THE LARGER SYNTHESIS
nance is curiously analogous to that of the French Empire in those years. Death at any time may end the career of the present ruler of Germany—there is no certain insurance of one single life. This withdrawal would leave Germany organised entirely with reference to a Court, and there is no trustworthy guarantee that the succeeding Royal Personality may not be something infinitely more vain and aggressive, or something weakly self-indulgent or unpatriotic and morally indifferent. Much has been done in the past of Germany, the infinitely less exacting past, by means of the tutor, the Chamberlain, the Chancellor, the wide-seeing power behind the throne, who very unselfishly intrigues his monarch in the way that he should go. But that sort of thing is remarkably like writing a letter by means of a pen held in lazy tongs instead of the hand. A very easily imagined series of accidents may place the destinies of Germany in such lazy tongs again. When that occasion comes, will the new class of capable men on which we have convinced ourselves in these anticipations the future depends—will it be ready for its enlarged responsibilities, or will the flower of its possible members be in prison for lèse majesté, or naturalised Englishmen or naturalised Americans or troublesome privates under officers of indisputably aristocratic birth, or well-broken labourers, won "back to the land," under the auspices of an Agrarian League?
In another way the intensely monarchical and aristocratic organisation of the German Empire will stand in the way of the political synthesis of greater
221
