from their dreams of cosmopolitanism and devoted their powers to the needs of the German nation.
[Footnote 1: Daab's Preface to Paul de Lagarde, German Faith, German Fatherland, German Culture, p. vi. (Jena, 1913).]
The years between 1806 and 1813, between the disastrous battle of Jena and the overwhelming victory of Leipzig, are the greatest years in German history. Shaking off the torpor and the prejudices of centuries the German nation arose and vanquished its oppressors.
But with the twilight of that glorious day the bats returned. The defeat of Napoleon was not only the defeat of French domination but the defeat of the French Revolution, and of the principles of Democracy and Nationality which inspired it. The unity of spirit which the Germans had achieved on the battlefield they were unable to transform after the victory into a unity of government or institutions. The Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe after the Revolutionary wars, did so, not in accordance with the principle of nationality or the wishes of the peoples of Europe but according to what was called "legitimacy," that is to say, the interests of the princes. There was only one idealist at the Conference, the Russian Emperor Alexander, and he was put off with empty phrases.
For Germany the result of the Conference was the reestablishment, in smaller numbers and with larger units of territory, of the old undemocratic principalities, and of a Confederation embodying their dynastic interests. Several of the larger States, such as Bavaria, Wuertemberg, Saxony, and Hanover, which Napoleon had raised to the status of kingdoms, were confirmed in their new dignities, and the kingdom of Prussia, the largest of them all, acquired, out of the debris of the old Archbishopric of Cologne and other small ecclesiastical and temporal States, the important provinces of Westphalia and the Rhineland, which have made possible for her the industrial growth of the last half century. Cologne, Duesseldorf, Elberfeld, Essen, and other great industrial centres of Western Germany will next year be celebrating the centenary of their Prussian connection. But the chief State in the Confederation and its undisputed head was Austria, which had for centuries enjoyed the prestige of supremacy over the German States; and it was the Austrian statesman Metternich who was mainly responsible for the Vienna settlement.
The German Confederation of 1815-1866 went far outside the boundaries of modern Germany. It included lands belonging to three non-German monarchs. The King of Holland was a member of it in virtue of the Dutch provinces of Limburg and Luxemburg; the King of Denmark for the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein; and the Emperor of Austria (who, then as now, ruled over Hungary, Austrian Poland, and the Southern Slav provinces) for Bohemia, Moravia, and German-speaking Austria up to and beyond Vienna. The Confederation was in fact in no sense a national State, and was never intended to be so. It was a loosely knit assortment of principalities and free cities. Germany was still broken up and divided in a manner almost inconceivable to the inhabitants of an old-established unity like Great Britain or France. At least five different kinds of money, for instance, were in use in the different States of the Confederation, and, as stamp-collectors know, the postal system was bewildering in its complexity. More important was the deep gulf between different parts of the country due to religious divisions. The Reformation, which left England with a National Church, left Germany hopelessly divided; and the division between the Protestants in the north and east, and the Catholics in the west and south, is still, half a century after the establishment of the United Empire, a source of difficulty.
Yet the Confederation has one undeniable achievement to its credit. It paved the way for German unity by facilitating the Zollverein, or Customs Union, which was extended between 1830 and 1844 to practically all the German States except those under Austrian rule. But the far-reaching importance of this development was not at that time appreciated. Western Europe was tired after the great Napoleonic struggle and was not in a mood for big designs. To all outward appearance Germany seemed to have relapsed, after the thrill and glamour of the Wars of Liberation, into the stuffy atmosphere of the old eighteenth century life. Only a very patient, a very docile, and a very philosophic and law-abiding people would have endured such an anti-climax; and it is these qualities, together with a certain clumsiness and helplessness due to their complete inexperience of the responsibilities of a larger citizenship, which go far to explain the subsequent history of Germany.
But in the evil days after the Congress of Vienna the idea of German unity lived on, and formed a constant theme of discussion and speculation, like the idea of the unity of Poland and of the Southern Slavs in the present generation. The stirring memories of the Great Revolution were like a constant refrain at the back of men's minds all through that dreary time. In 1830, when the French established a Liberal Monarchy and the Belgians freed themselves from the unwelcome supremacy of Holland, there was much excitement throughout Germany. But nothing serious occurred until 1848, when the Liberal and Nationalist movement, which had been gathering force throughout the educated classes of Western Europe for a generation, at length came to a head. The whole of Germany was in a ferment, a strong Republican movement manifested itself, and in almost every one of the many capital cities there was a rising with a demand for a free constitution and parliamentary government, and for the consolidation of German national unity in accordance with the same democratic ideals. The princes had no alternative but to give way, and, as a result, local Constitutions were granted, and a national Parliament was summoned to meet at Frankfurt, to draw up a national German Constitution on democratic lines.
