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The Kaiser’s crown at last, and how and why; herein, we sum up the very flower of our great man’s genius; and mark it well!

The very name “Kaiser” brings up memories of the Middle Ages, thence backward to the days of imperial C?sar. Kaiser, at best, is but C?sar, rewritten.

Yet Bismarck was at great pains to make clear that the substitution of Kaiser for King of Prussia involved no restoration of ancient imperial institutions.

The use of Kaiser, as the title for the new monarch, had behind it a deep, almost religious purpose, in conformity with the sense of nationality and brotherhood to which through long and painful development the German states had at last attained. Bismarck calls the return of the title “a political necessity, making for unity and centralization.”

“I was convinced,” he says, “that the pressure solidifying our imperial institutions would be more permanent the more the Prussian wearer of the imperial title should himself avoid that dangerous striving on the part of our dynasty to flaunt its own pre-eminence in the face of other dynasties. King William I was not free from this inclination ... to call forth a recognition of the superior prestige of Prussia’s crown, over the Kaiser’s title.”

The Kaiser idea is simple: He is the sworn servant “of” the people, but his terms are his own, viz., all is “for” the people, but not “through” the people.[221]

Such in a few words is the Bismarckian conception of a strong ruler.

It was not, then, to be “an expanded Prussia,” but a German Empire. And the Kaiser’s powers are hence the legal functions of an imperial organ, attached by the organic law of the Empire to the Prussian crown.

Thus Germany is a true state, but not a monarchy; sovereignty does not rest with the Kaiser, but with the totality of the allied governments. And in turn the old states became provinces of the Empire; and the Kaiser exercises his powers in the name of the Empire.

However, it must be recalled that Bismarck always detested political and social conformity, trampled conformity under foot, and with wild voice ridiculed conformity—especially when conformity meant to yield to the peasants a constructive share in the governments of the thirty-nine clashing German states. That is to say, his idea of freedom was to make the State paramount, guiding, directing and if need be disciplining the people.

Memories fasten themselves on us, at this moment, memories of the old days of struggle for nationality.

It was on Bismarck’s advice that, although Frederick William IV was bitten by the ambition to become ruler of United Germany, yet when the democratic Frankfort Diet offered him the crown, he did indignantly refuse; and many years later, his successor—that old man with the wonderful history!—William I, after the victories of Sedan and Gravelotte, was mightily afraid that the Berlin Parliament, representing democratic conformity, would offer him the honor of Emperor before that gift could be bestowed by the princes themselves.

Ludwig of Bavaria in his letter to William, urging the imperial title, Kaiser, or German Emperor, uses these words: “I have proposed to the German princes to join me in urging Your Majesty to assume the title, German Emperor, in connection with the exercise of the pr?dial rights of the Federation.” But it was Bismarck’s masterpiece of politics, equal[222] to his stroke of Holstein, that sent to the King of Bavaria the proper diplomatic advices, to be acted upon by the South German princes and returned to the supposedly surprised William, urging on him to become German Emperor.

In spite of Bismarck’s fine hand, Bavaria at first refused to accept the Iron Chancellor’s advices. There is light on this topic in Herr Ottokar Lorenz’s “Foundation of the German Empire,” making clear among other facts that “the German eagle had a narrow escape from dying in the egg.” Twice negotiations were broken off; finally, when the King of Bavaria tried to get his countrymen behind him in the plan to proclaim William of Prussia, German Emperor, at Versailles, “it was only after some hesitation and much regret.”

It took the Bavarian Landtag a month to make up its mind! To read the heated discussions is to destroy the legend that the proclamation of the Kaiser was by spontaneous demand.

But we must not press these things too far. The fact that King William had to fight for the magnificent honor he had won for himself and his country, is merely to say that men are men; nor should we ever forget that nothing creates so much jealousy as prosperity.

Herr Bismarck had the cleverness to win, at last, and after that there is little to be added.

For that matter, the much-lauded revolt of the American colonists against Britain was originally not endorsed by over one-third of the inhabitants. Yet, with the final victory, like a pack the colonists went over to the winning side, saying, “We told you so.”

We have nothing but praise for the way in which Bismarck created his Versailles masterpiece. That there was a political squabble behind the curtain, in Bavaria, was to be expected.

Tell me, did you ever achieve any success that you did not have to go out and fight for?

It is an amiable fiction that men “recognize” each other’s work, in politics, and “urge” on them rulership over nations. They, too, have to get out and fight for it!

[223]

This necessity for turbulent striving to carry out political ideas was especially true of Germany during the period of which we write. Complex conditions long made National Unity a profound problem, not only in politics but in human nature.

All manner of blacklegs were at work with here and there an honest man; national oratory was at once visionary, ludicrous and tragical; fanatics of the bomb, the knife and the poison-cup for years were abroad in the land. These situations, growing from times past, compel you to hold with Bismarck that ultimate appeal to the sword was after all the only hope for a new Germany.

Bismarck did it grossly, but at least he went through with it—call it militarism or what you please.

For that matter, neither Britain, France, Belgium, (nor the United States with her 186-odd variants of Christianity in her 186-odd religious sects), grew out of political cynicism, least of all out of some aloof system of esoteric idealism.

The King of Britain owes his crown to the sword; the President of France his high office to the sword; the Belgian King traces his legitimacy to revolution; likewise, to revolution the President of the United States owes his right to rule during his brief hour of official authority.

