In trying to understand the influences that dominated the government of Germany in its relations to foreign countries it must be clearly realized and remembered that the real rulers of Germany came from the caste that had for nearly two centuries furnished the majority of the members of the officer-corps. The Emperor-King, a.s.suming to rule by the grace of G.o.d, in reality ruled by the grace of the old n.o.bility and landed gentry of Prussia, from whose ranks he sprang. This had been aptly expressed eighty years earlier by the poet Chamisso, in whose _Nachtwachterlied_ appear the lines:
_Und der Konig absolut,_ _Wenn er unseren Willen tut!_
(Let the King be absolute so long as he does our will.) It was inevitable that the views of this cla.s.s should determine the views of government, and the only remarkable thing about the situation was that some of the men who, by the indirect mandate of this caste, were responsible for the conduct of the government, were less bellicose and more pacific than their mandate-givers. There were some men who, infected with the virus of militarism, dreamed of the _Welt-Imperium_, the eventual domination of the world by Germany, to be attained by peaceful methods if possible, but under the threatening shadow of the empire"s mighty military machine, which could be used if necessary. Yet even in their own caste they formed a minority.
Such, in brief outline, was Germany--an empire built on the bayonets of the world"s greatest and most efficient army and administered by tens of thousands of loyal and efficient civil servants. How was it possible that it could be overthrown?
In the last a.n.a.lysis it was not overthrown; it was destroyed from within by a cancer that had been eating at its vitals for eighty years. And the seeds of this cancer, by the strange irony of fate, were sown in Germany and cultivated by Germans.
The cancer was Socialism, or Social-Democracy, as it is termed in Germany.
CHAPTER III.
Internationalism and Vaterlandslose Gesellen.
The concluding statement in the previous chapter must by no means be taken as a general arraignment of Socialism, and it requires careful explanation. Indiscriminately to attack Socialism in all its economic aspects testifies rather to mental hardihood than to an understanding of these aspects. A school of political thought which has so powerfully affected the polity of all civilized nations in the last fifty years and has put its impress upon the statutes of those countries cannot be lightly dismissed nor condemned without qualification.
Citizens of the recently allied countries will be likely also to see merit in Socialism because of the very fact that, in one of its aspects, it played a large part in overthrowing an enemy government. Let this be clearly set down and understood at the very beginning: the aspects of Socialism that made the German governmental system ripe for fall were and are inimical not only to the governmental systems of all states, but to the very idea of the state itself.
More: The men responsible for the _debacle_ in Germany--and in Russia--regard the United States as the chief stronghold of capitalism and of the privilege of plutocracy, and the upsetting of this country"s government would be hailed by them with as great rejoicing as were their victories on the continent.
The aspect of Socialism that makes it a menace to current theories of government is "internationalism"--its doctrine that the scriptural teaching that all men are brothers must become of general application, and the negation of patriotism and the elimination of state boundaries which that doctrine logically and necessarily implies. And this doctrine was "made in Germany."
The basic idea of Socialism goes back to the eighteenth century, but its name was first formulated and applied by the Englishman Robert Owen in 1835. Essentially this school of political thought maintains that land and capital generally--the "instruments of production"--should become the property of the state or society. "The alpha and omega of Socialism is the transformation of private competing aggregations of capital into a united collective capital."[7] Ethically Socialism is merely New Testament Christianity, but, as will be seen later, it is in effect outspokenly material, irreligious and even actively anti-religious.
[7] _Die Quintessenz des Sozialismus_, by Schaffle.
Socialism received its first clear and intelligent formulation at the hands of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both Germans, although Marx was of Jewish descent. In 1847 these two men reorganized under the name "Communist League" a society of Socialists already in existence in London. The "Manifesto of the Communist League" issued by these two men in 1848 was the first real proclamation of a Socialism with outspoken revolutionary and international aims. It demanded that the laboring-cla.s.ses should, after seizure of political might, "by despotic interference with the property rights and methods of production of the _bourgeoisie_, little by little take from them all capital and centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.
e., in the hands of the proletariat organized as the ruling-cla.s.s." Marx and Engels recommended therefore the expropriation of real estate, the confiscation of the property of all emigrants and the centralization in the hands of the state of all means of credit (banks) and transportation.