The task before the Frankfurt Parliament was similar to that which has confronted British statesmen several times during the last century, in framing the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Union of South Africa—the task of welding a number of separate State governments with the free consent of their populations into a homogeneous and democratic central authority. But in the case of an old and still largely feudal country like Germany the task was infinitely more difficult, for it could not be successful without a levelling-up of the political ideals of the backward States, such as Prussia, and the elimination of many ancient associations and dynastic interests. The Frankfurt Constitution did actually come into being, and it was nobly planned. It guaranteed to every German citizen the rights of civil liberty, equality before the law, and responsible parliamentary government, both central and local. But the mind of the German nation was not yet equal to its new responsibilities. The Frankfurt Parliament, like the first Russian Duma, was out of touch with realities; it wasted precious time on the discussion of abstract questions of principle, and failed to meet the practical needs of the moment. While it sat and talked, the enthusiasm which had created it gradually evaporated. Meanwhile the more reactionary States, and the princes whose prerogatives were endangered, became more and more openly hostile. All through 1849 the Parliament was losing members by defection, and by the end of the year its influence had sunk to vanishing point.
The movement which collapsed thus ignominiously was not a popular agitation in the English sense of the term: like other movements of its generation it sprang, not from the people but from the well-to-do, and its strength lay among the professional and educated classes. The Frankfurt Parliament was a predominantly middle-class assembly: lawyers and professors, always an important element in German national life, were strongly represented in it and largely responsible for its failure. Its collapse was a bitter disappointment, and drove many of its leaders into exile abroad, more particularly to the United States, where some of them, such as Carl Schurz, lived to play a noteworthy part under more democratic political institutions.
After the failure of the Frankfurt Constitution it slowly became clear to far-sighted Germans that there was only one way in which German unity could come about. If, unlike the separate provinces of Canada and South Africa, the German States would not voluntarily sink their identity in a larger whole, unity could only come through their acceptance of the supremacy of one of the existing States.
There were only two possible candidates for the supremacy, Austria and Prussia. Austria was still, at that time, as she had been for centuries, in a position of undisputed headship. But her German policy was always hampered because she had also to consider her non-German subjects. Prussia, a younger and more homogeneous State, with a better organised administration and a better disciplined people, was preparing to assert herself. In 1862, at a moment when liberalism was gathering strength in Prussia, Count Bismarck became chief Minister of the Prussian Crown and the dominating force in Prussian policy. Bismarck was a Conservative and a reactionary, wholly out of sympathy with the ideals of 1848. His immediate object was to secure the supremacy of Prussia among the German States. In the very first months of his leadership he made it clear, in a famous sentence, by what methods he hoped to achieve his end. "The great questions are to be settled," he told the Prussian Diet, with a scornful hit at the Confederation, "not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and iron."
He was not long in translating words into action. In 1864 the King of Denmark died, and difficulties at once arose as to the succession to the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which still belonged to the German Confederation. Austria and Prussia intervened jointly in the name of the Confederation, and, as a result, the Duchies were separated from Denmark, Schleswig being administered by Austria and Holstein by Prussia. The object of this rather clumsy plan, which originated with Bismarck, was to create difficulties which would enable him to pick a quarrel with Austria. In 1866 this manoeuvre proved successful. Bismarck goaded Austria into war and succeeded, after a six weeks' campaign, in expelling her from the German State system, following this up by rounding off her own dominions with the annexation of a number of the smaller pro-Austrian States, amongst them the kingdom of Hanover. His victory also had the effect of completely checking the growing agitation for the establishment of responsible government in Prussia.[1]
[Footnote 1: On this point see Bismarck's Recollections, and the good short account in Powicke's Bismarck.]
Having made Prussia supreme in Germany, Bismarck was now in a position to solve the problem of German unity. He resolved to employ the same well-tried method. In 1870 the somewhat high-handed manner of Napoleon III. made it possible for him to bring about a war between the German States and France, in which Germany, under Prussian leadership, was completely victorious. In the flush of their success, after the capture of Paris in January 1871, the lesser States of Germany agreed to enter into a Federal Union under Prussian supremacy and to accept the King of Prussia as its head, with the title of Emperor.
Thus, at length, Germany became a National State, with a national constitution. The term Empire is misleading, for to English ears it suggests the government of dependencies. Germany is not an Empire in that sense: she is a Federation, like the United States and Switzerland, of independent States which have agreed to merge some of their prerogatives, notably the conduct of foreign affairs and of defence, in a central authority. Since some of these independent States were, and still are, monarchies, a higher title had to be provided for the Chief of the Federation. An ace, as it were, was needed to trump the kings. After much deliberation the title Emperor was agreed upon; but it is noteworthy that the Kaiser is not "the Emperor of Germany": he bears the more non-committal title of "German Emperor."
The German Imperial Constitution, devised by Bismarck in 1871, falls far short of the Frankfurt experiment of 1848. It does indeed provide for the creation of a Reichstag, or Imperial Parliament, elected by all male citizens over twenty-five. But the Reichstag can neither initiate legislation nor secure the appointment or dismissal of Ministers. In the absence of ministerial responsibility to Parliament, which is the mainspring of our English Constitutional system, the Reichstag might be described as little more than an advisory body armed with the power of veto. Like the English Parliament in the days of Charles I.'s ship-money, the Reichstag could in the last resort refuse supplies, and so bring the machinery of government to a standstill. But this situation has never yet arisen or seemed likely to arise. The Government has ridden the Reichstag with a strong hand, turning awkward corners by concessions to the various groups in turn, and the Reichstag has responded to this treatment. Bismarck "took his majorities where he could get them"; and Prince Buelow's book contains some illuminating pages about the clever methods which that statesman adopted to "manage" his Parliaments. |
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