may obtain from other sources, or with reliance upon reasonable probabilities.

There would appear to be no evidence that the Kaiser believes that in any explicit and unmistakable manner God has spoken directly to him, giving to him the political mission which he claims to have. Nor has it been reported that he claims ever to have had an apocalyptic vision in which this endowment of authority was made. Not in this direct and immediate sense, then, does the Kaiser claim to be the vicegerent of God. Rather, I think, he is convinced that, as Hegel taught, there is a rationality to human history; that in the unfolding events of this world there can be discerned a divine or providential factor; and that, regarded in this light, his right to rule is but a part of the divine right of the Hohenzollern family to rule, of the divine right of Prussia to take the leadership of the Teutons, and of the divine right of the Teutons to exercise the dominant authority in the world.

The divinity which thus does hedge him about is strictly personal to himself. Its aura does not include other officials within its influence. "In our country," said Professor Wilhelm Ostwald, soon after the outbreak of the war, "God the Father is reserved for the personal use of the Emperor. In one instance He [God] was mentioned in a report of the General Staff, but it is to be noted that He has not appeared there a second time." 8

Fernau, himself a German, in his work The Coming Democracy, has a chapter entitled "The Basis of Dynastic Power," in which he shows that in Germany allegiance is due not to the constitution or to the State but to the person of the ruler. He points out that by Article 64 of the Imperial Constitution the soldiers swear fealty not to the constitution but "to render unconditional obedience to the orders of the Emperor"; and that by paragraph 108 of the Prussian Constitution it is expressly provided that "a swearing-in of the army upon the constitution of the country does not take place."

"If any one still has doubts on this subject," says Fernau, "let him read the proclamations and speeches of William II. . . . In William

In an interview, extracts from which were published in the Paris Temps, November 26, 1914.

II's speeches, wherever they relate to the army, we find the possessive pronoun of the first person; my army, my guard, my engineers, my officers, my soldiers, my fleet, etc. . . . At Breslau on December 2, 1896, he says: "The more the people shelter themselves behind catchwords and party considerations, the more firmly and securely do I count upon my army, and the more confidently do I hope that my army, either without or within my realms, will wait upon my wishes and my behests. You are called upon, in the first place, to protect me against internal and external foes!""

This does not mean, however, that the King rests his rights of sovereignty upon the patrimonial idea that Prussia, its people and their lives, belong to him as property. This theory is, indeed, consistent with the divine right theory, but not a necessary consequence of it. That is to say, it can be held that by divine intendment the realm and its people and their goods have been placed as property in the possession of the King. But, on the other hand, it is equally possible to hold that it is the divine will that the supreme ruler of a State should act only as a trustee for his people. That the present Kaiser regards himself as a trustee in this sense and not as an owner of sovereignty is, I think, certain certain at least if we may accept his own words.

To just what extent the divine right doctrine of the monarchy, and of the Hohenzollern family to the throne of Prussia, prevails generally in Prussia it is difficult to say. Certain it is that it finds no emphatic support in the writings of the present-day German political philosophers and constitutional jurists; and yet, upon the other hand, we find practically no formal adverse criticisms of it. This remarkable silence upon this point would possibly indicate that the scientific mind is not able to accept it, but that for prudential or other reasons it is thought best not to criticize it. As throwing some light upon professional reticence upon this point is the incident referred to by Mr. Dawson, a well-known authority on conditions in Germany.

In 1902 [he says] the Breslau Professor of Jurisprudence, Dr. W. Schücking, in the course of a lecture on the question whether the succession to the throne could be regulated by law, remarked that he would "pass over the doctrine of monarchy by God's grace as being a non-juristic question." He was denounced by a hearer a fact which tells its own tale in a Berlin conservative newspaper, and

soon after received a warning from the Minister of Education containing the reminder that "he might teach what he wished, but he must always reckon with the possibility of his services being no longer required." Later interferences with his liberty led this independent-minded teacher to leave Prussia for one of the more tolerant German States.9

The most specific discussion that I have found upon the Kaiser's claim to divine right is that of Dr. Otto Hintze, Professor of History of the University of Berlin. Writing since the beginning of the war, he denies that the German people now accept such exalted conceptions as those, for example, of Frederick William IV. In criticizing the utterances of the present Kaiser, he says that they are without significance from the standpoint of constitutional law - which no one that I know of has ever asserted— and then gives the following interpretation of what is believed upon this point. "Our rulers," Professor Hintze says, "declare themselves to be such 'by the Grace of God.' . . . The meaning of this characterization from the viewpoint of political law is simply that the royal power was not granted by the people, but that it exists upon ancient, historical right that has grown and refined coincident with our history, thus proceeding from a combination of factors which piety may be inclined to ascribe to a higher dispensation." 10

• Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany, p. 64.

