Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 1915. THE AUTOCRATIC KAISER

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 12, 15 January 1915, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 1915. THE AUTOCRATIC KAISER

"The Emperor considers his Ministers not as experienced and independent chiefs of the Departments of State, entitled to opinioos of their own, but as the executors of his will, and he removes them as soon as they do not succeed in fulfilling his -wishes. . . . The German Parliament was already in Bismarck's time little more than a money-voting and law-assenting machine, plus a general talking-shop, possessed of hardly any influence, and of no control whatever over the administration and policy of the Government." These words of Mr. Ellis Barker which were written ten years ago are none the less true today. The one-man power which was exhibited in so startling a fashion by the dismissal of Bismarck in the early years of the present Emperor's roign has steadily grown, at the expense of both Ministers and Parliament. It was not the Reichstag or the German people that precipitated the present war, and though they have all responded to the call with a wonderful unanimity, it is in the highest degree improbable that under genuinely representative institutions Germany would ever have become at once so isolated and so aggressive as to require so colossal a calamity for the satisfaction of her ambition. Even after the war has run its course, will Europe have any right to expect that peace will be lasting if Germany is still allowed to remain in the grip of autocracy and militarism? Will not the continuance of the cause revive the effect under which the world groans to-day? and if so, what chance is there of removing the cause ? The question is discussed in a very thorough and judicial fashion in the December number of the Contemporary Review by one of the foremost English authorities on German affairs, Mr. W. H. Dawson, in an article entitled " The German Constitutional Movement and the War." Mr. Dawson writes with the caution and circumspection which often limit the conclusions of the man who speaks from full knowledge. He is indeed perfectly satisfied that " nothing short of a full and unconditional acceptance of Parliamentary government as free nations understand it, guaranteed by consequential amendments of the Constitution, will meet Germany's great need " ; and that in this respect the needs of Germany and of Europe are one. Steady political progress for Germany, the improvement of her relations with other Powers, and the peace of Europe all hang, in Mr. Dawson's opinion, upon tho same cause. Mr. Dawson entertains no hope that Germany will ever secure representative government by the revolution which was so freely prophesied at the outset of the war by those who judged German conditions and German popular opinion by- our own. "The spirit of revolution is," as he says, "foreign to the German character," and even ii it would answer to their call it Avould be a dangerous ally for the responsible European statesmen to invoke. Nor does Mr. Dawson look for any thorough-going reform from above. "The history of Constitutionalism in 'Prussia," he -writes, "is largely a history of broken faith on tho part of the Sovereigns." In recognition of the heroic sacrifices made by the people in the war against Napoleon they were promised a Constitution and a Legislature, but nearly a generation passed before anything at all was done, and the lapse of a century finds the promise still unfulfilled. "Am I not bound as an honourable man," wrote Frederick William IV., "to do what my father promised?" But the operations of his conscience proved to be neither rapid nor punctilious, for he waited until the tenth year of his reign before granting a Constitution which is a mere (jrave6ty of popular institutions, aud he left' written instructions to his successors to revoke the sordid boon that he had thus -reluctantly conferred. It is to the credit of the 'present Kaiser that he destroyed this disgraceful document, but neither he nor any of his predecessors made any attempt to make the grant a reality, though his father would doubtless have ' done so had he lived. William 1., who was a far milder man than his grandson, was indeed guilty, under Bismarck's instigation, of a flagrant violation of I this Constitution, when be carried, on. the ,

Government without a Budget for four years in succession. 1862-6. Germany's present ruler has been more observant of the letter of the Constitution, but he has displayed at least an equal disregard of its spirit, and both for Prussia and for Germany has persistently proclaimed his own will as the one supreme and unchallengeable authority in the State. His ideal is -well represented by the politician who remarked not long ago that "the Emperor should be in a position at any moment to say to a lieutenant, Take ten men and ehufc up the Reichstag. 1 " To bring the practice of government in Germany into harmony ■with the principles which have received verbal acknowledgemen in the Constitutions both of the States' and. the Empire is all that is needed, but why should a nation which has submitted to the violation of these principles for so many years suddenly awake to the necessity of enforcing their observance now? The Germans fought magnificently to rid the country of tho tyranny of Napoleon in the early years of the last century, but it looks as though foreign help has become necessary to ensure their deliverance from the tyranny of a home-grown Napoleon now.