The Press SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1916. A German Prophet.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15536, 11 March 1916, Page 8

The Press SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1916. A German Prophet.

When war first broke out, and the wise heads among Us set themselves to explain its remoter causes, we heard much

of Nietzsche, Treitsehke, Bernhardi, and others of their tribe. Hut there were prophets in Germany before the gospel of the superman was launched, o* the Prussian school of historians burnt their first incense at the sacred shrine of the Hohcnzollerns. There was, for example, Heinrich Heine. Could that strange Hamburg Jew, with tho gift of divine song, and the bitter heart, revisit for a moment his old haunts, anil see Twentieth Century Europe in the throes of a fiercer agony than it passed through a hundred years ago, what, we wonder, would he think and say of it all? The man had a piercing insight, and a knack of vitriolic utterance, at once his pride and his undoing. England and Englishmen appealed to him not at all. The best he could find to say of "Wellington was that lie was "a small man, and less 'than small." As for England itself, it was the home of coal-smoke and Englishmen, two things that he could not abide. France, the Revolution, and, above all. Napoleon, were the gods of his idolatry. 'The French," he believed, "are the chosen people of the " new religion (liberty, to wit). Its "first gospels and dogmas were framed "in their language. Paris is the New "-Jerusalem, the Rhine is the Jordan, '•'which separates tho land of Freedom " from tho laud of the Philistines." Ho lived through the heroic age of the great wars, and watched with fierce delight the shrivelling up of the petty German kingdoms and principalities. He had seen Napoleon, "whoso great scven- " mile-booted thoughts strode invisibly "through tho world," ride down the streets of Diisseldorf, where "no police- " man opposed him, and the people "with a thousand voices shouted "'Long live the Emperor!'" and had added his own "Hosannah." For Germany, as ho had known it in boyhood, and knew.it again after Napoleon had come and gone, was tho target of his bitterest scorn. Its pedantry, its Philistinism, its submissiveness to paste-board courts and worthless sovereigns, its patient acceptance of petty rules, and its awe of the policeman, lashed him into fury. His quips and his gibes, his merciless irony and savage epigrams, are known to all the world, and remembered with undying resont- , meat, at least in the University of Gottingen. Yet he was.not all compact of scorn. He had his momonts when, as "a soldier in tho Liberation "War of Humanity," ho felt himself to be a knight of tho Holy Ghost, "who bursts in sunder tho oppressor's " stronghold, and tho bondsman's yoke, " heals old death-wounds and renews "old rights, and chases away tho evil "clouds and tho dark cobwebs of the " brain which have spoilt love and "joy."' If ho hated priest and Kaiser, those wero times when ho loved, or thought he loved, the Gorman people. "Thou my people," he wrote in one of his inimitable "art the true " Kaiser, the true lord of the land. "Thy will, my people, is tho sole " rightful source of power. Though " now thou Host down in thy bonds, '*• yot in the end will thy rightful cause " prevail."

These arc brave words, yet even the most casual reader will not fail to note how, widely they have missed their mark. For Germany has resolutely turned her back on the Liberty Heine so insistently hymned, though not, if all tales be true, on the licenso of which ho set so pitiful an example. A freedom genuine enough to respect the rights of others, is an idea that has not commended itself to Germany. The notion that she ha« made her own is the notion of a whole world run into a common mould, and held down by the iron grip of brute force. That is what has turned the whole country into one vast armed camp, and what is driving massed legions to a horrible death before the walls of Verdun. "When we think of what might have been, and of what is. we stand amazed at the wilful hlindnes6 which has betrayed Germany into her insane career of crime and carnage. ' For apart altogether from ethical considerations, it is all so hopelessly and wantonly foolish. But, as on© of her own -poets has sung, " against stupidity (Dummheit) even "the gods fight in vain," and stupidity, readers of the "Reisebilder" will recall, was the essential German quality according to that inspired drummer M. Le Grand. "He once wanted to " explain to me the word L'Allemagno "(Germany)," writes Heine, "and he " drummed the all too simple " primeval melody which on market " days is played to dancing dogs— " diimm, dumni, dumm—stupid, stupid, " stupid 1 I was vexed," he adds in an ironical aside, "but I understood him." The same stupidity, a kind of innate

incapacity for seeing things as they j

really are, or at least for viewing facts from more tha n one angle, would probably still seem to Heine the essential German quality to-day. The hour for the German revolution, when the people would shake itself free from its secular fetters, and a drama bo enacted in comparison with which the French Revolution would appear a harmless idyll, has certainly not yet struck, nor does it show much sign of striking. Perhaps it is better so. bad as things are, for the emancipated Germany Heine foresaw would have been but little less menacing than thr> Juggernaut Empire of to-day. There is food for reflection in his prophetic warning to Franco, written as long ago as the year 1834. "Beware! T mean well with you, and " therefore I tell you the bitter truth. " You are not loved in Germany. "What "they really have against you I could '•never make out. Once, in a beer- " cellar at Gottingen, a young Teuton " said that revenge must be had on tho " French for Conrad von Stauffen, whom " they beheaded at Naples. You have " surely long forgotten that. But we " forget nothing. If we should once be " inclined to quarrel with you, good

•'•' reasons will not be wanting. Let "what will happe n in Germany, be al- " ways armed, remain quietly at your ' post, musket in hand. I almost stood "aghast when I learned lately that "your Ministry proposed to disarm "France." Those are words that other countries than France might well have laid to heart, for there is good, sound sense in the old classical myth which tells us that Pallas Athene, Goddess of Wisdom though she was, alone of all the gods and goddesses, never laid aside her helm and spear.