The dominant idea of the Socialism of this period was that set forth by Marx in his book, _Das Kapital_, which became the textbook of the movement. It was, in brief, that all wealth is produced by labor, and that the surplus above the amount necessary for the bare existence of the laborers is appropriated by the capitalists. Marx"s admirers have often endeavored to show that the communism advocated by him in these first years was not the violent communism that has eventuated in the last years in Bolshevism and kindred movements under other names. The question is of only academic interest, in view of the fact that Marx himself later realized that existing inst.i.tutions could not so easily be overturned as he had hoped and believed in 1848. Engels had also come to a realization of the same fact, and in 1872, when the two men prepared a new edition of the Manifesto of twenty-four years earlier, they admitted frankly:
"The practical application of these principles will always and everywhere depend upon historically existing conditions, and we therefore lay no especial stress upon the revolutionary measures proposed. In the face of the tremendous development of industry and of the organization of the laboring-cla.s.ses accompanying this development, as well as in view of practical experience, this program is already in part antiquated. The Commune (of 1871 in Paris) has supplied the proof that the laboring-cla.s.s cannot simply take possession of the machinery of state and set it in motion for its own purposes."
This awakening, however, came, as has been pointed out, nearly a quarter of a century after the founding of a Socialist kindergarten which openly taught revolution. In its first years this kindergarten concerned itself only with national (German) matters, and was only indirectly a menace to other countries by its tendency to awaken a spirit of unrest among the laboring-cla.s.ses and to set an example which might prove contagious. In 1864, however, the _Internationale_ was founded with the cooperation of Marx and Engels, and Socialism became a movement which directly concerned all the states of the world.
This development of Socialism was logical and natural, for its creed was essentially and in its origins international. It had originated in England in the days of the inhuman exploitation of labor, and especially child-labor, by conscienceless and greedy capitalists. It had been tried out in France. Prominent among its advocates were many Russians, notably Michael Bakunin, who later became an anarchist. Perhaps the majority of its advocates on the continent were Jews or of Jewish descent, for no other race has ever been so truly international and so little bound by state lines. The _Internationale_ had been in the air for years before it was actually organized; that organization was delayed for sixteen years by no means indicates that the idea was new in 1864.
The basic idea of the _Internationale_ has already been referred to. It accepted as a working-creed the biblical doctrine that G.o.d "hath made of one blood all nations of men," but it disregarded the further declaration in the same verse of the Scriptures that He "hath determined the bounds of their habitation." The Socialist creed teaches the brotherhood of man and the equality of all men irrespective of race, color or belief. The inescapable corollary of this creed is that patriotism, understood as unreasoning devotion to the real or supposed interests of the state, cannot be encouraged or even suffered. And this standpoint necessarily involves further the eventual obliteration of the state itself, for any state"s chief reason for existence in a non-altruistic world is the securing of special privileges, benefits, advantages and protection for its own citizens, without consideration for the inhabitants of other states. If this exercise of its power be prohibited, the state"s reason for existence is greatly diminished.
Indeed, it can have virtually only a social mission left, and a social mission pure and simple cannot inspire a high degree of patriotism.
Many non-Socialist thinkers have perceived the ant.i.thesis between the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man and the particularism of national patriotism. Bjornstjerne Bjornson wrote: "Patriotism is a stage of transition." This doctrine may come as a shock to the average reader, yet it is undoubtedly a prophetic and accurate statement of what will some day be generally accepted. Thoughtfully considered, the idea will be found less shocking than it at first appears. Neither Bjornson nor any other non-Socialist contemplates the abandonment of patriotism and state lines except by natural development. The world, in other words, is in a transitional stage, and when this transition shall have been completed it will find a world where the egoism of national patriotism has made way for the altruism of internationalism. And this will have been accomplished without violent revolutionary changes, but merely by a natural and peaceful evolutionary development.
Against such a development, if it come in the manner described and antic.i.p.ated, n.o.body can properly protest. But the Socialists of the international school--and this is what makes international Socialism a menace to all governments and gradually but surely undermined the German state--will not wait upon the slow processes of transition. Upon peoples for whom the flags of their respective countries are still emblems of interests transcending any conceivable interests of peoples outside their own state boundaries, emblems of an idea which must be unquestioningly and unthinkingly accepted and against which no dictates of the brotherhood of other men or the welfare of other human beings have any claim to consideration, the Socialists would impose over night their idea of a world without artificial state lines, and would subst.i.tute the red flag for those emblems which the majority of all mankind still reverence and adore. It requires no profound thinking to realize that such a change must be preceded by a long period of preparation if anarchy of production and distribution is to be avoided.
To impose the rule of an international proletariat under the present social conditions means chaos. The world has seen this exemplified in Russia, and yet Russia, where the social structure was comparatively simple and industry neither complex nor widely developed, was the country where, if anywhere today, such an experiment might have succeeded.
