THE HOHENZOLLERNS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1298, 17 September 1914, Page 4

THE HOHENZOLLERNS.

A FAMILY OF BANDITS. SALIKNT CHARACTERISTICS. EFFECT ON FOREIGN POLICY. A vigorous description of certain characteristics of the Hohenzollerns, the reigning family in Germany, as they directly affect the foreign policy of Germany, are given in a book, “Germany and Good Faith,” recently written by Mr E. H. C. Oliphant. In a preparatory note the writer wishes it to be understood that if very hard things are said of the German Imperial family it did not necessarily mean that the Germans as a people were to be similarly regarded. Indeed, he records his belief that the characteristics of the Hohenzollerns are not the characteristics of the people of Germany as a whole, though in many cases they are characteristics of the Prussian people, whose tyrannical and overbearing disposition had made them detested from one end ot Germany to the other.

“The Hohenzollerns ate a family of bandits,” he observes. “When they first confront us in the pages of history they possessed a formidable seat in the Suabian Alps, and lived by brigandage. This is not particularly to their discredit, for in this respect they were not distinguishable from the other feudal lords who ravaged Germany in the middle ages, and were the ancestors ot the Royal houses of later times ; what distinguishes them from the other is that they have never dropped their old characteristics ; the only difference between the older and the younger Hohenzollerns is that their operations duiing the past two centuries have been on a larger scale than formerly.” , THE RUEERS OF PRUSSIA,

To the Hohenzollerns, continues the author, an acquisition o£ territory has always been considered cheaply attained at the price of nothing more substantial than honour. “Prussian” tyranny, “Prussian” insolence, “Prussian” boorishness, “Prussian” duplicity, have become bywords in Europe, and In Germany ilselt; but the rulers of Prussia are not Prussians, and the chief, the central, and the dominant portion of the kingdom is not Prussia, but Brandenburg. The electors of Brandenburg acquired East Prussia by treaty, and united it to their electorate by a gross breach of faith. West Prussia they obtained later by still more disreputable means ; and, when they took the title of “king,” they did Prussia the injustice of attaching its name instead of that of Brandenburg, to the title. Frederick the Great was great in energy, in insight, in dissimulation, in effrontery, in ingratitude, in courage, in cynical disregard of his plighted word, but, even amongst the Hohenzollerns, unique he was not, save in genius. He had all the boundless vanity and self-confidence characteristic of the head of the family to-day, but to his free thinking spirit the partnership which the present Kaiser seems to imagine himself to have entered into with the Almighty would have been the subject of cruel ridicule. To William 1., the first Emperor of Germany, the writer ascribes the creation of that mighty instrument of war with which Moltke was to effect an alteration of the map of Europe; and so it is on him that must be affixed the original responsibility for the fact that for the past 40 or 50 years Europe has been an armed camp ; that for almost the whole of that time Germany has been a menace to the peace of the world, and that Europe has learned anew the old doctrine she had been glad to forget, that Might is Right.

William I. was a comparatively honest, well-meaning, vain, selfsatisfied despot, who took to himself the full credit for all that was done for his country in his time, and, like a true Hohenzollern, believed himself divinely appointed to do as he chose. Referring to Bismarck, Mr Oliphant describes him as being without scruple, and without any sense of honour. Moreover, he knew how to treat the Prussian people, for he was by nature a slave driver. ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY. In considering how the realm ot the Hohenzollerns has grown, the writer says that ot the i 4 provinces into which the Kingdom is now divided, Berlin has been theirs since they began their connection with their present territory ; but it was only a restricted Brandenburg, of which they took possession. Gradually they secured the whole of it, and in the reign ot John Siglsmond, East Prussia was acquired. The acquisition of part of the Rhineland dates back to the same period, and this was added to by the great Elector, who also secured portions of Saxony and Westphalia, and a large slice of Pomerania, without fighting for them. Frederick William 11. filched Silesia from Austria, and the greater part of West Prussia and part of Posen from Poland. Frederick William 11. completed the annexation ot West Prussia, his successor gathered in the remainder of Pomerania, Posen, Prussian Saxony, Westphalia, and the Rhineland ; and William I. added Schleswig-Holstein • with the exception of Heligoland, which William 11. obtained cheaply in 1890 —Hanover, HessiNassau, and Hohenzollern. Prussia has grown till it now contains nearly twice as great a population, and has nearly twice the area ol all the rest of Germany put together. WIU.IAM, THE MISCHIEVOUS, To the present Emperor, Mr Oliphant has attached the title of “William the Mischievous.” Hediffers from everyone of his predecessors in some particulars, and yet has some points of resemblance with the exception, perhaps, of his father. He possesses in full measure all the recognised Hohenzollern characteristic, except miserliness ; and some of them he carries to their limit, notably, the appropriation of the Almighty as a faithful ally of the Hohenzollerns, to be alternately flattered and patronised, cajoled, and utilised. The Kaiser’s vanity is personal, family, racial and national, and colossal in every form in which it manifests itself. So intense his egoism that he is an object of ridicule to all the princes of the Empire, who, in this way, repay the unbounded contempt with which he treats them.

The writer deals at length with the Kaiser’s numerous attempts to destroy the British Empire, and says that the keynote of the policy of Germany to the Empire of the Tsar has been abasement. To Russia the Kaiser has been deferential, but always on the lookout for gain ; to the Western Powers he has been the waiting Prussian, equally insulting in his flatteries and his threats, and always on the look-out to strike a fatal blow.

For the past quarter of a millenium the most ot the Hohenzollerns have been greedy ruffians, destitute of scruple and destitute of consideration for others ; selfish to the core and incapable of generosity to a fallen foe ; always ready to bully the weak and to truckle to the strong ; fond of having a finger in every pie and of putting forward claims that it would have been an insult to their intelligence to suppose them to have believed in ; of a perfectly insatiable greed and boundless ambition ; arrogant and ostentatious ; with the self-righteousness of the Pharisee and the brazen impudence of the demimonde; prepared

to betray friend and foe alike, and always full of suspicion that they will be betrayed; capable of the lowest cunning and incapable of shame. The colossal self-conceit that has characterised the majority of the Hohenzollerns may have something te do with their propensity' to meddle; the present Kaiser has been the most meddlesome ot them all. The quality of rapacity is one in which they have no rivals in Europe, and they are essentially a canny and cautious race. Most of their conquests have arisen from sheer greed. BREAKING OF FAITH. From George William to William I. there was not one Prussian monarch who honestly observed his engagements to his allies. Sometimes the disloyalty was of a negative character, a mere failure to keep a pledge, but very often it meant not only that, but the doing of the exact converse of what had been promised. With the present Kaiser underhandedness has become the greatest of arts, next to that of self-advertise-ment.

Under the Kaiser the first requisite in every German Ambassador is a capacity for doubledealing and for intrigue. The main duty of every embassy is to foment discord between the country to which it is accredited and the country against which the Kaiser happens to feel the most ill-will. Germany has been faithful to Austria for quite a prolonged period, but it has been only because she, too, wanted first to reduce Great Britain to the rank of a second-rate Power, to bring France into a position ot absolute independence, and to absorb Holland.