Germany and the Germans | Page 8

and crowning their achievements with coronets.
The Crusades brought about as great a shifting of the balance of power, as did later the rise of the rich merchants, industrials, and nabobs in England. As the power of the nobles decreased, the central power or the power of the kings increased; increased indeed, and lasted, down to the greatest crusade of all, when democracy organized itself, and marched to the redemption of the rights of man as man, without regard to his previous condition of servitude.
During the thousand years between the time when we first hear of the German tribes, in 113 B. C., and the year 1411, which marks the beginnings of what is now the Prussian monarchy, customs were becoming habits, and habits were becoming laws, and the political and social origins of the life of our day were being beaten into shape, by the exigencies of living together of these tribes in the woods of Germany.
There it was that the essence of democracy was distilled. Democracy, Demos, the crowd, the people, the nation, were already, in the woods of Germany, the court of last resort. They growled dissent, and they gave assent with the brandishing of their weapons, javelins, or ballots. They were called together but seldom, and between the meetings of the assembly, the executive work, the judicial work, the punishing of offenders, was left to a chosen few; left to those who by their control over themselves, their control over their families, their control over their neighbors, seemed best qualified to exercise the delegated control of all.
The chief aim of their organized government, such as it was, seems to have been to leave themselves free to go about their private business, with as little interference from the demands of public business as possible. The chief concern of each one was to secure his right to mind his own business, under certain safeguards provided by all. If those delegated to govern became autocratic, or evil-doers, or used their power for self-advancement or self-enrichment, they were speedily brought to book. The philosophy of government, then, was to make men free to go about their private business. That the time might come when politics would be the absorbing business of all, dictating the hours and wages of men under the earth, and reaching up to the institution of a recall for the angel Gabriel, and a referendum for the Day of Judgment, was undreamed of. The chiefs of the clans, the chiefs of the tribes, the kings of the Germans, and finally the emperors were all elective. The divine right of kings is a purely modern development. The descendants of these German tribes in England, elected their king in the days of William the Conqueror even, and as late as 1689 the Commons of England voted that King James had abdicated, and that the throne was vacant!
The so-called mayors of the palace, who became kings, were in their day representatives of the landholders, delegates of the people, who advised the king and aided in commanding the armies. These hereditary mayors of the palace drifted into ever greater and greater control, until they became hereditary kings. The title was only hereditary, however, because it was convenient that one man of experience in an office should be succeeded by another educated to, and familiar with, the same experiences and duties, and this system of heredity continues down to this day in business, and in many professions and so long as there is freedom to oust the incompetent, it is a good system. There can never be any real progress until the sons take over the accumulated wisdom and experience of the fathers; if this is not done, then each one must begin for himself all over again. The hereditary principle is sound enough, so long as there is freedom of decapitation in cases of tyranny or folly.
There has continued all through the history of those of the blood of the German tribes, whether in Germany, England, America, Norway, Sweden, or Denmark, the sound doctrine that ability may at any time take the place of the rights of birth. Power, or command, or leadership by heredity is looked upon as a convenience, not as an unimpeachable right.
Charlemagne (742-814), a descendant of a mayor of the palace who had become king by virtue of ability, swept all Europe under his sway by reason of his transcendent powers as a warrior and administrator. He did for the first time for Europe what Akbar did in his day for India. In forty-five years he headed fifty-three campaigns against all sorts of enemies. He fought the Saxons, the Danes, the Slays, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Bretons. What is now France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, and most of Italy were under his kingship. He was