Stanley Shaw

“ None of the canons, be it noticed, destroyed the canon that preceded, because beauty and harmony are indestructible and imperishable. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."
But not only the mind of man kept changing: the world itself and its civilization—by war, by treaty, by science, by invention, by art itself—kept changing, and is changing now. Development, physical as well as social, has been constant, and the changes accompanying it have inspired, and are inspiring, artists with new ideas to which they are always trying to give expression. The subjects of art have enormously multiplied. ”

“ Our foreigner enters the Park of Sans Souci and his spirit is at rest. Now he knows where he really is—not in the wonderful new German Empire, not in modern Berlin with its splendid and to him unspeaking streets, its garish "night-life," its faultily-faultless municipal propriety, not in Potsdam, "the true cradle of the Prussian army," as Baedeker, deviating for an instant into metaphor, describes it, but simply in Sans Souci. ”

“ I have learned to appreciate the high sense of honour and of duty which lives in the navy, and know that every man is ready faithfully to stake his life for the honour of the German flag, be it where it may. Accordingly I can, in this serious hour, feel fully assured that we shall stand strongly and steadily together in good or bad days, in storm or sunshine, always mindful of the Fatherland and always ready to shed our heart's blood for the honour of the flag. ”

“ He has always exhibited, as Bismarck always did, the genuine qualities of the Prussian—self-confidence, tenacity of purpose, absolute trust in his own ideals and intolerance of those of other people, impatience of rivalry, selfishness for the advantage of Prussia as against other German States, as strong as that for the newly born Empire against other countries. Finally, the Emperor is convinced, as Bismarck was convinced, that in the first and last resort, a society, a people, a nation, is based on force and by force alone can prosper, or even be held together. ”

“ He (Emperor William) left Coblenz to ascend the throne as the selected instrument of the Lord he always regarded himself to be. For us all, and above all for us princes, he raised once more aloft and lent lustrous beams to a jewel which we should hold high and holy—that is the kingship von Gottes Gnaden, the kingship with its onerous duties, its never-ending, ever-continuing trouble and labour, with its fearful responsibility to the Creator alone, from which no human being, no minister, no parliament, no people can release the prince. ”

“ Germany must have a powerful fleet to protect that commerce, and her manifold interests in even the most distant seas. She expects those interests to go on growing, and she must be able to champion them manfully in any quarter of the globe. Germany looks ahead. Her horizons stretch far away. She must be prepared for any eventualities in the Far East. Who can foresee what may take place in the Pacific in the days to come—days not so distant as some believe, but days, at any rate, for which all European Powers with Far Eastern interests ought steadily to prepare? ”

“ But, you will say, what of the German navy? Surely that is a menace to England! Against whom but England are my squadrons being prepared? If England is not in the minds of those Germans who are bent on creating a powerful fleet, why is Germany asked to consent to such new and heavy burdens of taxation? My answer is clear. Germany is a young and growing Empire. She has a world-wide commerce, which is rapidly expanding, and to which the legitimate ambition of patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds. ”

“ However art arose, it seems true to say, as a German writer has well said, that when a work of art, whether a poem or a picture or a statue, causes in us the thought that so, and in no other way, would we ourselves have expressed the idea, had we the talent, then we may conclude that true art is speaking to us, whatever the idea to be expressed may be. Everything demands thought, but our thoughts are an unruly folk, which never keep long on the same straight road, and love to wander off to left and right, here finding something new and there throwing away something old. ”

“ No one doubted the Emperor's sincere desire to pay the highest compliment he could think of to a people to whom he felt grateful for the honour done to Germany in the person of his brother, but nearly every one smiled at the simplicity, or, as some called it, the want of political tact shown by offering the statue of a ruler whose name, to the vast majority of Americans, is synonymous with absolute autocracy, to a republic which prides itself on its civic ways and love of personal freedom. ”

“ With regard to England we stand entirely independent of her: we are not a hair's-breadth more dependent on England than England is on us. But we are ready on the basis of mutual consideration and complete equality—about this obvious preliminary condition for a proper relation between two Great Powers we have never left any Power in doubt: I say, we are ready on this basis to live with England in peace, friendship, and harmony. ”

“ The desire for national expansion, if it could not be gratified by conquest, was to be satisfied by the spread of German influence, power, activity, and enterprise in all parts of the world. Such a collision of the ages is tragedy on the largest scale, for nothing can be more tragic—more inevitable or inexorable—than the march of Progress. ”