Socialist leaders, including even the internationalists, have perceived this. The murdered Jaures saw it clearly. But in the very nature of things, the vast majority of the adherents of these doctrines are not profound thinkers. Socialism naturally recruits itself from the lower cla.s.ses, and it is no disparagement to these to say that they are the least educated. Even in states where the higher inst.i.tutions of learning are free--and there are very few such places--the ability of the poor man"s son to attend them is limited by the necessity resting upon him to make his own living or to contribute to the support of his family. The tenets of national Socialism naturally appeal to the young man, who feels that he and his fellows are being exploited by those who own the "instruments of production," and who sees himself barred from the educational advantages which wealth gives. From the acceptance of the economic tenets of national Socialism to advocacy of internationalism is but a small step, easy to take for one who, in joining the Socialist party, finds himself the a.s.sociate of men who address him as "comrade"
and who look forward to a day when all men, white, black or yellow, shall also be comrades under one flag and enlisted in one cause--the cause of common humanity. These men realize no more than himself the fact that existing social conditions are the result of historical development and that they cannot be violently and artificially altered without destroying the delicate balance of the whole machine. And since this is the state of mind of the majority of the "comrades," even the wisest leaders can apply the brakes only with great moderation, for the leader who lags too far behind the majority of his party ceases to be a leader and finds his place taken by less intelligent or less scrupulous men.
Ferdinand La.s.salle, the brilliant but erratic young man who organized the first Socialist party in Germany, was a national Socialist. His party grew slowly at first, and in 1864, when he died, it had but 4,600 members. In 1863 Marx aided by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht,[8] formed the rival Confederation of German Unions upon an internationalistic basis. This organization joined the _Internationale_ at its congress in Nuremburg in 1868. The parties of Marx and La.s.salle maintained their separate ident.i.ties until 1875, when they effected a fusion at a congress in Gotha. The Marx adherents numbered at that time about 9,000 men and the La.s.salle adherents some 15,000, but the latter had already virtually accepted the doctrines of international Socialism and the _Internationale_, and the German Socialists had until the breaking out of the World War maintained their place as the apostles and leaders of internationalism.
[8] Called "the elder Liebknecht" to distinguish him from his son Karl Liebknecht, who was killed while under arrest in Berlin in the winter of 1919.
Socialism first showed itself as a political factor in Germany in 1867, when five Socialists were elected to the North German Diet. Two _Genossen_[9] were sent to the first Reichstag in 1871, with a popular vote of 120,000, and six years later nearly a half million red votes were polled and twelve Socialists took their seats in the Reichstag. The voting-strength of the party in Berlin alone increased from 6,700 in 1871 to 57,500 in 1877, or almost ninefold.
[9] _Genosse_, comrade, is the term by which all German-speaking Socialists address each other.
A propaganda of tremendous extent and extreme ability was carried on. No _bourgeois_ German politician except Bismarck ever had such a keen appreciation of the power of the printed word as did those responsible for Socialism"s missionary work. Daily newspapers, weekly periodicals and monthly magazines were established, and German Socialism was soon in possession of the most extensive and best conducted Socialist press in the world. The result was two-fold: the press contributed mightily to the spreading of its party"s doctrines and at the same time furnished a school in which were educated the majority of the party leaders.
Probably three quarters of the men who afterward became prominent in the party owed their rise and, to a great extent, their general education to their service on the editorial staffs of their party"s press. By intelligent reports and special Articles on news of interest to all members of the _Internationale_, whether German, French, English, or of what nationality they might be, this press made itself indispensable to the leaders of that movement all over the world, and contributed greatly to influencing the ideas of the Socialists of other lands.
Bismarck"s clear political vision saw the menace in a movement which openly aimed at the establishment of a German republic and at the eventual overthrow of all _bourgeois_ governments and the elimination of local patriotism and state lines. In 1878 he secured from the Reichstag the enactment of the famous _Ausnahmegesetze_ or special laws, directed against the Socialists. They forbade Socialist publications and literature in general, prohibited the holding of Socialist meetings or the making of speeches by adherents of the party. Even the circulation of Socialist literature was prohibited. The _Ausnahmegesetze_ legalized as an imperial measure the treatment that had already been meted out to Socialists in various states of the Empire. Following the Gotha congress in 1875, fifty-one delegates to the congress were sent to prison.
Wilhelm Liebknecht received a sentence of three years and eight months and Bebel of two years and eleven months. In Saxony, from 1870 to 1875, fifty Socialists underwent prison sentences aggregating more than forty years.
