Imperial Germany

“ The Emperor William concluded his proclamation to the German People with these words: "May God permit us, and our successors to the Imperial crown, to give at all times increase to the German Empire, not by the conquests of war, but by the goods and gifts of peace, in the path of national prosperity, freedom and morality!" After the end of the war was assured, he left Paris, and passed in a swift march of triumph through Germany to Berlin, where the popular enthusiasm was extravagantly exhibited. ”

“ On the 18th of January, 1871, within the Palace of Versailles,—the siege of Paris being still in progress,— amidst indescribable enthusiasm, the Imperial dignity was formally conferred upon King William, and Germany became a constitutional Empire.
Thus amidst the throes of war the free German nation was born. The German people, after long centuries of division and servitude, had at last found Freedom and Unity. ”

“ The greatest triumph for Imperial Germany lay in her success in enlisting the very elements amongst the Allies which might most be expected to oppose her. Although there was no country in the world where monarchy was so adored, militarism so universally admired, where rank and birth played so important a part, and the working classes, though cared for, so rigidly kept in subjection, Germany from the time of Bismarck onwards has always been the "spiritual home" of British Socialists, democrats, and pacifists, just as in France she has always found her principal allies in the masonic lodges. ”

“ In speech after speech he proclaimed the world-mission of Germany, of which he himself was the divinely appointed instrument; Germans are “the salt of the earth [1] ;” they must not “weary in the work of civilization,” and Germanism, like the spirit of imperial Rome, must expand and impose itself. [2] This new imperialism, too, had a religious basis, for “the whole of human life hinges simply and solely on our attitude towards our Lord and Saviour.” [3] The emperor's progresses in the East were conceived in the spirit of the new crusade, at once Christian and German ”

“ Is it not rather the booty over which God and the devil—I was about to say the Kaiser and the Pope—are still wrangling? You will admit that for more than a thousand years, the unifying principle was the imperial principle. People talk of the Thirty Years' War as having disintegrated Germany. I should say it was the thousand years' war, of which the Thirty Years' War was only the worst excess, the worst paroxysm of that plague of religious dissension with which the Germans are inoculated. And without unity, Germany is a very queer structure. ”

“ In Germany the dangerous confusion of the national monarchy with the tradition of the Roman Empire had continued fatal to the German Kingdom, even after the imperial idea had ceased to exert any commanding influence over men's minds. The royal power in consequence became the merest shadow of its former self. Central organisation ceased to exist. Private war and general anarchy were chronic. The national life waxed cold, when uncherished by a strong national monarchy ”

“ Instead of strengthening the allegiance of the Germans towards their sovereign, the imperial title was the means of steadily undermining it. To the connexion of their kingdom with the Empire they owe the fact that for centuries they were the most divided of European nations, and that they have only recently begun to create a genuinely united state. France was made up of a number of loosely connected lands, each with its own lord, when Germany, under Otto, was to a large extent moved by a single will, well organized and strong. ”

“ During the Napoleonic wars Germany, as every one knows, was, generally speaking, in the grip of the French Imperial power. To follow the vicissitudes and fluctuations of fortune throughout Central Europe during these years lies outside our present purpose. ”

“ I will merely endeavour, at the end of this21 chapter, to summarize the most striking features of the Imperial temperament, and to indicate the aspect under which he must appear to us hereafter in the light of an appalling war. After all, in the man who sways the destinies of Germany, it is the statesman who claims our chief interest, because of his attempt to give a new direction to the destinies of Europe. ”

“ The Empire wasted its strength in imperial ambitions and foreign conquests instead of consolidating, organizing and unifying its own territories and the fact that the imperial crown was elective for many generations before it became hereditary in the House of Hapsburg checked the unification of Germany during the Middle Ages. ”

“ In the present Empire of Germany there are no other great figures [Pg 254] to balance the Imperial personage, and I do not see how other great figures are likely to arise. A great number of fine and capable persons must be failing to develop, failing to tell, under the shadow of this too prepotent monarchy. There are certain limiting restrictions imposed upon Germans through the Imperial activity, that must finally be bad for the intellectual atmosphere which is Germany's ultimate strength. ”

“ It concerned the imperial dignity of Germany, but it exercised so powerful a secondary influence upon affairs most thoroughly English that even in a history of England a short discussion must be devoted to it.
The increasing weakness of the Emperor Matthias rendered his speedy end probable; and all preparations were already being made in the house of Austria to secure the succession of the Archduke Ferdinand of Styria to the imperial throne, as well as to his own hereditary kingdoms and provinces. No arrangement could in itself have been more suitable in the nature of things. ”

“ After the Peace of Brétigny they were disbanded, and being without employment, formed bands under their own leaders, and committed frightful ravages in France, and, later, in Italy.
Free Imperial Cities.
Certain towns in Germany, owing allegiance to no sovereign prince, excepting only to the Emperor. They exercised sovereign powers within their own limits, and sent representatives to the Diet. In 1790 they were fifty-one in number. The three last cities to retain their privileges were Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg, which in 1871 became an integral part of the German Empire. ”

“ War founded this Empire—war and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one-third of the habitable globe, when we propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally refuses; and pointing, not without justice, to the road by which England, sword in hand, has climbed to her unmatched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no other, Germany is determined also to ascend! ”

“ Thus ignobly fell the noblest of the ancient Germans, the man whose patriotism saved the realm of the Teutonic tribes from becoming a province of the empire of Rome. Had not Hermann lived, the history of Europe might have pursued a different course, and the final downfall of the colossus of the south been long averted, Germany acting as its bulwark of defence instead of becoming the nursery of its foes. ”

