Behind the scenes in the Reichstag : sixteen years of parliamentary life in Germany

Front matter

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BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE REICHSTAG

SIXTEEN YEARS OF PARLIAMENTARY LIFE IN GERMANY

Foreword

"Cannot you give us some recollections of your parliamentary life?"

How many times I have been asked this question by editors of papers and reviews!

I have always hesitated to respond to these pressing requests, first because these excursions into the past, before the outbreak of war, can have but slight interest, and secondly because, being deprived of my notes, forgotten at Colmar or deposited in a safe place in a neutral country, I am obliged to rely wholly on my memory, which often fails me.

All that happened before the war is already so far away from us. In recalling these reminiscences of a still near past, it seems as though one were turning over the pages of an old conjuringbook. And yet the whole tragedy of to-day was in being in the events before 1914, and the more I reflect on what I observed and heard, both at Berlin and at Strassburg, the more I confess to myself that we were, with a few exceptions, stricken with blindness in not seeing the big thunder clouds gathering on the horizon.

xii FOREWORD

That is the reason why, overcoming my fear of being very incomplete, I have decided to set down, in a desultory manner, whatever events in my political past seem to me to present retrospective interest.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. How I Entered Politics 1

II. Arrival at Berlin 24

CHAPTER I How I Entered Politics

My Election — The Centre and the Members for Alsace- Lorraine — Denounced at Rome — Bishop and Chancellor — My Lawsuits — Two Months' Imprisonment — An Instance of German Blackguardism — The Bird had Flown.

It was in 1898 that the electors of the arrondissement of Ribeauville offered me the candidature for a seat in the Reichstag. The Abbe Simonis, who, since 1874, had represented the fifth constituency of Alsace-Lorraine with so much joyous energy, had just retired from public life, at the same time as his colleague, Canon Guerber, who until then had carried out the mandate of the arrondissement of Guebwiller. This excellent M. Simonis had been condemned, a few months before, to pay a fine of 600 marks because, at a public

meeting at which he had contested the candidature

l of Kreisdirektor Poehlmann, he allowed himself to quote the Alsatian proverb — "A man, a promise, or else a 'What do I care?' individual."

This misadventure — rather honourable than otherwise — had deeply grieved a man whose antecedents had been spotless until then.

But M. Simonis had a more serious reason for leaving the arena of public life. He belonged to the generation of early protestors who considered that they had carried out all the obligations of their mandate by going to Berlin merely twice or thrice a year to make heard there the voice of Alsace-Lorraine, inconsolable through having been separated from France. Now, it happened that our two provinces, forcibly associated with the destiny of the German Empire, sometimes suffered cruelly from an interior legislation in the elaboration of which their representatives systematically refused to collaborate. Therefore the electors had finished, not by getting tired of protesting, but by requesting their deputies to take a more active part in the work of the Imperial Parliament. M. Guerber and M. Simonis, however, would not consent to modify their purely negative attitude, so an appeal had to be made to new men.

The candidatures in the vacant constituencies were offered to several laymen — manufacturers, doctors, and lawyers, all of whom, in spite of earnest requests, politely refused. Thus, a week before the day fixed for the elections, I was begged to accept the struggle, whilst Canon Roellinger, Cure of Gueb wilier, was putting up for M. Guerber's seat.

Truth to tell, there was more danger than profit in entering public life at the time of the dictatorship and the regime of passports. Terror had reigned in Alsace since 1888, and, though the election of Jacques Preiss at Colmar in 1891 and that of Ignace Spiess at Schlestadt in 1896 denoted an awakening of public opinion, the reprisals which had immediately been made by the Secretary of State, von Puttkamer, seemed to foreshadow fresh acts of persecution against both the elected candidates and their electors.

Owing to the very short time at our disposal, it was necessary to improvise manifestos, posters, distributions of bulletins and public meetings. It was a week of excitement. Fortunately, our electors were most determined. Roellinger and I were elected at the first ballot with respectable majorities, although we had three opponents: a Governmental Catholic, a Liberal, and a Socialist.

