German Problems and Personalities Part 10

As we hinted at the outset, the munic.i.p.ality has far greater powers in Germany than in Great Britain. It is true that the police authority is under the control of the central power, that education inspection is under the control of the Church, which is another kind of spiritual police. It is true that the City Fathers are debarred from mixing with party politics. But within those limitations, and in the province of economics and social welfare, munic.i.p.al powers are almost unrestricted. It is thus that German towns have been the pioneers in school hygiene. Every German child is under the supervision of the school dentist and the school oculist. It is thus that German cities have established their public p.a.w.nshops, and have saved the poor man from the clutches of the moneylender. It is thus that they have initiated gratuitous legal advice for the indigent. They have even established munic.i.p.al beerhouses and _Rathhauskeller_. In one word, they have launched out in a hundred forms of civic enterprise.

VI.

One of the most striking fields of munic.i.p.al enterprise is the policy of Land Purchase. The people were encouraged to enter on this policy by the evils of private land speculation, and by the shocking housing conditions in some of the big cities, and especially in Berlin, where the curse of the barrack system still prevails.

Nearly every German city is an important landowner, owning on an average 50 per cent. of the munic.i.p.al area.

"While the powers of English urban districts in relation to land owners.h.i.+p are severely restricted by law, German towns are free to buy real estate on any scale whatever, without permission of any kind, unless, indeed, the contracting of a special loan should be necessary, in which event the a.s.sent of the City Commissary is necessary. This a.s.sent, however, entails no local inquiry corresponding to the inquiries of the Local Government Board, simply because the German States have no Local Government Board, and no use for them; the proceeding is almost a formality, intended to remind the communes that the State, though devolved upon them their wide powers of self-government, likes still to be consulted now and then, and it is arranged expeditiously through the post. For, strange as it may sound to English ears, the Governments of Germany, without exception, far from wis.h.i.+ng to hamper the towns in their land investments, have often urged the towns to buy as much land as possible and not to sell"

(Dawson, p. 123).

"Within the present year the little town of Kalbe, on the Saale, expended just 14 a head on its 12,000 inhabitants in buying for 468,000 a large estate for the purpose of creating a number of smallholdings and labourers' allotments. During the period 1880 to 1908 Breslau expended over one million and a half pounds in the purchase of land within the communal area. Berlin has an estate more than three times greater than its administrative area. In 1910 alone seventy-three of the large towns of Germany bought land to the aggregate extent of 9,584 acres and to the aggregate value of over four million pounds sterling. Charlottenburg now owns 2,500 acres of land as yet not built upon, with a value of over a million and a quarter pounds, and the value of all its real estate is about four and a half million pounds sterling. In 1886 Freiburg, in Baden, owned nearly 11,000 acres of land with a value of 925,000. In 1909 its estate was only 2,000 acres larger, but its value was then 2,300,000."

"Since 1891 Ulm, under the rule of a mayor convinced of the wisdom of a progressive land policy and strong enough to carry it out, has bought some 1,280 acres of land at different times for 316,000, while it has sold 420 acres for 406,000, showing a cash profit of 900,000, apart from the addition of 860 acres to the town estate. As a result of Ulm's land policy, its a.s.sets increased between 1891 and 1909 from 583,500 to 1,990,000, an increase of 1,407,000, equal to 25 a head of the population. Another result is that of the larger towns of Wurtemberg only one has a lower taxation than Ulm. It is solely owing to its successful land policy that this enterprising town, without imposing heavy burdens on the general body of ratepayers, has been able to undertake a programme of social reforms which has created for it an honourable reputation throughout Germany."

VII.

In quite a different direction, in the encouragement of Art and Literature, the German munic.i.p.ality plays a leading part.

"The budgets of most large and many small German towns contain an item, greater or less according to local circ.u.mstances, which is intended to cover 'provision for the intellectual life of the town.'

This item is independent of expenditure on schools, and, if a.n.a.lyzed, will be found often to include the maintenance of or subsidies to munic.i.p.al theatres, bands, and orchestras, as well as grants to dramatic and musical societies of a miscellaneous order. In this provision the theatre takes an altogether dominant position, and the fact is significant as reflecting the great importance which in Germany is attributed to the drama as an educational and elevating influence in the life of the community. It may be that the practice of subsidizing the theatre is not altogether independent of the fact that the repertory theatre is universal in Germany, except in the smallest of provincial towns, with the result that a far more intimate tie exists between the drama and the community than is possible in the case of travelling companies."