“ But its determination to attach them to the new German Empire, and to make that Empire the leading industrial State of the Continent, has had a complete triumph. So far as education, technical training, research, and enlightened laws can make a nation great, Germany is surely on the high road to national and industrial supremacy.
It is a strange contrast that meets our eyes if we look back to the years before the advent of King William and Bismarck to power. In the dark days of the previous reign Germany was weak, divided, and helpless. ”

“ It only showed the insane vanity of German Imperialism, drunk with victory, and the absolute incapacity of German statesmen to understand other races, so that they were always applying the simple common measure which was law for themselves: Force, the supreme reason. Naturally, such a brutal demand, made of an ancient nation, rich in its past ages of a glory and a supremacy in Europe, such as Germany had never known, had had exactly the opposite effect to that which Germany expected. ”

“ How easy it would have been to secure the allegiance of the Germans, who are unable to withstand the attraction of military glory, for whom an oath of allegiance is a mere nothing, and who felt for France an affection which we cruelly drove out of them!... Germany, which always admires the marvellous, long preserved its admiration for the Emperor. ”

“ When the army has been brought to such a state as to command respect, then I will take the first opportunity to declare war with Austria, burst asunder the German Confederation, bring the middle and smaller States into subjection, and give Germany a national union under the leadership of Prussia. ”

“ The note was given in a speech of the emperor’s on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the empire, in which he said, “the German empire has become Welt-Politik. a world empire.” The ruling idea of this new Welt-Politik was that Germany could no longer remain merely a continental power; owing to the growth of population she depended for subsistence on trade and exports; she could not maintain herself amid the rivalry of nations unless the government was able actively to support German traders in all parts of the world. ”

“ The general situation of the German Empire in the period before the war had become continually more brilliant, and for that very reason continually more difficult from the point of view of foreign politics. Unprecedented progress in industry, commerce, and world traffic had made Germany prosperous. The curve of our development tended steadily upward. ”

“ Nothing but making the empire hereditary in the House of Austria, can give it that strength and efficiency, which I wish it had, for the sake of the balance of power. For, while the princes of the empire are so independent of the emperor, so divided among themselves, and so open to the corruption of the best bidders, it is ridiculous to expect that Germany ever will, or can act as a compact and well-united body against France. ”

“ The spectacle of German Imperialism, boastful, selfish, narrow, and altogether hateful, in its terrible blood-dance through Europe, has been an object-lesson to humanity against excesses of national vanity and national egotism and against Imperial pride. ”

“ Had not the uprising of the peasants been shamefully betrayed by the leaders of German culture and civilization, the development of the nation would, at that time, have already assumed a normal form, and not only would Germany be the equal of the other civilized nations, but as the first-born modern nation, would have held the roost prominent place among them. ”

“ Millions of Germans in Alsace-Lorraine, Bohemia, Poland, and East Prussia were transferred to alien domination; millions of others in German Austria were denied the right of self-determination in the form of union with Germany ”

“ You may well rejoice that [177] you are young Germans, as you travel through the stretch from Aix to Mainz, that is, from Charlemagne to the time of Germany’s splendor under Barbarossa.
But why did all this glory come to naught? Why did the German Empire dwindle away? Because the old empire was not founded upon a strictly national basis. The universality idea of the old Roman Empire of the German Nation did not admit of any development in the spirit of German nationality. The life of a nation depends upon its frontiers, upon the personality of its people, and upon its racial traits. ”

“ Can any one interest himself in this German Empire? Where is the new thought? Is it only a new combination of power? All the worse, if it does not know its own mind. Peace and laisser aller are not types of politics for which I have any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest thoughts to victory—the only things that can make me interested in Germany. England's small-mindedness is the great danger now on earth. ”

“ The control of the Presses of the various nationalities composing the Dual Monarchy is so absolute that the real facts of the war are unknown to the multitude. Germany is not idle in Austria or elsewhere. ”

“ The three elements of recent German greatness are the extension of her territory; contiguous territories in Europe and in other continents colonial possessions; the enlargement of German commerce and wealth, and to these ends the firm establishment of her military supremacy in Europe. These are the ideas on the true greatness of nations which have prevailed in the ruling oligarchy of Germany for at least sixty years, and now seem to have been accepted, or acquiesced in, by the whole German people. In this view, the foundation of national greatness is fighting power. ”

“ After that, William II, King of Prussia, will be unable to descry a single cloud on the German horizon. And Germany, Germany will be above and over all! The glory and the splendour of the Hohenzollerns will shine upon the entire universe, and the German Emperor, Emperor of Emperors, like the King of Kings, will have nothing to fear until the Heavens fall. ”

“ On the 16th of June the army made a triumphant entrance into Berlin, William riding at its head, to be triumphantly hailed as emperor by his own people on his own soil. All Germany, with the exception of Austria, was for the first time fully united into an empire, the minor princes having ceased to exist as ruling potentates. ”

“ In Germany, notwithstanding the greatest division, the most peculiar separation of religion and even of races, yet nevertheless that great German empire is coming forward as a monument of the civilization of the future world, and as the centre of all Europe against any form of Oriental barbarism. ”

“ While measures of the most far-reaching historical importance were thus being adopted in the State on which the future fate of Germany was to depend, and while revolution was being superseded by healthy progress, a German Empire of the first rank, the Empire of intellect, grew up in the domain of art and science, where German character and endeavour found the deepest and fullest expression. ”