10 Treitschke, in his Politics (I, 58) says: "The claim to rule by the grace of God is no more than a devout aspiration which does not attempt to formulate a mystical and spiritual right to power, but simply to assert that the inscrutable will of Providence has decreed the elevation of a particular family above its rivals. Piety is a fundamental requirement in a monarch, since the notion that he stands immeasurably above all other men may actually unsettle his reason, if it be not balanced by personal humility which compels him to acknowledge himself God's instrument. All this does not abrogate the axiom that it is the nature and aim of monarchy to be of this world. Genuine monarchy does not aspire to partnership with the Almighty. On the other hand, monarchy stands opposed to republicanism. In a republic, authority is founded upon the will of the governed, while in a monarchy it is derived from the historical claim of a particular family and concentrated in the will of one man who wears the crown and who, though surrounded by more or less responsible advisers, ultimately decides every question himself."

The recognition by Treitschke of the Providential element, of course, gives to monarchy and to the reigning family a supra-rational or transcendental basis of right.

If this be a fair statement of the scientific position, as held in the higher institutions of learning, we may have little doubt that when we descend to popular opinion the opinion is general, except of course among the Social Democrats, a very considerable, but as yet politically uncontrolling exception, — that the King and Kaiser does rule by a divine delegation of authority.

We come now to the final point which I wish to discuss in this paper, which is this: Granting that there exists in Prussia the character of monarchical government which I have described, What concern is this to the peoples of other States? And, in view of the generally acknowledged principle of international law, that one nation is not presumed to have the right to bring pressure to bear upon another State to compel it to change the form of government, with what right or justice are the Entente Powers now demanding, as a condition of permanent peace, that Prussia shall effect a radical change in her scheme of political rule, or at least in the principles upon which it is founded, and upon which, in the past, it has been operated?

The answer to this question, shortly stated, is this:

As regards the particular monarch now reigning, it has appeared that he and the advisers by whom he has seen fit to surround himself have no respect for their own covenanted word and no regard for the rights of other peoples as sanctioned by long-established rules of international law. For the sake of securing his own end he has shown no compunction in visiting upon wholly innocent persons- the Belgians, for example immeasurable and irremediable injuries. This he has justified to himself as an agent of the Almighty, and, acquiescing in this claim, the people of Germany have been led to support him. Giving motive force to his acts has, of course, been the assumption that he is the legislative mouthpiece and the executive arm of a transcendent being, the National State of Germany, which has for its aim and mission to spread throughout the world that Kultur which it has itself created.

When thus conceived it is clear that the Prussian conception of monarchy assumes a significance which leaves it no longer a matter with which only the Germans themselves are concerned. Until this doctrine is discredited there can be no possible security to other peoples.

It is, therefore, a matter of the merest precaution and self-defense that the Entente Powers and the United States should demand of the German people that, if they wish to continue to be monarchically governed, they should eliminate from their political philosophy and from their constitutional practice the features which have made possible the policies which their government has adopted.

The demand, therefore, of the Allied Powers that Prussian autocracy be overthrown is not based upon a claim upon their part that they have a right to impose their own political ideas upon the Germans, for if this were so they would subject themselves to one of the chief indictments which they have brought against the Prussians. Rather, their contention is compacted of two convictions: That only thus can they obtain treaty agreements the binding force of which they can have an assurance will be respected; and that only thus will it be possible to prevent a continued acceptance by the German people of political principles and of national policies which not only furnish a constant menace to international peace and comity, but threaten to destroy civilization itself. As it now appears to the United States and to the Entente Powers, but two alternatives appear tolerable. Either the political power of Germany must be so weakened that it can no longer endanger the world, or it must be taken out of the autocratic control of those who have so misused it.

Stated in other words, the conviction of the Entente Powers is that this much at least may be said of democracy: That released from false teaching imposed upon them from above, and left free to form and express their own judgments regarding matters of public policy and of public morality, no intellectually enlightened people will adopt or support such policies as have been framed by the autocratic rulers of Germany and sought to be executed as divine commands. This, then, is the real meaning of the demand that the world must be made safe for democracy. Never again must it be possible for a few men intoxicated with their own power and demented by a belief in the divine origin of their own authority to plunge a whole world into an abyss of horror and suffering.

W. W. WILLOUGHBY.