"If the question be asked, Is the higher drama encouraged by the munic.i.p.al theatre? the answer must be an emphatic affirmative of the high standard of education in Germany. Speaking generally, no theatres in Germany maintain the drama at a higher level than the munic.i.p.al theatres in the large towns. The lower forms of the drama will find no home here, for public taste looks for the best that the stage can offer, and as the demand is, so is the supply. Many a provincial theatre of this kind presents more Shakespearean plays in a week than the average English theatre outside London presents in a couple of years. A glance at the repertory of any of the munic.i.p.al theatres which have been named is enough to convince one that an elevated aim is steadily kept in view. For example, in a recent year the two Mannheim munic.i.p.al theatres presented 161 separate works, including 93 dramas, 62 operas and operettas, and 6 ballets, and of these works 442 repet.i.tions were given in the aggregate, making for the year 604 performances, a number of which were at popular prices. The dramas given included fifteen by Schiller, ten by Shakespeare, three by Goethe, three by Lessing, five by Moliere, four by Hans Sachs, four by Sheridan, eleven by Grillparzer, two each by Kleist and Hebbel, and several by Ibsen, while the operas included three by Beethoven, three by Cherubini, six by Mozart, three by Weber, and several by Wagner.

Could an English provincial theatre-could all English provincial theatres together-show a record equal to this? That plays of this kind are given is proof that the German public looks to the munic.i.p.al theatre for the cultivation of the highest possible standard of dramatic taste and achievement."

VIII.

The German city has managed to combine efficiency with freedom. She has managed to establish a strong executive and yet to safeguard the will of the people. In France the Mayor is appointed by the State, and he is the tool of the Ministry. In Great Britain the City Fathers are honorary and unpaid. In Germany they are salaried servants, and yet elected by the people. In Great Britain magistrates are temporary, ephemeral figure-heads. They are not even allowed time to serve their apprentices.h.i.+p. They remain in office one, two, or at most three years, receive a knighthood in the larger provincial towns, and retire into private life. In Germany the Burgomaster and Aldermen are permanent servants, at first elected for twelve years, and on re-election appointed for life. Their whole life is identified with the interests of the city.

There lies the originality of German civic government, and there lies the secret of munic.i.p.al efficiency. The German Mayor and council are experts. City government is becoming so technical a science that there are now schools of civic administration established in several parts of the German Empire. The city administrator is not a grocer or a draper temporarily raised to office, nor are they only town clerks and officials. They have both the confidence of the people and the responsibility of power, and they are given time to achieve results, to follow up a systematic policy.

IX.

The whole secret of German munic.i.p.al government is told by Mr. Dawson in a footnote of his book:

"The chief Mayor of Duisburg is about to seek well-earned rest after thirty-four years of work. When in 1880 he took over the direction of the town's affairs, Duisburg had 34,000 inhabitants. To-day Duisburg, with the amalgamated Ruhrort and Meiderich, has a population of 244,000. This remarkable development is specially due to the far-sighted munic.i.p.al policy pursued by the chief Mayor, who made it his endeavour to attract new industries to the State for the creation of the docks-as the result of which Duisburg is the largest inland port in the world-and the incorporation of Ruhrort and Meiderich in 1905."

This footnote ill.u.s.trating the history of Duisburg might serve equally well as an ill.u.s.tration for the history of other German towns. On reading that footnote I could not help thinking of a famous English statesman whose recent death has closed a stirring chapter of British history. German and Austrian munic.i.p.alities give the widest scope for political genius and attract the ablest men. If the same conditions had prevailed in this country, Mr. Chamberlain would have been content to identify himself with the prosperity of his adopted city, as the Mayor of Duisburg identified himself with the greatness of Duisburg; as Lueger identified himself with the greatness of Vienna. And if Birmingham had given full scope to the genius of Mr. Chamberlain, how different would have been the life-story of the late statesman, and how different would be the England in which we are living to-day!

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEGLECT OF GERMAN

There are many urgent reforms needed in our national education; those who are best qualified to speak could make many a startling revelation if they only dared to speak out. And there is ample evidence that almost every part of our educational machinery requires the most thorough overhauling. In the words of Bacon, "Instauratio facienda ab imis fundamentis." But I doubt whether there does exist any more glaring proof of the present inefficiency of our Secondary Schools and Universities than their scandalous att.i.tude towards the study of the German language and literature.

The plain and unvarnished truth is that at the beginning of this, the twentieth century, when Germany is the supreme political and commercial Power on the Continent of Europe, the study of German is steadily going back in the United Kingdom. In some parts it is actually dying out. In many important Secondary Schools it is being discontinued. Even in the Scottish Universities, which pride themselves on being more modern and more progressive than the English Universities, there does not exist one single Chair of German. In Oxford a Chair of German was only established through the munificence of a patriotic German merchant.