“ The artist, like the poet, is born not made; you cannot make an artist, you can only make an artisan. The artist, who represents the Creator, the creative faculty, can influence man: man cannot, and should not try to, influence the artist, but can, and should only, offer him the materials for his art, smooth the way for his endeavour, encourage him in it by sympathetic yet candid criticism, and above all, when he can afford it, by buying the result of his endeavour when it is successful.
This should be the attitude of both monarch and Maecenas: it is an attitude of benevolent neutrality. ”

“ Perhaps, however, what was most objected to was his trying to drive the art of the nation into a groove, the direction given by himself: in trying to inspire it with a particular spirit and that an ancient not a modern spirit, when he ought to let the spirit come of its own accord out of the mind of the people—the mind of many millions, not the mind of one man, however high his rank. Politics and government might be things in which he had a right to an authoritative voice, but art, like religion, the people considered to be a matter for individual taste and judgment. ”

“ Before closing our sketch of the Emperor as a man by quoting appreciations written by two contemporary writers, one German and the other English, it may be added that there is a statesman still—it is pleasant to think—alive who could, an he only would, draw the Emperor's character perfectly, both as man and monarch. Indeed, as has been seen, he has more than once sketched parts of it in Parliament, but only parts—the whole character of the Emperor, on all its sides and in all its ramifications, has yet to be revealed. ”

“ Foreign politics everywhere for the last three or four years have been full of incident, outcry, and bloodshed. The state of things, indeed, prevailing in the world for some time past is extraordinary. A visitant from another planet would imagine that normal peace and abnormal war had changed places, and that civilized mankind now regard peace as an interlude of war, not war as an interlude of peace. He would be wrong, of course, but the race in armament, which threatens to leave the nations taking part in it financially breathless and exhausted, might easily lead him astray. ”

“ Look at the accomplished rise of Japan; think of the possible national awakening of China; and then judge of the vast problems of the Pacific. Only those Powers which have great navies will be listened to with respect when the future of the Pacific comes to be solved; and if for that reason only Germany must have a powerful fleet. It may even be that England herself will be glad that Germany has a fleet when they speak together on the same side in the great debates of the future. ”

“ Human imagination, in its worship of force as the source of ability to achieve the ends of ambition and desire, very early conceived the courts of kings as fairylands of power, wealth, luxury, and magnificence—in a word, of happiness. The same imagination represents the Almighty, whose true nature no one knows, as a monarch in the bright court of heaven, and his great antagonist, Satan, who stands for the king of evil, is enthroned by it amid the shades of hell. ”

“ At Bremen he said:
"The world-empire I dream of is a new German Empire which shall enjoy on all hands the most absolute confidence as a quiet, peaceable, honest neighbour—not founded by conquest with the sword, but on the mutual confidence of nations aiming at the same end."
The Emperor's world-policy was referred to more than once about this time by Chancellor Prince Bülow in the Reichstag. "It is," he said on one occasion, "Germany's intention and duty to protect the great and ever-growing oversea interests which she has acquired through the development of conditions." ”

“ The Italian saying, "traduttore, tradittore," is the expression of a fact too seldom recognized, especially by those whose business it is to interpret, so to speak, one people to another. Language is as mysterious and elusive a thing as aught connected with humanity, as love, for example, or music; and it may be asserted with some degree of confidence that among every people there are ideas current, and in all departments—in law, society, art—which it is impossible exactly to translate into the speech of other nations. ”

“ Convinced that the first duty of the royal theatres was to maintain in the nation the cultivation of the idealism to which, God be thanked, our people are still faithful, and of which the sources are not yet nearly exhausted, I determined to myself to make my royal theatres an instrument comparable to the school or the university whose mission it is to form the rising generation and to inculcate in them respect for the highest moral traditions of our dear German land. ”

“ He is to-day the same Hohenzollern he was the day he mounted the throne, observing exactly the same attitude to the world abroad and to his folk at home, tenacious of exactly the same principles, enunciating exactly the same views in politics, religion, morals, and art—in everything which concerns the foundations of social life. He still believes himself, as his speeches and conduct show, the selected instrument of Heaven, and acts towards his people and addresses them accordingly. ”

“ Above all they must put aside their endeavour to seek the excellent through the ever more-sharply contrasted party factions. They must cease to put party above the welfare of the whole. They must put a curb on their ancient and inherited weakness—to subject everything to the most unlicensed criticism; and they must stop at the point where their most vital interests become concerned. For it is precisely these political sins which revenge themselves so deeply on our sea interests and our fleet. ”

