And the Kaiser abdicates Part 1

And the Kaiser abdicates.

by S. Miles Bouton.

Foreword.

The developments leading up to the German Revolution of November, 1918, and the events marking the course of the revolution itself are still but imperfectly known or understood in America. For nearly two years preceding the overthrow of the monarchy, Americans, like the people of all other countries opposing Germany, were dependent for their direct information upon the reports of neutral correspondents, and a stringent censors.h.i.+p prevented these from reporting anything of value regarding the conditions that were throughout this period gradually making the German Empire ripe for its fall. To a great extent, indeed, not only these foreign journalists, but the great ma.s.s of the Germans themselves, had little knowledge of the manner in which the Empire was being undermined.

During the crucial days of the revolution, up to the complete overthrow of the central government at Berlin, a sharpened censors.h.i.+p prevented any valuable direct news from being sent out, and the progress of events was told to the outside world mainly by travelers, excited soldiers on the Danish frontier and two or three-day-old German newspapers whose editors were themselves not only handicapped by the censors.h.i.+p, but also ignorant of much that had happened and unable to present a clear picture of events as a whole. When the bars were finally thrown down to enemy correspondents, the exigencies of daily newspaper work required them to devote their undivided attention to the events that were then occurring.

Hence the developments preceding and attending the revolution could not receive that careful consideration and portrayal which is necessary if they are to be properly understood.

An attempt is made in this book to make clear the factors and events that made the revolution possible, and to give a broad outline of its second phase, from the middle of November, 1918, to the ratification by Germany of the Peace of Versailles. A preliminary description of Germany's governmental structure, although it may contain nothing new to readers who know Germany well, could not be omitted. It is requisite for a comprehension of the strength of the forces and events that finally overthrew the Kaiser.

Much of the history told deals with matters of which the author has personal knowledge. He had been for several years before the war resident in Berlin as an a.s.sociated Press correspondent. He was in Vienna when the Dual Monarchy declared war on Serbia, and in Berlin during mobilization and the declarations of war on Russia and France. He was with the German armies on all fronts during the first two years of the war as correspondent, and was in Berlin two weeks before America severed diplomatic relations with Germany. The author spent the summer of 1917 in Russia, and watched the progress of affairs in Germany from Stockholm and Copenhagen during the winter of 1917-18. He spent the three months preceding the German Revolution in Copenhagen, in daily touch with many proved sources of information, and was the first enemy correspondent to enter Germany after the armistice, going to Berlin on November 18, 1918. He attended the opening sessions of the National a.s.sembly at Weimar in February, 1919, and remained in Germany until the end of March, witnessing both the first and second attempts of the Spartacans to overthrow the Ebert-Haase government.

The author's aim in writing this book has been to give a truthful and adequate picture of the matters treated, without any "tendency"

whatever. It is not pretended that the book exhausts the subject. Many matters which might be of interest, but which would hinder the straightforward narration of essentials, have been omitted, but it is believed that nothing essential to a comprehension of the world's greatest political event has been left out.

A word in conclusion regarding terminology.

_Proletariat_ does not mean, as is popularly supposed in America, merely the lowest grade of manual laborers. It includes all persons whose work is "exploited" by others, i. e., who depend for their existence upon wages or salaries. Thus actors, journalists, clerks, stenographers, etc., are reckoned as proletarians.

The _bourgeoisie_ includes all persons who live from the income of investments or from businesses or properties (including real estate) owned by them. In practice, however, owners of small one-man or one-family businesses, although belonging to what the French term the _pet.i.te bourgeoisie_, are regarded as proletarians. The n.o.bility, formerly a cla.s.s by itself, is now _de facto_ included under the name _bourgeoisie_, despite the contradiction of terms thus involved.

No effort has been made toward consistency in the spelling of German names. Where the German form might not be generally understood, the English form has been used. In the main, however, the German forms have been retained.

Socialism and Social-Democracy, Socialist and Social-Democrat, have been used interchangeably throughout. There is no difference of meaning between the words.

S. MILES BOUTON

Asheville, New York, November 1, 1919.

CHAPTER I.

The Governmental Structure of Germany.

The peoples of this generation--at least, those of highly civilized and cultured communities--had little or no familiarity with revolutions and the history of revolutions before March, 1917, when Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown. There was and still is something about the very word "revolution" which is repugnant to all who love ordered and orderly government. It conjures up pictures of rude violence, of murder, pillage and wanton destruction. It violates the sentiments of those that respect the law, for it is by its very nature a negation of the force of existing laws. It breaks with traditions and is an overcoming of inertia; and inertia rules powerfully the majority of all peoples.