Out of the fifteen seats of the annexed provinces, the Alsace-Lorraine group, which had accepted the heritage of the protestors, secured eleven, whilst the Socialists won three and the Germans had tc be satisfied with a single semisuccess at Saverne. In fact, Dr. Hoeffel, who represented the little town of the Lower Rhine, which was later made illustrious by Lieutenant von Forstner and Colonel von Reutter, got himself received at the Reichstag as a guest (Hospitant) in the fraction of the Independent Conservatives (Reichspartei) , among whom, moreover, he played a very obscure part.

Already at that time the immigrants and the Government had but one object — that of forcing the Deputies of Alsace-Lorraine to join the groups of the Imperial Parliament. For having responded to that earnest request during the preceding legislatures, MM. Petri and von Bulach had lost their seats. However, the Socialists, who relegated national claims to the background in favour of political questions, were not restrained by the same scruples, and their representatives, from Hickel to Bueb, had deliberately joined the Parliamentary group of the Extreme Left, which from that time gave them the support of the Germans.

In the meantime the immigrants had tried to penetrate all the political organizations of Alsace- Lorraine, in order to precipitate the evolution desired by the Ministry of Strassburg. In 1891 I had written on that subject a pamphlet, entitled, "Irons-nous au Centre?" ("Shall we Join the Centre?") , which caused rather a stir, and in which I combated any union whatsoever with the Catholic party of the Reichstag, because that union would have indicated to everyone the renunciation of our national claims, and would have prevented us presenting and defending our private resolutions in Parliament.

During the following twenty-three years I had to combat, both in my newspaper and at our meetings of delegates, the ever-recurring idea of rallying to the Centre. Several times my adversaries, headed by the German professor Martin Spahn and the Alsatians Muller and Didio, demanded my expulsion from the party. They never succeeded in obtaining anything save derisive minorities for their motions, whether frank or hypocritical ones.

But these recollections necessitate going back. My pamphlet "Irons-nous au Centre?" brought me numerous and enthusiastic letters of encouragement, like the one which followed it closely — "Parti catholique et Coteries" ("The Catholic Party and Coteries"). It was doubtless owing to this circumstance that, in December, 1893, I was entrusted by M. Jung, the printer, with the management of the Journal de Colmar, a bi-weekly journal printed entirely in the French language.

Before leaving the parochial ministry (at that time I was curate in the artisan parish of St. Joseph at Mulhausen, a parish justly celebrated for its numerous and prosperous social works) I called on the Bishop of Strassburg, Mgr. Fritzen, who still occupies the see of St. Arbogast. And this is what the prelate, whose two brothers were then members of the Reichstag, said to me :

"I am aware that the politics which you will uphold in your paper are not mine; but I do not think I have the right to forbid you to defend the interests of the population in your own manner. In ecclesiastical matters you will obviously remain subject to my control. As to the rest, write whatever you judge fit. It is not for me, as a bishop, to meddle with politics properly so called."

I asked him for nothing more. Let me add that Mgr. Fritzen kept strictly to this line of conduct and never attempted to give me the least imperative advice. It sometimes happened that I discussed with him, with absolute freedom, problems of public life ; yet he carefully refrained from exercising the slightest pressure on me. Better still, on several occasions, and without my knowledge, he undertook to defend me.

Here is the proof. In 1897, at Colmar, I had been elected a County Councillor, and at the first meeting of the Council I had to take the oath required by the law, "I swear obedience to the Constitution and fidelity to the Emperor."

This question of the taking of the political oath had been raised immediately after the annexation in 1873, on the occasion of the County Council elections. The first councillors to be elected having refused to take the oath, the prefects suspended the sitting. Gambetta, consulted by the interested parties, very wisely replied, "Compulsion does not stand in the way of the exercise of liberty. If you do not take verbally an oath which your heart disavows, all the seats will pass to creatures of the German Government. So observe this simple formality, which does not necessitate the slightest renunciation of your regrets and your hopes."

The advice was followed. Nevertheless, it was always horribly painful to pronounce the fatal formula. The day after I had been obliged to undergo this hard necessity, I published in my paper an article of which the following is a summary: "The political oath, because one is obliged to take it, does not admit of the obligation of conscience. Moreover, though I have indeed promised obedience to the Constitution, it is with the firm desire to modify it. Finally, the promise of fidelity to the Emperor ought not to prevent a Republican (and I have always been one) from trying to change the regime, provided that in attempting to do so he does not depart from legal methods."

