FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119  
120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   >>   >|  
nd haughty and domineering to those below them. The tendency is perhaps not confined to Germany, but it seems, to the inhabitant of countries where bureaucracy is not a powerful caste, to penetrate German society and ordinary life to a greater degree--yet not to a great degree--than in more democratic societies. The Emperor naturally knows nothing of such a thing, for there is no one superior to him in the Empire in point of rank, and he is much too modern, too well educated, and of too kindly and liberal a nature to encourage or permit Byzantinism towards him on the part of others. Indeed Byzantinism was never a Hohenzollern failing. In his able work on German civilization Professor Richard tells of some Silesian peasants who knelt down when presenting a petition to Frederick William I, and were promptly told to get up, as "such an attitude was unworthy of a human being." Only on one occasion in the reign has an action of the Emperor's afforded ground for the suspicion that he was for a moment filled with the spirit of the Byzantine emperors--namely, when he demanded the "kotow" from the Chinese Prince Tschun, who led the "mission of atonement" to Germany. This, however, was not really the result of a Byzantine character or spirit, but of the excusable anger of a man whose innocent representative had been treacherously killed. Of affinity with the idea of Byzantinism is that as frequently occurring idea in German court and ordinary life conveyed by the word "reaction." Here again we have one of those qualities to be found among mankind everywhere and always: the instinct opposed to change, even to those changes for the good we call progress, the disposition that made Horace deride the _laudator temporis acti se puero_ of his day, the feeling of the man who laments the passing of the "good old times" and the military veteran who assures us that "the country, sir, is going to the dogs." In political life such men are usually to be found professing conservatism, owners of land, dearer to them often than life itself, which they fear political change will damage or diminish. In Germany the Conservative forces are the old agrarian aristocracy, the military nobility, and the official hierarchy, who make a worship of tradition, hold for the most part the tenets of orthodox Protestantism, dread the growing influence of industrialism, and are members of the Landlords' Association: types of a dying feudalism, disposed to beli
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119  
120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
German
 

Germany

 

Byzantinism

 

spirit

 

change

 
political
 
military
 

Byzantine

 
Emperor
 

ordinary


degree

 

Horace

 
deride
 

disposition

 
laudator
 

progress

 
domineering
 
veteran
 

passing

 

laments


feeling

 

temporis

 

instinct

 

conveyed

 

reaction

 

occurring

 

frequently

 

treacherously

 

killed

 

affinity


mankind

 
assures
 

tendency

 

confined

 

qualities

 
opposed
 

tenets

 
orthodox
 

Protestantism

 
tradition

worship
 

nobility

 
official
 
hierarchy
 

growing

 

feudalism

 
disposed
 

Association

 
influence
 

industrialism