The average American is comparatively little versed in the history of other countries. He knows that the United States of America came into existence by a revolution, but "revolutionary" is for him in this connection merely an adjective of time used to locate and describe a war fought between two powers toward the end of the eighteenth century. He does not realize, or realizes but dimly, the essential kins.h.i.+p of all revolutions. Nor does he realize that most of the governments existing today came into being as the result of revolutions, some of them bloodless, it is true, but all at bottom a revolt against existing laws and governmental forms. The extortion of the Magna Charta from King John in 1215 was not the less a revolution because it was the bloodless work of the English barons. It took two b.l.o.o.d.y revolutions to establish France as a republic. All the Balkan states are the products of revolution. A man need not be old to remember the overthrow of the monarchy in Brazil; the revolution in Portugal was but yesterday as historians count time. Only the great wisdom and humanitarianism of the aged King Oscar II prevented fighting and bloodshed between Sweden and Norway when Norway announced her intention of breaking away from the dual kingdom. The list could be extended indefinitely.

The failure to recall or realize these things was one of the factors responsible for the universal surprise and amazement when the Hohenzollerns were overthrown. The other factor was the general--and justified--impression that the government of Germany was one of the strongest, most ably administered and most h.o.m.ogeneous governments of the world. And yet Germany, too, or what subsequently became the nucleus of Germany, had known revolution. It was but seventy years since the King of Prussia had been forced to stand bareheaded in the presence of the bodies of the "March patriots," who had given their lives in a revolt which resulted in a new const.i.tution and far-reaching concessions to the people.

Even to those who did recall and realize these things, however, the German revolution came as a shock. The closest observers, men who knew Germany intimately, doubted to the very last the possibility of successful revolution there. And yet, viewed in the light of subsequent happenings, it will be seen how natural, even unavoidable, the revolution was. It came as the inevitable result of conditions created by the war and the blockade. It will be the purpose of this book to make clear the inevitableness of the _debacle_, and to explain the events that followed it.

For a better understanding of the whole subject a brief explanation of the structure of Germany's governmental system is in place. This will serve the double purpose of showing the strength of the system which the revolution was able to overturn and of dispelling a too general ignorance regarding it.

The general condemnation of Prussia, the Prussians and the Hohenzollerns must not be permitted to obscure their merits and deserts. For more than five hundred years without a break in the male line this dynasty handed down its inherited rights and produced an array of great administrators who, within three centuries, raised Prussia to the rank of a first-rate power.

The kingdom that subsequently became the nucleus for the German Empire lost fully half its territory by the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, when, following the reverses in the Napoleonic wars, Germany was formally dissolved and the Confederation of the Rhine was formed by Napoleon. The standing army was limited to 42,000 men, and trade with Great Britain was prohibited. The Confederation obeyed the letter of the military terms, but evaded its spirit by successively training levies of 42,000 men, and within six years enough trained troops were available to make a revolt against Napoleonic slavery possible. The French were routed and cut to pieces at the Battle of the Nations near Leipsic in 1813, and Prussian Germany was again launched on the road to greatness.

A certain democratic awakening came on the heels of the people's liberation from foreign domination. It manifested itself particularly in the universities. The movement became so threatening that a conference of ministers of the various states was convoked in 1819 to consider counter-measures. The result was an order disbanding the political unions of the universities, placing the universities under police supervision and imposing a censors.h.i.+p upon their activities.

The movement was checked, but not stopped. In 1847 ominous signs of a popular revolution moved King Frederick William IV of Prussia to summon the Diet to consider governmental reforms. The chief demand presented by this Diet was for a popular representation in the government. The King refused to grant this. A striking commentary upon the political backwardness of Germany is furnished by the fact that one of the demands made by a popular convention held in Mannheim in the following year was for trial by jury, a right granted in England more than six hundred years earlier by the Magna Charta. Other demands were for the freedom of the press and popular representation in the government.

The revolution of 1848 in Prussia, while it failed to produce all that had been hoped for by those responsible for it, nevertheless resulted in what were for those times far-reaching reforms. A diet was convoked at Frankfort-on-the-Main. It adopted a const.i.tution establis.h.i.+ng some decided democratic reforms and knit the fabric of the German confederation more closely together.

