THE NEW GERMAN CHANCELLOR

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3196, 21 September 1917, Page 5

THE NEW GERMAN CHANCELLOR

A PRUSSIAN BUREAUCRAT INTERESTING SKETCH When Von Bcthmann-Hollweg, a biireaucrat of bureaucrats, becamo Chancellor ill July, 190 D, a Berlin editor recalled Bismarck's maxim, that if Imperial Germany were over governed by a Prussian Civil Servant slie would be !ost (says Mr. P. W. Wile, in the "Daily Mail"). Hitherto tho Empire lia«l escaped such a fate. Now a Civil Servant, Dr. Georg Michaolis, has taken the bridge. Will ho steer clear of the rocks any more successfully than tho pilot just dropped? Tho new Chancellor is GO years old, a year the junior of Von Bethmann-Holl-weg, and was trained for the law. Apart from his dyed-in-the-wnol bureaucratic personality and antecedents, tho main thing about him that commands notico is that he is tho first commonor to gain the German Premiership. All his predecessors were uoblomen of degree. There can bo little doubt that the absence of a "von" ill Dr. Michaelis's name —it is nronouncod Mich-ali-ay-lis—was one of tho factors which led to his appointment. . Dr. Michaelis, as a statesman and politician in the generally acoepted meaning of those terms, is what tho Germans call an "unwritten page," i.e., an utterly unknown quantity. Meteoric rises' in the Prussian pmblic service orb practically Unheard of—certainly there is none comparable with Miohaelis's leap from an Undcr-Secretaryship of a Prussian Ministry to the Imperial Chancellorship. I have a fairly wide knowledge of German public men in consequence of 13 yeais' residence in Berlin, but I do not remember ever once having heard tho name of the hew Chancellor. That is because his career has been the typical one of the common Prussian Civil Servant. Enterinj? official life at 22, he carried on the stilted and negligible existence of h|s class uninterruptedly for 38 years. His ignorance of foreign politics may be considered to be profound, though in his late 'twenties ho lived for a while in Tokio as a 'tutor in the School of German Jurisprudence and Political Science. After various periods of servico m the Prussian provinces as a minor law court official, a public prosecutor, a superintendent of religious and educational affairs, and a deputy-president of the province of Silesia, with headquarters at Broslau/ Dr. Michaelis became /UnderSecretary of the Prussian, Ministry ot FinaWe' in 1909. There he worked zealously but unobtrusively until the outbreak of Var, when his energetic administrative capacity resulted in his being called to the directorship of the Imperial Grain Commission. This was Germany's initial attempt at food control. In February, 1917, when von Batoefci, the Imperial Fooa Dictator, was under Are for muddling and mismanagement, it was 'decided to found a special Pood Commissionership for Prussia, ana Dr. Michaelis was appointed to fill it. There has been little evidence, however, that the expected salvation has been achieved. Prussia was just aa "Ungry under Michaelis as it was under Batocki. When Dr. Michaelis was appointed FooT Commissioner lie waß described by "well-informed" authorities as an official of singularly virile temperament and a man accustomed to hack his own way through difficulties and opposition, no matter how seemingly insuperable. Els administration of tho Gram Commission, it was 1 said, ' often required him to exhibit great strength of character, and he, refrained systematically from yielding to "weak considerations' whenever tlie emergency called for vigour and decision. He will have Med of thesu qualities amid the conditions in which he has been called to tho Chancellorship. His political training and environment, coupled with tho circumstances of his sudden ascent 10. the dizzy heights of world politics, compel us to look upon Dr. Michaelis as a Junker Chancellor, like all tho others bofore ltim There is nothing in his past, and still less in his present, to make Germans or non-Germans believo that tho Prussian leopard luis changed its spots.