THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13239, 28 August 1917, Page 6

THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR.

Dr Michaelis, the German Chancellor, is a- nobody, and his appointment] to the position by the Kaiser wa-s a surprise to the German people. The new Chancellor had never been identified with those great props of the H-ohen-zollern dynasty, the junkers. He is not a noble. As a plain commoner he had no such sympathetic interests, relations and connections with the junkers" as were maintained by his predecessor. The astonishing tiling to tlie Germans was that any one not a '•von'' could become the Imperial Chancellor. Since the days the. German Empire was proclaimed by William T. at Versailles there has always been a "von" in the Imperial Chancellery—Yon Bismarck, Von Hohenlolie. Von Buelow, Von Bethmann-Hollweg. Michaelis, direct from the people, Ims come up from the bottom. After the customarily thorough gymnasium' training, Georg Michaelis enteredi ,i-lie service of the Prussian Government in 1579, taking a small post in the Department of Jurisprudence. Serving in a subordinate capacity, he remained for six years. In 1885 he went to Tokio and taught in the German School of Jurisprudence. Four years 'later he returned to Prussia and re-entered the Department of Jurisprudence in a higher post. His services attracted little attention outside of Government circles, but he was gradually forging ahead, and in 1902 he was made ooer-president of the Breslau district in Silesia. Thereafter he rose step by step until in 1909 he was appointed Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Finance, the post he has just vacated to take the Chancellorship. In 1916 he was made Prussian Food Controller, co-operating with Count von Batocki, the Imperial Food Controller.