The structure of the Confederation was already very substantial, despite much state particularism and internal friction. An important event in the direction of a united Germany had been the establishment in 1833 of the _Zollverein_ or Customs Union. The existence of scores of small states,[1] each with its own tariffs, currency and posts, had long hindered economic development. There is a well-known anecdote regarding a traveler who, believing himself near the end of his day's journey, after having pa.s.sed a dozen customs-frontiers, found his way barred by the customs-officials of another tiny princ.i.p.ality. Angered at the unexpected delay, he refused to submit to another examination of his effects and another exaction of customs-duties.

[1] There were more than three hundred territorial sovereignties in Germany when the new const.i.tution of the union was adopted at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.--There were princ.i.p.alities of less than one square mile in extent. The particularism engendered by this state of affairs has always been one of the greatest handicaps with which federal government in Germany has had to contend.

"You aren't a country," he said. "You're just a spot. I'll go around you." And this he did, without being seriously delayed in reaching his destination.

The growing power of Germany aroused the fear of the French, who realized what the union of the vital, energetic and industrious German races would mean. Years of tension culminated in the war of 1870-71. The result is known. Unprepared for the conflict, the French were crushed, just as Austria had been crushed four years earlier.

The last external obstacle in the way of German unity and strength had thus strangely been removed. On January 18, 1871, while the victorious German armies still stood at the gates of Paris, King William I was proclaimed German Emperor as Kaiser Wilhelm I.

The designation as "German Emperor" should be noted, because it is significant of the manner of union of the German Empire. The aged monarch was insistent that the t.i.tle should be "Emperor of Germany." To this the sovereigns of the other German states objected, as carrying the implication of their own subjection. Between "German Emperor" or "Emperor in Germany" and "Emperor of Germany," they pointed out, there was a wide difference. "German Emperor" implied merely that the holder of that t.i.tle was _primus inter pares_, merely the first among equals, the presiding officer of an aggregation of sovereigns of equal rank who had conferred this dignity upon him, just as a diet, by electing one of its number chairman, confers upon him no superiority of rank, but merely designates him to conduct their deliberations. These sovereigns'

jealousy of their own prerogatives had at first led them to consider vesting the imperial honors alternately with the Prussian and Bavarian King, but this idea was abandoned as impracticable. At the urgent representations of Bismarck the aged King consented, with tears in his eyes, it is said, to accept the designation of German Emperor.

The German Empire as thus formed consisted of twenty-five states and the _Reichsland_ of Alsace-Lorraine, which was administered by a viceroy appointed by the King of Prussia. The empire was a federated union of states much on the pattern of the United States of America, but the federative character was not completely carried out because of the particularism of certain states. The Bavarians, whose customs of life, easy-going ways, and even dialects are more akin to those of the German Austrians than of the Prussians,[2] exacted far-reaching concessions as the price of their entrance into the empire. They retained their own domestic tariff-imposts, their own army establishment, currency, railways, posts, telegraphs and other things. Certain other states also reserved a number of rights which ought, for the formation of a perfect federative union, to have been conferred upon the central authority. On the whole, however, these reservations proved less of a handicap than might have been expected.

[2] The Bavarians have from early days disliked the Prussians heartily. _Saupreuss'_ (sow-Prussian) and other even less elegant epithets were in common use against the natives of the dominant state. It must in fairness be admitted that this dislike was the natural feeling of the less efficient Bavarian against the efficient and energetic Prussian.

The Imperial German Const.i.tution adopted at this time was in many ways a remarkable doc.u.ment. It cleverly combined democratic and absolutist features. The democratic features were worked out with a wonderful psychological instinct. In the hands of almost any people except the Germans or Slavs the democratic side of this instrument would have eventually become the predominant one. That it did not is a tribute to the astuteness of Bismarck and of the men who, under his influence, drafted the const.i.tution.

The German Parliament or _Reichsrat_ was composed of two houses, the _Bundesrat_, or Federal Council, and the _Reichstag_, or Imperial Diet.

The Federal Council was designed as the anchor of absolutism. It was composed of fifty-eight members, of whom seventeen came from Prussia, six from Bavaria, and four each from Saxony and Wurttemberg. The larger of the other states had two or three each, and seventeen states had but one each. In 1911 three members were granted to Alsace-Lorraine by a const.i.tution given at that time to the _Reichsland_. The members of the Federal Council were the direct representatives of their respective sovereigns, by whom they were designated, and not of the people of the respective states. Naturally they took their instructions from their sovereigns. Nearly all legislative measures except bills for raising revenue had to originate in the Federal Council, and its concurrence with the Reichstag was requisite for the enactment of laws. A further absolutist feature of the const.i.tution was the provision that fourteen votes could block an amendment to the const.i.tution. In other words, Prussia with her seventeen members could prevent any change not desired by her governing cla.s.s.