The article produced a scandal. The Governmental Press left no stone unturned in attacking the priest who had dared to contest the holiness of the oath. Now, a few weeks later, the Bishop of Strassburg addressed to me a letter in which he announced that the Pope, Leo XIII, sent me, through his mediation, "his whole-hearted benediction." As no explanation accompanied this missive, I called on Mgr. Fritzen to ask him for enlightenment.

"I did not want," replied the prelate, smiling, "to tell you sooner of the plot hatched against you. After your article on the political oath, the Statthalter (Prince von Hohenlohe-Langenburg) sent to the Holy See, through the intermediary of the Prussian representative, a long memorandum, or, to speak more accurately, a virulent indictment. The Pope sent me the papers. I undertook your defence. Here are both the Prince's speech for the prosecution and mine for the defence. As you see, Rome says 'we' are in the right."

Indeed, the two documents — copies of which I have preserved — establish both the incommensurable stupidity of the Statthalter and the perfect correctness of the bishop, who, without even informing me, had protected me by his high authority.

A second denunciation from Prince von Hohenlohe met with the same fate the year after.

An amusing detail. When, eight years later, in 1905, 1 had the honour to be presented to Cardinal Rampolla, he welcomed me with the following words :

"Well, are you satisfied with the reply we formerly sent your Staathalter?"

The great friend of France, who was and who remained a Cardinal to the end, was once more to be recognised in this joyous exclamation. One had only to see the mischievous smile with which he emphasised it to be able to guess that the former Secretary of State to Leo XIII had been glad to be in a position to play a good trick on our professional Germanisers.

Mgr. Fritzen had once more to take up my defence in the spring of 1914, and under particularly difficult circumstances. My lecturing campaign in France, in the month of January of the preceding year, had provoked in the whole of the German Press the most violent protests and caused a torrent of shameful insults to descend on my head. For several weeks each post brought me a dozen letters or post-cards on which the Bodies, belonging to all classes of society, exhausted themselves by expressing insulting words and ridiculous threats. Moreover, the Leipzig court had been requested to charge me with high treason, and questions had been asked regarding my case in the two Parliaments of Berlin and Strassburg. During the whole session I was boycotted by the majority of my colleagues. On the other hand, my electoral committee and the meeting of the Alsace-Lorraine Centre deliberately refused to separate themselves from me.

The storm had already partly subsided when, in February, 1914, I called on the Bishop of Strassburg.

"You come in the nick of time," he declared. "It is barely a week ago since the Imperial Chancellor, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, sitting in the very chair you occupy, earnestly entreated me to take the most severe disciplinary measures against you. I replied to him (and you will not be surprised at this) that I deplored your political attitude, but that I was not in a position to censor it. You misemploy, perhaps, your liberty as a citizen, but, as a priest, I have nothing to reproach you with. Under these conditions, I should make an ill use of my ecclesiastical authority by exercising it in a matter in which all Catholics retain their entire independence."

A last time Mgr. Fritzen had to devote his attention to me; and again he acted with all the circumspection the situation demanded. It was in the early days of the month of September, 1914. I had just published in the Echo de Paris several articles signed "An ex-Member of the Reichstag." The German Press naturally made use of the most violent language against the "traitor." The military authorities demanded of the Bishop of Strassburg that he proceed to execute me in due form. So Mgr. Fritzen published in the Catholic journals of Alsace a letter in which he deplored my attitude, "which was contrary to my oath" (see above ) , and announced that he . . . removed me from the list of Alsatian priests in the ordo of his diocese.

Need I add that this last measure is inoperative? A priest can only be detached from his diocese as the result of a canonical trial. The lists of the ordo have merely a documentary value. They have no legal value. The Bishop of Strassburg, therefore, got out of a difficulty by a veritable practical joke.

