Part 9 (2/2)
Few are the incidents and events of his reign to which he does not impart a religious flavor. Thus it was only last summer, on the completion of a new fort at Metz, that he insisted on its inauguration taking place with much religious pomp and ceremony, and he himself christened the fortress in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, thus calling down the blessing of the Trinity on a stronghold, the guns of which are pointed against France, and the success of which can only consist in the destruction of innumerable French foes!
It is he, too, who has originated the practice of christening with religious ceremonies the great guns furnished by Krupp for use afloat and ash.o.r.e against Germany's enemies; and on the blades of the swords which he has presented to his elder sons, and to his favorite generals and officers, there is invariably inscribed on the one side, ”In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” and on the other, averse from the Bible, surmounted by the imperial cypher.
William has even gone to the length of drawing up an extraordinary argument in defence of duelling based upon quotations taken from the Bible. The emperor takes as the text of his argument that verse of the writings of St. Paul, in which the Apostle declares that he would rather die than that anyone should rob him of his good name. William infers from this that the most eloquent and forcible of all the fathers of the Church was prepared to fight to the death for the honor of his name.
”Nowhere in the Bible,” adds his majesty, ”is there any prohibition of duelling, not even in the New Testament, which, unlike the Old Testament, is not a book of law. Indeed, every attempt to use the New Testament as the basis for a new code of law has resulted in failure.”
With regard to the use made by the opponents of duelling of that law in the Old Testament which proclaims, ”Thou shalt not kill,”
the emperor draws attention to another portion of the Old Testament, wherein is mentioned that the sword shall not be carried in vain. Then invoking St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians, in which the Apostle exclaims: ”Oh! ye foolish Galatians. This only would I learn of you.
Received ye the spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of the faith? Are ye so foolish, having begun in the spirit, that ye wish to perfect yourselves in the flesh?”
The emperor declares that to twist the Word of G.o.d into a prohibition of duelling is nothing else than to perfect one's self by the flesh--that is to say to attribute an altogether material and common-place interpretation to what is meant spiritually. He adds that this is just as reprehensible in the eyes of the Almighty as the attempts by the Pharisees to adapt the Mosaic law to their own convenience, attempts which were so bitterly denounced by Christ.
Finally, the emperor generally concludes this extraordinary exposition of his views by the following exordium:
”He who after careful self-examination finds himself compelled to fight a duel, and whose conscience is clear of sentiments of hatred and of vengeance, may do so in the conviction that he is in no wise acting contrary to the Word of G.o.d, to the obligations of honor, or to the accepted customs of society. As in battle, so also in the duel, which has been forced upon him in one way or another, he may say to himself: _If we live, we live in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord, Amen_.”
It must be borne in mind that Emperor William delivered himself of these utterances, not merely in his capacity of Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia, and commander-in-chief of the entire German army, but also in his self-a.s.sumed role of _Summus-Episcopus,_ or spiritual as well as temporal chief of the Lutheran Church throughout the empire.
Such a speech was delivered on the occasion of the endeavor made by certain members of the court circles to induce the Lutheran synod to inst.i.tute disciplinary measures against the Potsdam pastor who had declined to accord the rites of Christian burial to Baron von Schrader, killed in a duel by Baron Kotze, the encounter being the outcome of the anonymous letter scandal already described. The synod, however, thoroughly endorsed the att.i.tude of the Lutheran minister in question, and availed itself of the opportunity to pa.s.s a resolution to the effect that no person killed in a combat of this kind, or even dying from wounds received in a duel, could be regarded as having met his death as a Christian, and as such ent.i.tled to Christian burial.
Curiously enough this view was endorsed by the gallant old General Bronsart von Sch.e.l.lendorf, at that time minister of war, who, in expressing his approval of the resolution, called upon the emperor as commander-in-chief to take more radical steps for checking the phenomenal growth of the practice of duelling.
William, however, declined to comply with the request, dismissed the general shortly afterwards from office, and, on the contrary, proceeded to condemn both the action of the synod and of the Potsdam pastor who had declined to officiate at Baron Schrader's obsequies, giving as the reason for his position in the matter the argument from which I have just given some extracts.
This was by no means the first time that William found himself in conflict with the provincial synods of the Lutheran Church in his dominions. On one occasion the consistory of the Lutheran Church of the Province of East Prussia, in which the imperial game preserves of Rominten are situated, pa.s.sed a unanimous vote of censure upon the kaiser for having desecrated the Sabbath, and violated the secular laws with regard to its observance, by giving a big hunting-party on Sunday at Rominten. It was understood at the time that the consistory would have abstained from taking this extreme step had it not been for the comment excited throughout Germany by the somewhat malicious juxtaposition in most of the newspapers of two articles, one of which gave an elaborate description of the Sunday shooting-party of the emperor at Rominten, while in a parallel column was a proclamation just issued by the civil governor of the province of Westphalia, calling attention to the lax observance of the Sunday laws, and reiterating the pains and penalties that are prescribed by statute for those who shoot, sing, dance, play skittles or indulge in any recreation, whether in public or in private, that is inconsistent with repose on Sunday.