The Reichstag, the second chamber of the parliament, was a truly democratic inst.i.tution. Let us say rather that it could have become a democratic inst.i.tution. Why it did not do so will be discussed later. It consisted of 397 members, who were elected by the most unlimited suffrage prevailing at that time in all Europe. It is but recently, indeed within the last five years, that as universal and free a suffrage has been adopted by other European countries, and there are still many which impose limitations unknown to the German Const.i.tution. Every male subject who had attained the age of twenty-five years and who had not lost his civil rights through the commission of crime, or who was not a delinquent taxpayer or in receipt of aid from the state or his community as a pauper, was ent.i.tled to vote. The vote was secret and direct, and the members of the Reichstag were responsible only to their const.i.tuents and not subject to instructions from any governmental body or person.

They were elected for a term of three years,[3] but their mandates could be terminated at any time by the Kaiser, to whom was reserved the right to dissolve the Reichstag. If he dissolved it, however, he was compelled to order another election within a definitely stated period.

[3] This was later altered to five years.

One very real power was vested in the Reichstag. It had full control of the empire's purse strings. Bills for raising revenue and all measures making appropriations had to originate in this chamber, and its a.s.sent was required to their enactment. The reason for its failure to exercise this control resolutely must be sought in the history of the German people, in their inertia where active partic.i.p.ation in governmental matters is concerned, and in those psychological characteristics which Bismarck so well comprehended and upon which he so confidently counted.

No people on earth had had a more terrible or continuous struggle for existence than the various tribes that later amalgamated to form the nucleus for the German Empire. Their history is a record of almost continuous warfare, going back to the days of Julius Caesar. In the first years of the Christian era the Germans under Arminius (Hermann) crushed the Romans of Varus's legions in the Teutoburg Forest, and the land was racked by war up to most modern times. Most of its able-bodied men were exterminated during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).[4] This almost constant preoccupation in war had a twofold result: it intensified the struggle for existence of the common man and kept him from devoting either his thoughts or energies to problems of government, and it strengthened the powers of a comparatively small ruling-cla.s.s, who alone possessed any culture and education and whose efforts were naturally directed to keeping their serfs in the subjection of ignorance. These conditions prevailed until well into the last century.

[4] The population of Germany dropped from twenty to less than seven millions during this war.

The conditions can best be appreciated by a comparison with the conditions existing in England at the same time. England, too, had had her wars, but her soil was but rarely ravaged by foreign invaders, and never to the extent in which Germany repeatedly suffered. Parliamentary government of a sort had existed more than three centuries in England before it reached Germany. A milder climate than that of North Germany made the struggle for the bare necessaries of life less strenuous, and gave opportunity to a greater proportion of the people to consider other things than the mere securing of enough to eat and drink. They began to think politically centuries before political affairs ceased to rest entirely in the hands of the n.o.bility of Germany.

The Germans of the lower and middle cla.s.ses--in other words, the vast majority of the whole people--were thus both without political training and without even the inclination to think independently along political lines. Some advance had, it is true, been made along these lines since the Napoleonic wars, but the events of 1871 nevertheless found the great ma.s.s of the people without political tutelage or experience. People even more politically inclined would have found themselves handicapped by this lack of training, and the German--particularly the Southern German--is not politically inclined. This will be discussed more fully in the chapters dealing with the course of events following the revolution of 1918. It will be sufficient to point out here the German's inclination to abstract reasoning, to philosophizing and to a certain mysticism; his love of music and fine arts generally, his undeniable devotion to the grosser creature-comforts, eating and drinking, and his tendency not to worry greatly about governmental or other impersonal affairs provided he be kept well fed and amused. It is, in brief, the spirit to which the Roman emperors catered with the _panem et circenses_, and which manifests itself strikingly in the German character. The result of all this was a marked inertia which characterized German political life up to recent years. Even when a limited political awakening came it was chiefly the work of German-Jews, not of Germans of the old stock.

These, then, were the conditions that prevented the democratic features of the Imperial Const.i.tution from acquiring that prominence and importance which they would have acquired among a different people. The Kaiser could dissolve the Reichstag at will. Why, then, bother oneself about opposing the things desired by the Kaiser and his brother princes?