But Socialism throve on oppression. In politics, as in religion, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It would be praising any statesman of the "80"s too highly to say that he had learned that ideas cannot be combated with brute force, for the rulers of the world have not yet learned it. But Bismarck did perceive that, to give any promise of success, opposition to Socialism must be based upon constructive statesmanship. To many of the party"s demands no objection could be made by intelligent society. And so, in the address from the throne in 1881, an extended program of state socialism was presented. With the enactment of this program into law Germany took the first important step ahead along the road of state Socialism, and all her legislation for the next thirty years was profoundly influenced by socialistic thought, in part because of a recognition of the wisdom of some of Socialism"s tenets, in part because of a desire to draw the party"s teeth by depriving it of campaign material.
More than a decade earlier the Catholic Church in Germany had recognized the threatening danger and sought to counteract it by the organization of Catholic labor unions. It succeeded much better in its purpose than did the government, which is not to be wondered at, since the temporal affairs of the church have always been administered more intelligently than have the state affairs of any of the world"s governments. For many years Socialism made comparatively small gains in Roman Catholic districts. A similar effort by the Lutheran (State) Church in 1878 accomplished little, and Bismarck"s state Socialism also accomplished little to stop the spread of Socialist doctrines.
Kaiser Wilhelm II early realized the menace to the state of these enemies of patriotism and of all _bourgeois_ states. In a much quoted speech he termed the Socialists _vaterlandslose Gesellen_ (fellows without a Fatherland). The designation stung all German Socialists, who, ready as they were in theory to disavow all attachment to any state, did not relish this kind of public denunciation by their monarch. The word _Gesellen_, too, when used in this sense has an unpleasant connotation.
The Socialists, whose political tenets necessarily made them opponents of royalty and monarchism everywhere, were particularly embittered against a Kaiser whose contempt for them was so openly expressed. Their press, which consistently referred to him baldly as "Wilhelm II" sailed as closely into the wind of _lese majeste_ as possible, and sometimes too closely. Leading Socialist papers had their special _Sitzredacteur_, or "sitting-editor," whose sole function consisted in "sitting out" jail sentences for insulting the Kaiser or other persons in authority. Police officials, taking their keynote from the Kaiser, prosecuted and persecuted Socialists relentlessly and unintelligently. Funeral processions were stopped to permit policemen to remove red streamers and ribbons from bouquets on the coffins, and graves were similarly desecrated if the friends or mourners had ventured to bind their floral offerings with the red of revolutionary Socialism. The laws authorizing police supervision of all public meetings were relentlessly enforced against Socialists, and their gatherings were dissolved by the police-official present at the least suggestion of criticism of the authorities. There was no practical remedy against this abuse of power.
An appeal to the courts was possible, but a decision in June that a meeting in the preceding January had been illegally dissolved did not greatly help matters. Socialist meetings could not be held in halls belonging to a government or munic.i.p.ality, and the Socialists often or perhaps generally found it impossible to secure meeting-places in districts where the Conservatives or National Liberals were in control.
Federal, state and munic.i.p.al employees were forbidden to subscribe for Socialist publications, or to belong to that party.
The extent of these persecutions is indicated by a report made to the Socialist congress at Halle in 1890, shortly after the _Ausnahmegesetze_ had expired by limitation, after a vain attempt had been made to get the Reichstag to reenact them. In the twelve years that the law had been in operation, 155 journals and 1,200 books and pamphlets had been prohibited; 900 members of the party had been banished from Germany without trial; 1,500 had been arrested on various charges and 300 of these punished for violations of the law.
The _Ausnahmegesetze_ failed of their purpose just as completely as did the Six Acts[10] of 1820 in England. Even in 1878, the very year these laws were enacted, the Socialists polled more votes than ever before. In 1890 their total popular vote in the Empire was 1,427,000, which was larger than the vote cast for any other single party. They should have had eighty members in that year"s Reichstag, but the shift in population and consequent disproportionateness of the election districts kept the number of Socialist deputies down to thirty-seven. At the Reichstag election of 1893 their popular vote was 1,800,000, with forty-four deputies.
[10] These acts were pa.s.sed by Parliament after the Manchester Riots of 1819: to prevent seditious meetings for a discussion of subjects connected with church or state; to subject cheap periodical pamphlets on political subjects to a duty; to give magistrates the power of entering houses, for the purpose of seizing arms believed to be collected for unlawful purposes.
