HOW BISMARCK KEPT GOETHE'S BIRTHDAY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 134, 26 November 1875, Page 8

HOW BISMARCK KE PT GOETHE'S BIRTHDAY.

While the Germans of New York were paying homage with garlands and with music to the memory of Germany's greatest poet and. stateliest man of letters on Saturday, Prince Bismarck was celebrating the birthday ol Goethe in his native city ot Frankfort-on-the-Main in quite another fashion. On that day Mr. Echvard Sack, the responsible dheetor of the ' IVankiurtcr Zeitung,' was arrested and imprisoned, for refusing to disclose the authorship of three articles published in his journal last March, which the imperial authorities chose to regard as hostile to themselves and to the policy which they desired to impose upon Germany. The dying prajer of the great author, m whom Germans take such pride, was a prayer for "light." The one thing which the actuil rulers of Germany have resolved shall not be known in Germany if they can pi event it is light. To this end they have undertaken not only to reduce the pulpit to a position of complete subservience to the State, but to make the j>i'Css, in the forcible language of Baron Von Liebenstcin, of Baden, already quoted in these columns, " a mere echo of the views of the Government." How resolutely and mercilessly Prince Bismarck has piosccuted his campaign against the independence of the pulpit is known to all the world, The story of last week in Germany makes it certain that the "princo of blood and iron" fears the press no more than the pulpit, and will give the journalists of Germany no more quarter than the priests of Germany. A month ago, on the 2nd of August, three of the editors of the ' Frankfurter Zeitung ' were arrested and imprisoned avowedly with the hope that these harsh proceedings might lead them to release themselves by givingup the name ot their collaborator, in or out of office, who had written the obnoxioi s articles. A day or two afterwards a fourth editor of the • Zeitung,' casually absent from Frankfort when the first arrests took place, was impounded with his fellows. At the same time Mr. Sack, the lesponsihle director of the journal, was fined and distinctly given to understand that the fate -which had overtaken the editors -was in s'oio ior him also. Mr. Sack, to his credit be it said, met this threat with spirit and Auth dignity, denounced the actien oi the Go\ eminent in fitting terms as a revhal of the ancient oideal by toiture, and declared his ieadme<-s to accept impiisonnicnt ii it should bo offered to him as the alternative of treason to his a^sor-hitep, to his order, and to his duty towards the public. Three weeks after this, a congress of German journalists was held in Bren en, which, thorn; h incorporated wirh the new German Empire, still retains its local Go\ eminent and freedom enough to secure liberty of speech within the law to men who, under the Hag of Prussia, mu&t be dumb. By this congress res-olutions were adopted calling upon the Imperial Parliament of Germany to protect, by new and sp>eeiiic enactments, the iiheri y oi the German press to publish the truth in regard to ill proceedings at law, and to withhold from publication the names of writers in the public journals. Neither Mr. Edward Sack nor the congress ot the German press at Bremen went so far as to demand immunity ior the responsible directors of the press in the exercise of their i unctions from prosecution by the Government. What they asked was much less than this. They asked for the conductors ot the public journals of Germany the right to deal as men ot honor with their contributors, and to take upon themselves the consequences of any publication made by them which might draw down upon them the vengeance of the Government as transgressing the limits of a plain and clearly defined legality. What answer the Imperial Parliament of Germany will make to these resolutions remains to be seen. Prince Bismarck, for his part, has already answered them. They were adopted at Bremen on the 23rd of August. On the 28th of August, at Frankiort-on-tho-Main, Mr. Edward Sack, by whose treatment these resolutions had been called out, was seized and s-ent to prit-on, with orders, that he be kept there until he should disclose the name ot the author of the articles which ha\e <=o aroi sed the wrath of the authorities at Berlin. It would be ebllici.lt ior any Government to offer a more direct insult than this to a body oi German subjects who, whatever may be true or Jalse oi them as individuals, certainly stand now as the spokes- n cr,, and in t! c \ncation of the Imperial Parliament as the only spokcsn.cn, of the Geiman nation. In countries like England and America, which have become accustomed by long years oi practical freedom to look upon the press in its tiuo light, such a course as this into which Prince Bismarck has thus dchl erately entered will be justly regarded as the beginning oi the end ol his hitherto triumphant career. II ho should abaiidon it new 1 eicie the united hostility of the journalists of Geimaiiy, or at the 1 chest ol the German Parliament, his, prestige, which, in his (ate c\ en moie tri,]} than in the case ol most of his lnstciical c< n picis-, n,i s-t 1 c ti.Lui to 1 o two-thirds, at least, of Ins power, will n eei\c asi lioi.s and perhaps a deadly blow. 11 he iJcr^c\ereK in it, thdi^h l«,r a time lie nuiy lie- able to deal succcssiull.A with the Gem an pr. ss, as Prlnuj Pohgnac tried and lulled to deal with thi prt s-s oi J<iai ( c, he will me'\ ltably find Ins authoiity mined Mid coi ntt lii.mcd in a thousand lud'cu'ii ways throughout the Cicrn an hmpiie', andihe colossal edifice w hich with so much pains and passionate zeal he has gradually built up will

I fall about him in. a day when he thinketh not, with a crash to , startle not Germany only, but Europe a,ud the world. ' The very efforts which Prince Bismarck, following blindly in the fat.il path trodden by so many great personages and famous rulers before him, is now making to compel everybody into thinking as he thinks on pain of not being allowed to think at all in Germany, pLunly prove that Prince Bismarck himself recognizes and icurs this latent power of everybody's thinking. If it were possible for Prince Bismarck to transform the Germany of 1875 into the likeness of the Pxus-ia of 1775, to abolish, representative institutions entirely, and to rule the empire as the generals of the Kaiser rule the Kaiser's camps, this policy of the asphyxiation of the public press might he pursued perhaps with, better prospects of superficial success. Even in that case it would be a policy deadly in the end to the life of the empire. Tlieiv is no such intrinsic difference between the Gallo-Teu-^ tonic people of France and the Sclavo Teutonic people of Germany, that tiie forces which slowly ate away the vigor and. the energy in. public affairs of the Parisian empire oi Napoleon 111 should be expected to nourish the vigor and the energ-y in public affairs of the Berlinese empire of "William I. The Gormans of the nineteenth century are no longer the docile and domestic people whom the great Frederick disciplined with his baton into the first militarymachine of his time. The lust of the eyes and the pride of life crossed the Rhine long itgo. and make their home now as thoroughly on the banks of the Spree a? 021 the banks of the Seine. It is well for Germany to erect statues to Arminius and to deck with flowers the tomb of Goetlie. But the future of Germany is of deeper import to herself and to the world than all the glory and all the greatness of the, past. And the future of Germany lies to-day slmt in and stifling behind that prison door in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, — 'New York World.'