Harold Frederic

“ What other dynasty in Western Europe does not envy William his six handsome, sturdy, and superbly healthy little sons? Seeing them with their shining, bright-eyed faces and ordinary well-worn clothes, one cannot but reflect upon the contrast afforded at Vienna, where the great rival house of Hapsburg is dying miserably out in pallid epileptics and vicious dullards.
These six fine boys, the oldest of whom is now in his tenth year, are reared in the Spartan traditions of the Hohenzollerns. Winter and summer they are up at six o’clock and into their cold tubs with merciless punctuality. ”

“ He holds himself with arrow-like straightness, bears his uniform or robes with proud grace, and draws his features into a kind of mask of imperial dignity and reserved wisdom and strength very impressive to the beholder. It is with what may be called this official countenance of William’s that the general public is chiefly familiar, for he assumes it in front of the photographer’s camera, just as he does on parade, at formal gatherings, and even in his carriage when he drives through the streets. ”

“ One of the most important functions of an Emperor must surely be to look like an Emperor.
But in private life, when the absence of ceremonial and the presence of none but friends permit him to unbend, we see quite another William. He does not now give, the impression of being a tall man, and his face wears a softened and kindly expression prone to break into an extremely sweet and winning smile. ”

“ But neither the blood nor the training of princes helps them to put thoughts of self aside—and in William’s case a long chain of circumstances bound him to a position which, though we may find it extremely unpleasant to the eye, seemed to him a simple matter of duty and of justice to himself and to Prussia.
The world gladly preserves and cherishes an idealized picture of the knightly Kaiser Frederic, facing certain death with intrepid calm, and labouring devotedly to turn what fleeting days might be left him to the advantage of liberalism in Germany. ”

“ And the Germany which, under the impulse of a chivalrous and ardent young leader, finds itself thrilled now by this apocalyptic picture of ideals realized, and of government by the best that is in men instead of the worst, is certainly a much pleasanter subject for contemplation than that recent Germany which, under Bismarck, sneered at every spiritualizing ambition or thought, and roughly thrust its visionaries into prison or exile. ”

“ He cannot see too many uniforms about him, and he literally inundates Berlin with martial pageants. One might suppose that the effect of this would be to satiate the Berliners, but they maintain a most vigorous and unabated interest in seeing the troops march by, and throng the sidewalks every time as if the spectacle had all the excitement of novelty.
In almost every other country the personal tastes or whims of the sovereign, if he be at all a man of the world, leave a certain mark upon the every-day dress of the people about him. ”

“ In place of their amorphous Utopia, he throws upon the canvas before the Socialists the splendid fantasy of a beneficent absolutism which shall be also a democracy, in which everybody shall be good to everybody else, and all shall sleep soundly every night, rocked in the consciousness that their Kaiser is looking out for them, to see justice done in every corner, and happiness the law of the land. ”

“ The precipitate haste with which the young Kaiser had rushed off to visit St. Petersburg, almost before the public signs of mourning for his father had been removed in Berlin and Potsdam, had impressed everybody as curious. Nearly a year had now elapsed, and the failure of the Czar to say anything about returning the visit was growing to seem odder still. It was, of course no secret that the Czar did not like William. No two men could present greater points of difference, physically and mentally. ”

“ One feels that these two passages from his own diary—the utterances of November and the reflections of March—show distinctly why the practical rulers, soldiers, and statesmen of Prussia distrusted Frederic. They saw him more eager and strenuous about grasping the imperial dignity than any one else—willing even to break treaties and force Bavaria, Saxony, and Würtemberg into the empire at the cannon’s mouth, and then they heard him lamenting that until he came to the throne there would not be enough “uprightness” to insure The Empress Frederic “constitutional methods.” ”

“ But there had been no reconciliation, and the unjust old quarrel still drew a malignant gash of division through the political and social relations of the German people. Anti-Semitism in the same way lingered on, powerless for much overt mischief, but serving to keep alive the miserable race dissensions which have wrought such harm in Germany, and lending the apparent sanction of the Court to Berlin’s, social ostracism of the Jews. William’s broadening perceptions grasped now the necessity of putting an end to both these survivals of intolerance. ”

“ Europe has seen nothing like it before. Within these twenty years Berlin has grown like a veritable Chicago. And not only has it attracted to itself hundreds of thousands of new citizens, and spread itself out on the Brandenburg plain over new square miles of stately brick and mortar and asphalt, but it has sapped the pre-eminence of its more ancient rivals, each in its speciality. ”

“ The purport of these proclamations, shot forth from the printing press while the news of Frederic’s death was still in the air, fitted well the precipitancy of their appearance. William delivered a long eulogy upon his grandfather, made only a passing allusion to his father, recited the warlike achievements and character of his remoter ancestors, and closed by saying: “Thus we belong to each other, I and the army; thus we were born for one another; and firmly and inseparably will we hold together, whether it is God’s will to give us peace or storm.” ”

“ No doubt it is in great part due to the influence of this standing example that Prussia leads the van of civilization in its proportion of scholars and teachers, and has made its name a synonym for all that is thorough and exhaustive in educational systems and theories. The dawn of this notion of a specially Spartan and severe practical schooling for his heir, in the primitive and curiously-limited brain of the first King Frederic William, really marked an era in the world’s conception of what education meant. ”

“ Unfortunately, this swift and unexpected shifting of history’s lime-light revealed young William in extremely repellent colours. Many circumstances, working together in the shadows behind the throne, had combined to put him into a temporary attitude toward his parents, which showed very badly under this sudden and fierce illumination. “Ho, ho! He is a bad son, then, is he?” we all said, and made up our minds to dislike him on the spot. ”