And even when there are teachers there are very few students. In one of the greatest British Universities, with a const.i.tuency of 3,500 students, there has been, for the last ten years, an average of five to six men students. And the reluctance of young men to study German is perfectly intelligible. The study of German does not pay. It brings neither material rewards nor official recognition. All the prizes, all the scholars.h.i.+ps and fellows.h.i.+ps, go to other subjects, and mainly to the cla.s.sics. Let any reader of _Everyman_ stand up and say that I am exaggerating; I would only be too delighted to discover that I am wrong.

Such being the att.i.tude of those who are primarily responsible for our national education, can we wonder at the att.i.tude of the general public? Can we expect it to take any more interest in German culture than the educational authorities? Let those who have any doubt or illusion on the subject make inquiries at booksellers', at circulating libraries and public libraries, at London clubs. I have tried to make such an investigation, and all those inst.i.tutions have the same sorry tale to tell. It is impossible to get an outstanding book which appears in Germany, for it does not pay the publisher to stock such a book. At Mudie's, for every hundred French books there may be two German books. At the Royal Societies Club, with a members.h.i.+p of several thousands, every one of whom belongs to some learned society, you may get the _Revue de Deux Mondes_, or the _Temps_, or the _Figaro_, but you cannot get a German paper. For the last twenty years I have not once seen a copy of the _Zukunft_, or the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, or the _Kolnische Zeitung_, at an English private house, at an English club, at an English bookseller's, at an English library.

A few months ago the most popular and most enterprising daily paper of the kingdom published some articles on the German elections, which were justly rousing a great deal of attention in this country. I was very much impressed by the cleverness of those articles, but my admiration knew no bounds when the author confessed that he was writing without knowing a word of German, and that when attending political meetings he had to make out the meaning of the language by the gestures and facial expression of the orators. Have we not here, my cla.s.sical friends, an exhilarating instance of the results of your monopoly? _Ab uno disce omnes._

We are constantly being told that "knowledge is power," and that the knowledge of a foreign language means not only intellectual power, but commercial and political power. Yet those in authority do not budge an inch to get possession of such power. We are constantly warned by political pessimists that Germany is making gigantic strides, and that we ought to keep a vigilant outlook. Yet we do nothing to obtain first-hand information of the resources of a nation of sixty-five millions, who is certainly a formidable commercial rival, and who to-morrow may meet us in deadly encounter.[20] On the other hand, we are told with equal persistence by political optimists that we ought to be on the most friendly terms with a great kindred people from whom nothing separates us except regrettable ignorance and superficial misunderstandings. Yet, in order to dispel that ignorance and to remove those misunderstandings, we do not make the first necessary step-namely, to learn the language of the people whom we are said to misunderstand.

[20] Written in 1912.

It is true that Members of Parliament and journalists are ready enough to proceed to Germany on a mission of goodwill, and to be entertained at banquets and international festivities. But how futile must be those friendly demonstrations when we consider that the enormous majority of those Parliamentarians and journalists are unable to read a German newspaper! And how must it strike a citizen of Hamburg or Frankfurt when their English guests have to reply in English to the toasts of their German hosts! And how must a patriotic German feel when he discovers that not five out of a hundred have taken the trouble to master the n.o.ble language of the country whose friends.h.i.+p they are seeking!

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending, at the house of a prominent political leader, a representative gathering of politicians, diplomats, and journalists, who were met to consider the best means of promoting Anglo-German friends.h.i.+p. In answer to a speech of mine, an eminent German publicist and editor of an influential monthly review delivered an eloquent address in broken French. To hear a German address in French an audience of Germanophile Englishmen was certainly a ludicrous situation! But the speaker realized that it would be hopeless to use the German language, even to an a.s.sembly specially interested in supporting Anglo-German friends.h.i.+p.

How long, my cla.s.sical friends, are we going to submit to these disastrous results of your monopoly? _Quousque tandem!_ How long are we going to stand this scandal of international illiteracy and ignorance, fraught with such ominous peril for the future? How long is this nation going to be hoodwinked by an infinitesimal minority of reactionary dons and obscurantist parsons, determined to force a smattering of Greek down the throats of a reluctant youth? How long is modern culture to be kept back under the vain pretence of maintaining the culture of antiquity, but in reality in response to an ign.o.ble dread of enlightenment and progress, and in order to protect vested interests and to maintain political, intellectual, and religious reaction?

CHAPTER IX

MECKLENBURG, THE PARADISE OF PRUSSIAN JUNKERTHUM

I.

The tourist who takes the express train between Berlin and Copenhagen, one hour after he has left the Prussian capital reaches a vast plain more than half the size of Belgium, where barren moorlands alternate with smiling fields, where dormant lakes are succeeded by dark pine-forests. Few travellers ever think of breaking their journey on this melancholy plain, the territory of the Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They have not the remotest suspicion that these Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg, which they cross in such listless haste, are, from a political point of view, one of the most fascinating countries of Europe. Mecklenburg has for the students of comparative politics the same sort of interest which an Indian reserve territory, or the Mormon State of Utah, has for the traveller in the United States, or which a cannibal tract in the equatorial Congo forest has for the explorer of Central Africa. For this pleasant land of Mecklenburg-Schwerin is the last survival of a patriarchal and feudal civilization. It is the most perfect type of the paternal Prussian type of government, entirely unspoiled by the Parliamentary inst.i.tutions of a feeble democratic age.