It may be seriously questioned whether Bismarck"s unfortunate legislation did not actually operate to increase the Socialists"
strength. Certain it is that it intensified the feeling of bitterness against the government, by men whose very creed compelled them to regard as their natural enemy even the most beneficent _bourgeois_ government, and who saw themselves stamped as Pariahs. This feeling found expression at the party"s congress in 1880 at Wyden, when a sentence of the program declaring that the party"s aim should be furthered "by every lawful means" was changed to read, "by every means." It must in fairness be recorded, however, that the revolutionary threat of this change appeared to have no effect on the subsequent att.i.tude of the party leaders or their followers. The record of German Socialism is remarkably free from violence and sabotage, and the revolution of 1918 was, as we shall see, the work of men of a different stamp from the elder Liebknecht and the st.u.r.dy and honest Bebel.
Two great factors in the growth of Socialism in Germany remain to be described. These were, first, the peculiar tendency of the Teutonic mind, already mentioned, to abstract philosophical thought, without regard to practicalities, and, second, the accident that the labor-union movement in Germany was a child of party-Socialism.
Socialism, in the last a.n.a.lysis, is nearer to New Testament Christianity than is any other politico-economic creed, and the professions and habits of thought of nearly all men in enlightened countries are determined or at least powerfully influenced by the precepts of Christ, no matter how far their practices may depart from these precepts. Few even of those most strongly opposed to Socialism oppose it on ethical grounds. Their opposition is based on the conviction that it is unworkable and impracticable; that it fails to take into consideration the real mainsprings of human action and conduct as society is today const.i.tuted. In an ideally altruistic society, they admit, it would be feasible, but, again, such a society would have no need of it. In other words, the fundamental objection is the objection of the practical man.
Whether his objection is insuperable it is no part of the purpose of the writer to discuss. What it is desired to make plain is that Socialism appeals strongly to the dreamer, the closet-philosopher who concerns himself with abstract ethical questions without regard to their practicality or practicability as applied to the economic life of an imperfect society. And there are more men of this type in Germany than in any other country.
Loosely and inefficiently organized labor unions had existed in Germany before the birth of the Socialist movement, but they existed independently of each other and played but a limited role. The first labor organization of national scope came on May 23, 1863, at Leipsic, when La.s.salle was instrumental in founding _Der allgemeine deutsche Arbeiterverein_ (National German Workmen"s Union). Organized labor, thus definitely committed to Socialism, remained Socialist. To become a member of a labor union in Germany--or generally anywhere on the continent--means becoming an enrolled member of the Socialist party at the same time. The only non-Socialist labor organizations in Germany were the Catholic Hirsch-Duncker unions, organized at the instance of the Roman Catholic Church to prevent the spread of Socialism. These were boycotted by all Socialists, who termed them the "yellow unions," and regarded them as union workmen in America regard non-union workers. It goes without saying that a political party which automatically enrolls in its membership all workmen who join a labor union cannot help becoming powerful.
That international Socialism is inimical to nationalism and patriotism has already been pointed out, but a word remains to be said on this subject with reference to specific German conditions. We have already seen how the Germany of the beginning of the nineteenth century was a loose aggregation of more than three hundred dynasties, most of which were petty princ.i.p.alities. The heritage of that time was a narrowly limited state patriotism which the Germans termed _Particularismus_, or particularism. Let the American reader a.s.sume that the State of Texas had originally consisted of three hundred separate states, each with its own government, and with customs and dialects varying greatly in the north and south. a.s.sume further that, after seventy years filled with warfare and political strife, these states had been re-formed into twenty-six states, with the ruler of the most powerful at the head of the new federation, and that several of the twenty-six states had reserved control over their posts, telegraphs, railways and customs as the price for joining the federation. Even then he will have but a hazy picture of the handicaps with which the Imperial German Government had to contend.
Particularism was to the last the curse and weakness of the German Empire. The Prussian regarded himself first as a Prussian and only in second place as a German. The Bavarian was more deeply thrilled by the white-and-blue banner of his state than by the black-white-red of the Empire. The republican Hamburger thanked the Providence that did not require him to live across the Elbe in the city of Altona, which was Prussian, and the inhabitants of the former kingdoms, duchies and princ.i.p.alities of Western Germany that became a part of Prussia during the decades preceding the formation of the Empire regularly referred to themselves as _Muss-Preussen_, that is, "must-Prussians," or Prussians by compulsion.
The attempt to stretch this narrowly localized patriotism to make it cover the whole Empire could not but result in a seriously diluted product, which offered a favorable culture-medium for the bacillus of internationalism. And in any event, to apply the standards of abstract ethical reasoning to patriotism is fatal. The result may be to leave a residue of traditional and racial attachment to one"s state, but that is not sufficient, in the present stage of human society, for the maintenance of a strong government. Patriotism of the my-country-right-or-wrong type must, like revealed religion, be accepted on faith. German patriotism was never of this extreme type, and in attacking it the Socialists made greater headway than would have been the case in most countries.