ess, and in order to protect vested
interests and to maintain political, intellectual, and religious
reaction?

CHAPTER IX

MECKLENBURG, THE PARADISE OF PRUSSIAN JUNKERTHUM

I.

The tourist who takes the express train between Berlin and Copenhagen,
one hour after he has left the Prussian capital reaches a vast plain
more than half the size of Belgium, where barren moorlands alternate
with smiling fields, where dormant lakes are succeeded by dark
pine-forests. Few travellers ever think of breaking their journey on
this melancholy plain, the territory of the Grand Dukes of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They have not the
remotest suspicion that these Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg, which they
cross in such listless haste, are, from a political point of view, one
of the most fascinating countries of Europe. Mecklenburg has for the
students of comparative politics the same sort of interest which an
Indian reserve territory, or the Mormon State of Utah, has for the
traveller in the United States, or which a cannibal tract in the
equatorial Congo forest has for the explorer of Central Africa. For
this pleasant land of Mecklenburg-Schwerin is the last survival of a
patriarchal and feudal civilization. It is the most perfect type of
the paternal Prussian type of government, entirely unspoiled by the
Parliamentary institutions of a feeble democratic age.

II.

Here alone of all the North German States the conditions of a past
generation continue in their pristine vigour. Although the Grand Duke
is the only descendant of Slavonic Princes in the German Empire, and
still calls himself "Prince of the Wendes," he is the most Teutonic of
dynasts. Although Mecklenburg-Schwerin is independent of Prussia, it
is the most Prussian and the most Junkerized of all Federal States.

In degenerate Prussia the Kaiser has actually to submit to the
financial control of an unruly Reichstag, and is not even allowed to
spend the Imperial revenues as any Emperor by right Divine ought to be
logically allowed to do. The Duke of Mecklenburg is far more fortunate
than William II. He has no accounts to settle, _he has not even a
budget to publish_. He collects in paternal fashion the revenues of
his Grand Ducal demesnes, and no power has any right to ask any
questions. Even the "Almanack of Gotha," which is generally omniscient
in these matters, is silent on the revenues of His Highness. There is
a public debt of about one