“ The British Constitution is a growth of centuries, not, like the German Constitution, the creation of a day. The British Constitution is unwritten, if it is stamped, as Mary said the word "Calais" would be found stamped on her heart after death, on the heart and brain of every Englishman. The German Constitution is a written document in seventy-eight chapters, not fifty years old, and on which, compared with the British Constitution, the ink is not yet dry. ”

“ The Government,"
he continued,
"has nothing but benevolent and friendly designs regarding China, and has no wish either to offend or provoke her. We are ready in East Asia to recognize the interests of other Great Powers in the certain confidence that our own interests will be duly respected by them. In one word—we desire to put no one in the shade, but we too demand our place in the sun. In East Asia, as in the West Indies, we shall endeavour, in accordance with the traditions of German policy, without unnecessary rigour, but also without weakness, to guard our rights and our interests." ”

“ The ordinary German immediately cries out that England is planning to attack him, to annihilate his fleet, destroy his commerce, and diminish his prestige among the nations. The German Government repeatedly declares that the German fleet is intended for defence not aggression, that Germany does not aim at the seizure of other people's property, but at protecting her growing commerce, at standing by her subjects in all parts of the world if subjected to injury or insult, and at increasing her prestige, and with it her power for good, in the family of nations. ”

“ As the education of a prince, and the surroundings in which he is brought up, are usually different from the education and surroundings of his subjects, it is not surprising if, at least during some portion of his reign, and until he has graduated in the university of life, misunderstandings, if nothing worse, should occur between them: indeed the wonder is that princes and people succeed in living harmoniously together. They are separated by great gulfs both of sentiment and circumstance. ”

“ In accord with the German character we confine ourselves externally in order to be unconfined internally. Far stretches our speech over the ocean, far the flight of our science and exploration; no work in the domain of new discovery, no scientific idea but is first tested by us and then adopted by other nations. ”

“ He sees himself, a young and hitherto unknown actor, leaving the wings and taking the very centre of the stage, while the vast audience sits silent and attentive, as yet hardly grasping the significance of his words and gestures, emphatic though they are. And then he recalls the years of Sturm und Drang, the growth of Empire in spite of grudging rivals and of fellow-countrymen as yet not wholly conscious of their destinies, which one can now see constituted a whole drama in themselves, fraught with great consequences to the world. ”

“ When a German Emperor ascends the throne there is no great outburst of national rejoicing, no great series of popular ceremonials. There is no brilliant procession as in England, no impressive coronation like that of an English monarch in Westminster Abbey, no State visit of the monarch to the Houses of Parliament. In Germany Parliament goes to the King, not the King to Parliament. ”

“ It takes all sorts of art to make an artistic world, as it takes all sorts of people to make the human world: a world with only classic art in it would be as uninteresting and unthinkable as a world in which every one was of the same character, occupation, and dress.
But it is time to consider the Emperor a little more in detail in relation to his connexion with the arts. If he were not a first-rate monarch he would probably be a first-rate artist. He said once that if he were to be an artist, he would be a sculptor. ”

“ Life has now become real and the Emperor's soldiering days have begun—never to conclude! His regiment is his world; parades and drills, the orderly-room and the barrack square occupy his time; and would seem monotonous and hard but for the little Eden with its Eve close beside them.
The Emperor turns uneasily, for his thoughts recur to the painful circumstances of his accession; but calmness soon succeeds as the curtain rises on the splendid panorama of the reign. ”

“ But whatever its causes, Social Democracy is one of the most curious and anomalous societies extant. In a country which worships order, it calls for absolute disorder. A revolutionary movement, it anxiously avoids revolution. It is a magnificent organization for no apparent practical, direct, or immediate purpose. Proclaiming the protection of the law and enjoying the blessing of efficient government, it yet refuses to vote the budget to pay for them. ”

“ And if this is so in matters of religion, itself only a form of the reasoning soul, why should it not be the same in morals or philosophy, art or science, government or administration: why should we not all accept, as many still do, the sayings and writings of the Hebrew prophets (as does the Emperor) , of Plato and Aristotle, of Bacon and Hobbes, of Milton and Shakespeare and Goethe, of Kepler and Galileo, or Charlemagne and Napoleon, as divinely intended to convey and make plain to us the dictates of Heaven until such time as yet greater souls shall instruct us afresh and still more fully? ”

“ What has come over you that you are so completely given over to suspicions quite unworthy of a great nation? What more can I do than I have done? I declared with all the emphasis at my command, in my speech at Guildhall, that my heart is set upon peace, and that it is one of my dearest wishes to live on the best of terms with England. ”