"HOCH DER-?"

Free Lance, Volume XIX, Issue 1029, 17 March 1920, Page 6

"HOCH DER-?"

Surprising' News from Berlin. , A LTHOTJGH everybody hasi s been -£-r- anticipating something of the "kind, nobody expected to hear on Mon- - ■day morning last that the Monarchist Party in Germany had pulled off a •coup, ejected the Ebert-Ba,uer Republican Government, and set things in motion for the restoration of the monarchy in the person of -? A hurried meeting of v the Allies has been •convened, the, smart Alecs in Washington are saying they- are not a bit surprised, and the newspapers are talking about an armed invasion of Germany. The hermit of Ainerongen has suddenly become interesting, although nobody, imagines that the reactionaries Vwould be silly enough to put a- discredited mountebank back on the German throne.

Comment on this Latest development in Hnnland must await further details, but one aspect of the business is worth little attention. Why do people •?rave for the lustre of an autocratio ■figure-head when they might work out their own salvation as a democracy ? If the monarchist movement- in Germany were composed entirely of barons, •counts, grand dukes, princes, generals, deposed kings, and so forth, we could understand the motive. But such a select company woulcl not be strong •enough to last tiny more' than one round in a- revolutionary scrap. The monarchist movement ■Germany must have plenty of adherents amongst the people to accomplish what it has done. What is this strange •aberration that makes the German people want an autocratic ruler to look up to, to take off their hats and shout "JEocn der Kaiser I" "Hoch der Koenigl" or words to that effect? We know that the " divinity that doth, hedge a king only exists in the folios of Shakespeare and in tales of old renown. Yet it looks as if man by tradition has always wanted a fetish of some kind, something to swear by—a popular idol in fact—and, if the German

people wefe to set up old Hindenburg upon, a throne, we shcrald. be inclined to ' think : that they are - after their fetish, and that their lust for Herr Ebert'>s and-other republican gore is merely an incident.