II.

Here alone of all the North German States the conditions of a past generation continue in their pristine vigour. Although the Grand Duke is the only descendant of Slavonic Princes in the German Empire, and still calls himself "Prince of the Wendes," he is the most Teutonic of dynasts. Although Mecklenburg-Schwerin is independent of Prussia, it is the most Prussian and the most Junkerized of all Federal States.

In degenerate Prussia the Kaiser has actually to submit to the financial control of an unruly Reichstag, and is not even allowed to spend the Imperial revenues as any Emperor by right Divine ought to be logically allowed to do. The Duke of Mecklenburg is far more fortunate than William II. He has no accounts to settle, _he has not even a budget to publish_. He collects in paternal fas.h.i.+on the revenues of his Grand Ducal demesnes, and no power has any right to ask any questions. Even the "Almanack of Gotha," which is generally omniscient in these matters, is silent on the revenues of His Highness. There is a public debt of about one hundred and fifty million marks! The public revenues are the private income of the Grand Duke. The public debt is a private charge on the people.

In degenerate Prussia even the Imperator-Rex has to divide some of his authority with a meddlesome a.s.sembly, and has to delegate it to an obedient but ridiculous bureaucracy. In the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg the ruler governs his subjects in the good old patriarchal way. It is true, in the troubled days of 1848 an unwise predecessor granted something like a paper const.i.tution, but that sc.r.a.p of parchment happily became a dead-letter twelve months after it had been granted.

It is also true that there still subsists some faint image of representative government in the two estates of the Grand Duchy, dating as far back as 1755, but those venerable estates of the Grand Duchy are only composed of and only represent the _Ritterschaft_-_i.e._, six hundred and ninety n.o.blemen; and the _Landschaft_-_i.e._, fifty munic.i.p.alities. Neither the peasants in the country nor the artisans in the towns are ever troubled to give their advice on matters concerning the common weal. And as, in order that a Bill may become the law of the Grand Duchy, the consent of the two estates is required, nothing unpleasant is ever likely to happen, and the old order, represented by the six hundred and ninety overlords, continues undisturbed.

In degenerate Prussia even the Junkers have to submit to the presence of petty landowners of lowly birth, or even to peasants of servile origin. Do not historians remind us that even Frederick the Great had to surrender to the claims of the Miller of Sans Souci. In Mecklenburg-Schwerin there is no Miller of Sans Souci to worry the Grand Duke. _For no peasant owns one single acre of land._ One-half of the territory of the Grand Duchy is owned by a few hundred lords of the manor, and the other half realizes the Socialist ideal of the suppression of private property and of the transfer of all private owners.h.i.+p to the State. Six thousand square miles are the absolute property of the State-that is to say, of the Grand Duke. For never was absolute ruler more truly ent.i.tled than the Grand Duke to appropriate the words of Louis XIV.: "L'etat c'est moi."

In this paradise of Prussian Junkerthum one might reasonably have expected the monarch and the lords of the manor to enjoy as complete happiness as is ever allotted to mortal man. And the peasants and artisans could equally be expected to share in the universal contentment. Are not the Grand Duke and his knights as closely interested in the welfare of their tenants as a shepherd in the welfare of his flock? But even in a patriarchal Grand Dukedom the spirit of modern unrest seems to have penetrated. If German statisticians may be trusted, the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy do even seem to have preferred the risks and uncertainties of living in a distant and unpaternal American Government to the peace and quiet and security of the Mecklenburg plains. The ungrateful subjects of the Grand Duke have done what the Kaiser once advised his own disloyal subjects to do; they have shaken the dust of the Fatherland off their feet; they have emigrated in such large numbers to the United States of America that this paradise of Prussian Junkerthum, with its 700,000 inhabitants, is to-day the most thinly populated part of the German Empire, and contains fewer industries than any other part.

After all, to a military empire soldiers are more necessary than peasants and artisans. Already in 1815 Mecklenburg could claim the glory of having produced the greatest Junker soldier of the age, bluff and rough Prince Blucher, the victor of Waterloo. The achievements of the Grand Ducal regiments have fully proved that Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz have in the present war remained true to the glories of their military past and have remained worthy of their feudal present, and the august head of the Grand Ducal dynasty is just now doing most efficient work in the Balkan States as the super-Amba.s.sador of his Imperial cousin.