But what would you in this imperfect world?

German Unity sprang from the needs of human hearts—fighting bravely for what they hold important!—even as you fight for your rights, or consent to remain a slave. And Germans never will be slaves.

Therefore, know it now and be done with it, or make the most of it if you are inclined to snarl at realities: The Kaiser’s crown came by the sword. Surely, you did not expect that it fell from HeavenAs long as men are men, they must fight for what they achieve; and the German Empire is no exception;—nor is there any good reason to expect that history can possibly be other than the record of human nature, in action.

Up to his downfall in 1890, Bismarck was an uncompromising Royalist, scoffed at the common people as a source of political sovereignty.[224]

No man knows what is, ultimately, for the glory of God; but when in bitter retirement, thrown off by the grandson of William I, Bismarck, replying to the old dispute about the interior causes of the Franco-Prussian war, to which William owes his title German Emperor, it is a fact that Bismarck proceeded to weaken the royalist tradition by forcing the government to produce the Ems dispatch; and it was then made clear to the common people that there was behind it all the under-play of politics, thus dispelling the religious and patriotic glamour that the war had been entered upon to protect the Fatherland against the land-lust of Napoleon the Little.

Had now the military right been used not to express the will of God, but the ends of human expediency?

Bismarck certainly knew all this before the great war, but for reasons of political expediency suppressed the facts till in a moment of indignation he dropped the mask and called on all honest men to know the truth.

Bismarck, twenty years before, had with equal indignation set up before the Prussians that their King had been grossly insulted, and that Napoleon wanted the left bank of the Rhine.

But let us forget all this, in a broad acknowledgment of the fact that human beings at various times, for their own ends, do indeed wear various masks; and let us not keep up the fight forevermore;—but here and now let us grant to Bismarck final absolution, not claiming for him the perfection of the demigod.

After all is said, history is not the record of some far-off manifest destiny, but instead is merely the sordid story of human nature in action, reciting at best the littleness that appertains to men’s ways, with now and then the unrealized expression of some fleeting larger hope.
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His Versailles masterpiece reduced to its final analysis, in terms of human nature; wherein it is made clear that Bismarck knew his German peasant as well as his Prussian King.

The core of human interest around which Bismarck shaped his stupendous politico-military drama, in order that, in the end, William might become German Emperor, was neither an appeal to parliaments nor to armies, but a reply to a peculiar psychological something in the Teuton character that makes respect for the strong hand.

It is only in the largest way that this fact may be made clear. It escapes categorical statement;—and can best be glimpsed behind the history of events, from the psychological rather than the physical side.

Bismarck manipulated an invisible but very real human force, made it the breath of life for his plans!

That he warped on the Nineteenth Century the old Holy Roman Empire conception of Divine-right is an amazing politico-military fact.

It was only after many brilliant achievements that, at the height of his power, C?sar linked himself with the gods. C?sar’s earlier life knew no such pretensions, but as he climbed the dizzy heights of fame, at last the day came when his kinship with the immortal gods themselves alone satisfied his inordinate ambitions; and from that time forth Divine-right became an established fact in the theological-political code of kings; and thus on, down through the Middle Ages, until the French Revolution destroyed confidence in the old-line absolute monarch, as vicegerent of Christ on this earth.

However, that Otto von Bismarck, the blond Pomeranian giant, warped on the Nineteenth Century the Imperial C?sarian idea of the Divine-right of kings is not the final fact of his work. The inner fact is that he urged the King’s authority as a foil against the mob-idea of the French Revolution.[226] The liberty-crazed masses needed a strong hand at this time.

What made possible the coming of the Empire was not, after all, traceable entirely to the political side of Bismarck’s hotly contested struggles.

The innate craving of the German people for a strong ruler has a subtle inner meaning, too easily overlooked.

In the final analysis, Bismarck’s position expresses Prussian sense of National security in a powerful war lord, rather than supports the conception of master and man. His was not the position of lord and servant; rather it means a manly, intelligent admission of the necessity of a strong central authority in the nation.

By the force of years of tedious repetitions, building on the plain laws of mental suggestion, Bismarck at last created certain dominating ideas; but the germ of these ideas already existed in Prussia’s consciousness.

The Prussian character supporting Divine-right represents a singular compound of cadet, blind confidence in aristocratic leadership, religious radicalism, worship of ancestors approximating the Chinese sentiment, and finally, a racial psychology of rulership, based on the rattan of Frederick the Great. On this total combination, the astute Bismarck played for thirty long years, warring for his lord and master, the Hohenzollerns.

A careful reading of Bismarck’s speeches, letters, dispatches, will show that whatever political expediency he may at various times have followed, and however often he may have changed front, there is still in his great labor a tireless repetition of ideas commanding respect for vested authority, for ancestry, for a ruling class as against the ruled, and always for absolute dog-like obedience to some central commanding power.

The psychological something on which Bismarck builded his German Empire is Bismarck’s recognition of the peculiarities of his German peasant, as well as of his Prussian King. We come now to some great central racial facts.

Bismarck’s unending eulogies of military glory, now extolled[227] in the high language of a victorious commander-in-chief, again as a drill-sergeant sharply criticising the squad, are not to be dismissed as the expressions of one i............