William of Germany | Page 2

dissolves it.
These parties, from the situation of their seats in a parliament of 397
deputies, became known as the parties of the Right, or Conservative
parties, and the parties of the Left, or Liberal parties. Between them sat
the members of the Centre, who, as representing the Catholic
populations of Germany--roughly, twenty-two millions out of
sixty-six--became a powerful and unchanging phalanx of a hundred
deputies, which had interests and tactics of its own independently of
Right or Left.
By and by, one of the parties of the Left, representing the classes who

work with their hands as distinguished from the classes who work with
their heads, thought they would like to live under a political system of
their own making and began to show a strong desire to take all power
from the King and from the Parliament too. They agitated and
organized, and organized and agitated, until at length, having settled on
what was found to be an attractive theory, they made a wholly separate
party, almost a people and parliament of their own. This is known as
the Social Democracy, with, at present, no deputies.
Such, in a comparatively few sentences, is the political state of things
in Germany. It might indeed be expressed in still fewer words, as
follows: Heaven gave the royal house of Hohenzollern, as a present, a
folk. The Hohenzollerns gave the folk, as a present, a parliament, a
power to make laws without the power of executing them. The Social
Democrats broke off from the folk and took an anti-Hohenzollern and
anti-popular attitude, and the folk in their Parliament divided into
parties to pass the time, and--of course--make laws.
This may seem to be treating an important subject with levity. It is
intended merely as a statement of the facts. The system in Germany
works well, to an Englishman indeed surprisingly so. In England there
is no Heaven-appointed king; all the powers of the King, both that of
making laws and of administering them, have long ago been taken by
the people from the King and entrusted by them to a parliament, the
majority of whom, called the Government, represent the majority of the
electing voters. In the case of Germany the folk have surrendered some
of what an Englishman would term their "liberties," for example, the
right to govern, to the King, to be used for the common good; whereas
in the case of England, the people do not think it needful to surrender
any of their liberties, least of all the government of their country, in
order to attain the same end.
Thus, while the German Emperor and the German folk have the same
aims as the English King and the English people, the common weal and
the fair fame of their respective countries, the two monarchs and the
two peoples have agreed on almost contrary ways of trying to secure
them.

The political system of Germany has had to be sketched introductorily
as for the Englishman, a necessary preliminary to an understanding of
the German Emperor's character and policy. One of the most important
results of the character and policy is the state of Anglo-German
relations; and the writer is convinced that if the character and policy
were better and more generally known there would be no estrangement
between the two countries, but, much more probably, mutual respect
and mutual good-will.
With the growth of this knowledge, the writer is tempted to believe,
would cease a delusion that appears to exist in the minds, or rather the
imaginations, of two great peoples, the delusion that the highest
national interests of both are fundamentally irreconcilable, and that the
policies of their Governments are fundamentally opposed.
It seems indeed as though neither in England nor in Germany has the
least attention been paid to the astonishing growth of commerce
between the countries or to the repeated declarations made through a
long series of years by the respective Governments on their countries'
behalf. The growth in commerce needs no statistics to prove it, for it is
a matter of everyday observation and comment. The English
Government declares it a vital necessity for an insular Power like Great
Britain, with colonies and duties appertaining to their possession in all,
and the most distant, parts of the world, to have a navy twice as
powerful as that of any other possibly hostile Power. The ordinary
German immediately cries out that England is planning to attack him,
to annihilate his fleet, destroy his commerce, and diminish his prestige
among the nations. The German Government repeatedly declares that
the German fleet is intended for defence not aggression, that Germany
does not aim at the seizure of other people's property, but at protecting
her growing commerce, at standing by her subjects in all parts of the
world if subjected