“ In the new Berlin, of which I shall speak presently, the Jews occupy a more commanding and dominant position than they have ever had in any other important city since the fall of Jerusalem. For this the Germans have themselves largely to blame. The military bent of the ascendant Prussians has warped the whole Teutonic mind toward unduly glorifying the army. The prizes of German upper-class life are all of a military sort. Every nobleman’s son, every bright boy in the wealthier citizens’ stratum, aspires to the uniform. ”

“ Thus with practical completeness had the ancient dynasties of old Germany been subordinated to and absorbed by the ascendency of the Hohenzollerns, when young William II stepped upon the throne. Thus, too, with this passing glance at their abasement or annihilation, the way is cleared for us to study the young chief of this mighty and consolidated Empire, to examine his personality and his power, and, by tracing their growth during the first three years of his reign, to forecast their ultimate mark upon the history of his time. ”

“ Every smart public servant in Russia is governed by the knowledge that his imperial master has a peculiar aversion to all forms of bother, and values his officials precisely in proportion as they make short and infrequent reports, free from all accounts of unpleasant things, and, still more important, from all meddlesome suggestions of reform. When a Russian diplomat was asked, a year ago, what the Czar’s personal attitude toward William was, he answered expressively by shrugging his shoulders and putting his fingers in his ears. ”

“ But it is not on specific achievements that the tremendous popularity which William has won for himself during the past year is founded. We are by no means within view of the end of the game, but it is already apparent that his greatest strength lies in the certainty and sureness of touch with which he appeals to the inborn German liking for lofty and noble visions of actions. The possibility—probability if you like—that these visions will never get themselves materialized, is not so important as it seems. Socialism in Germany is far more a matter of imagination than of fact. ”

“ The element of imaginative men who had themselves little or nothing to complain of, but who dreamed of a vague Social Democracy as an idealized refuge from the harsh, dry bureaucracy and brutal militarism of Bismarck’s government, played a large and larger part in each successive augmentation of the Socialists’ voting strength. For want of a better word we may say that William is a dreamer too. ”

“ This sharp and clamorous note of contradiction came from Berlin, where a helmeted and crimson-cloaked young man, still in his thirtieth year, stood erect on a throne, surrounded by the bowing forms of twenty ruling sovereigns, and proclaimed, with the harsh, peremptory voice of a drill-sergeant, that he was a War Lord, a Mailed Hand of Providence, and a sovereign specially conceived, created, and invested with power by God, for the personal government of some fifty millions of people. ”

“ The Reichstag at Berlin is by no means powerful in the sense that Parliament is in London or Congress in Washington. It is a convention of spectacled professors, country nobles, and professional men desirous of advertisement or the pretence of employment, with a sprinkling of smart financiers and professional politicians who have personal ends to serve. They play at legislation—some seriously, others not—but as a rule what they do and say makes next to no difference whatever. They have not even the power of initiating legislation. ”

“ In 1862 the Prussian Diet and Prussian society generally were in open revolt against the new king, William I. Constitutionalism and the spread of modern ideas had made the old absolutist system of the Hohenzollerns impossible; budgets were thrown out, constituencies were abetted in their mutiny by the nobles, and the newspaper press was fiercely hostile. The King, a frank, kindly, slow-minded old soldier, did not know what to do. The thought of surrendering his historic prerogatives under pressure, and the resource of sweeping Berlin’s streets with grape-shot, were equally hateful to him. ”

“ Withal courageous, enterprising, ambitious, hot-headed, but with a heart of gold, sympathetic in the highest degree, impulsive, spirited, vivacious in character, and gifted with a talent for repartee in conversation which would almost make the listener doubt his being a German. He adores the army, by which he is idolized in return. He has known how, despite his extreme youth, to win popularity in all classes of society. He is highly educated, well read, busies his mind with projects for the welfare of his country, and has a striking keenness of perception for everything relating to politics. ”

“ In his speech to the officers of the English fleet at Athens he said that his interest in their navy dated from the earliest days of his boyhood, when he played about Portsmouth dockyard and gained impressions of the vastness and splendour of British shipping which had vividly coloured his imagination for all time. No other German ruler has ever given so much thought to naval matters, and it is his openly-expressed ambition to give the Empire during his reign a fighting fleet which shall rank among the great navies of the world. ”

“ This action of the emotional sick man, returning through the March snowstorm to play his brief part of phantom Kaiser, created much talk in Germany three years ago, and Friedberg, upon the strength of it, plumed himself greatly as the chief friend of the new monarch. He was the first Jew ever decorated by that exalted and exclusive Black Eagle—and during the short reign of ninety-nine days he held himself like the foremost man in the Empire. ”

“ For a young man descended from such phenomenally thrifty people as the Hohenzollerns and Wettins have always been, William has remarkably lavish, not to say prodigal, notions about money. He was left a very rich man by his father’s death, and a complaisant Reichstag shortly thereafter largely increased the amount of his civil list, but for all that prudent Germans shake their heads over the immense schemes of expenditure to which he is already committed. ”

“ Even the splendid University of Berlin exerts a liberalizing influence rather through the public political attitude of its professors than by the diffusion of literary tastes among the community. This fact, together with the recollections which associate the late Emperor Frederic with bookish people, and the irritated consciousness that a very large proportion of Germany’s present authors are Jews and Radicals, gives the contemptuous attitude of Berlin’s aristocratic and military classes toward literature a decided political twist. ”