Of course, the vote of the consistory of Eastern Prussia was eventually quashed, and its members disciplined. But the publicity given to the affair served to call the attention of the people at large to the emperor's disregard of the laws which he himself had caused to be enacted. Previous to his reign, Sunday had been looked upon as a day of recreation, revelry, and festivity throughout Germany.
In the days of the old emperor all the finest performances of the court theatres were reserved for Sunday, the princ.i.p.al state banquets took place on that day, as well as the imperial hunting parties and battues. Among the _bourgeoisie_, dances, b.a.l.l.s and picnics were the order of the Lord's Day, while the lower cla.s.ses thronged the beer gardens and the beer halls that const.i.tute so important a feature of German life. Regattas, parades, race-meetings, and popular entertainments and festivals of one kind or another, were, in fact, all reserved for Sunday.
All this was changed when the emperor came to the throne, and among the earliest laws enacted on his initiative, were those to which the Governor of Westphalia called attention in the proclamation just described, and which prohibited every form of revelry on the Sabbath.
For instance, a few months after William's accession he was invited by the Berlin Yacht Club to attend the annual regatta, which was to take place on the following Sunday morning, but he declined on the ground that it would prevent his going to church, and when the committee offered to postpone the races until the afternoon he declared that his principles would not permit him to regard Sunday as a day to be devoted to regattas, and a.n.a.logous forms of popular entertainment.
It must be explained that he was at the time strongly imbued with the evangelistic views which he had derived from his wife's aunt, the American Countess of Waldersee, and from her protege, ex-Court Chaplain Stoecker, who combined with his strict and Puritanical views on the subject of the Sabbath, the most intense animosity towards the Jews, and a virulent hatred for the late Emperor Frederick.
This strange divine, so famous for many years as the leader of the so-called ”Judenhetz” movement, is one of the most displeasing figures in German public life, and Emperor William, who has long since turned his back upon him, and dismissed him from his court chaplaincy, must bitterly regret that he ever accorded him any favor or intimacy, and permitted himself to be influenced by his views. How is it possible to speak with any patience of a minister of the Church who, in a weekly paper, ”The Ecclesiastical Review,” of December 10, 1887, actually had the audacity to write in an editorial article signed with his name the following cruel sentence? ”Let us pray every day and every hour for our royal family, and in particular for the Old Man (the old kaiser) and for the Young Man (the present emperor) of this race of heroes.
May G.o.d in His mercy grant that the terrible punishment which has overtaken the sick Prince Frederick (the late Emperor Frederick) bear fruit, and may it bring resignation to his mind, and peace to his conscience.”
At the moment when the article appeared, in which it was publicly intimated that the crown prince's malady was a just and well-merited punishment for his sins, the imperial patient, so sorely afflicted, whose life had been so blameless, was at death's door, a fact over which the court chaplain openly rejoiced, proclaiming that ”a brilliant future is about to open up before us.”
Since William has cut himself adrift from Pastor Stoecker, the strictness of his views with regard to the observance of Sunday, has undergone a change. At any rate, he has modified them in so far as he himself is concerned, and while he is very regular in his attendance at church on Sunday morning, he no longer seems to consider it a sin to go out sailing, shooting or hunting on Sunday afternoons, or to attend theatrical performances or other kinds of entertainment in the evening. Inasmuch as the Sunday Observance Laws have not been repealed, one can only take it for granted that he considers himself and his consort as being above the law of the land, and in no wise bound thereby. Yet neither of their majesties has a legal right to any such immunity. According to the terms of the Prussian const.i.tution the emperor and empress are just as amenable to the laws that figure in the statute book, and equally required to obey them as any ordinary German citizen. The only advantage that the emperor enjoys is that he possesses certain prerogatives in connection with the giving of evidence, and with the punishment of offences that are directed against his person and his honor.
In this obligation to submit to the laws of the land he differs from his grandmother Queen Victoria, and from his ally, Emperor Francis-Joseph, the tenure of whose thrones was originally based on what in olden times was known as the Divine right of kings. Thus, in England, as in Austria, and even in Spain and Portugal, the mediaeval theory still prevails that ”_the king can do no wrong!_” Queen Victoria, for instance, is not below the law like Emperor William, but above it. No court has jurisdiction over her, and legally speaking there is no jurisdiction upon earth to try her in a civil or criminal way, much less to condemn her to punishment.
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