The Bishop of Metz, Mgr. Bentzler, had to take a similar measure against Canon Collin. It is true that he added the following words to his public letter, "I am opening a canonical legal inquiry against M. Collin. But as circumstances do not permit me to serve him with the indictment, I am under the necessity of postponing the proceedings sine die." As in all probability it will be the future Bishop of Metz, Mgr. Collin, who will conduct the case against Canon Collin, there is every reason to believe that the sentence will not be too severe.

However that may be, Mgr. Bentzler proved himself on this occasion to be as witty as Mgr. Fritzen. I should never have believed two Germans capable of such humorous fancies.

When I took over the management of the Journal de Colmar it had 400 subscribers. Four week later there were 3,500. I attribute this success partly to the intervention of the Procurator of the Correctional Tribunal, Herr Bemays, who brought a sensational action against me. In the early days of January, 1894, I had published an article containing the following phrase, "The plan for the canalisation of the Hardt is lying about wretchedly in the portfolios of the Ministry." The Public Prosecutor saw in these words an insult to Herr von Puttkamer and opened proceedings. The sitting was epic. The Public Prosecutor began his speech for the prosecution with these words, "Wetterle's journal is frivolous, it violates all the rules of propriety, and it has assumed the mission of exciting hatred between the people and the notable men of the town, the Government and the persons under its jurisdiction, the natives and the German immigrants." He spoke for two full hours in this amiable manner and ended by demanding a sentence of four months' imprisonment. Preiss defended me. He was superb in his rejoinder. The trial ended in an acquittal. During the sitting the court was crowded to overflowing. The next day subscriptions began to flow in. My paper was launched.

However, I had not always the same success before the courts. My judicial record is very bad: twelve fines, ranging from 40 to 600 marks, plus two months' imprisonment.

One of these lawsuits was extremely funny. In the course of a controversy with a brother- journalist of Colmar I had written: "L,e journal X . . . petarade et rue dans les brancards." Although the metaphor was not applied to a person, the manager of the paper in question thought fit to bring an action against me. To the huge delight of the judges, counsel for the plaintiff devoted his attention to the most improper jests around the word "petarade." I pointed out to him that Saint- Simon had written, "The Princesses descended to the garden and indulged in all manner of pctarades" ; and that one could not honestly admit that the celebrated author of the Memoires intended to accuse those young and lively persons of improprieties. But this did not help me in the least. I was condemned to pay a fine of 100 francs, and one of the grounds of the judgment solemnly set forth that, in the opinion of all grammarians, petarade is equivalent to "une salve de p . . ." This lesson in French was well worth the fee I had to pay for it.

Every time that I appeared at the bar the same difficulties of translation occurred. Public prosecutors and judges grew pale over dictionaries in order to prove me guilty of the blackest designs. My counsel in turn were obliged to consult the most learned lexicons to establish my innocence. These philological discussions amused the gallery immensely.

I do not glory in my convictions. Nevertheless, I am bound to point out that in the text of all the judgments against me there was always the following clause, "Die antideutschen Gesinnungen des Angeklagten sind gerichtsbekannt" ("The anti-German sentiments of the accused are notorious"). This got me an increased penalty each time. The judicial authorities, moreover, never failed to extend the discussion to articles which were not incriminated. All the actions brought against me were for constructive offences.

Honest Hosemann, a Public Prosecutor whose candour was proverbial, said to me one day, "We guess your intentions; but you always know how to graze the dangerous line without overstepping it. But take care, for at the first false step we shall not fail to catch you."

I was to make that false step in 1909. The director of the Lycee of Colmar, Gneisse, a passionate pan-Germanist pedagogue, had published in the Strassburger Post an article in which he extolled the foundation of a league against the "Frenchifying" of Alsace-Lorraine. Gneisse was the most grotesque personage one can imagine. Hansi has immortalised him in several of his celebrated caricatures. A controversy sprang up between the pedant and myself. Gneisse was brutal; I replied to him jestingly. One of my articles I adorned with a portrait of my adversary, drawn by Hansi's masterly hand. Now, it happened that one day a young collegian, the son of one of my friends, came to see me at my office. Gneisse's portrait was lying on my desk. The boy asked me for it in order to give it to his father. He was, however, rather imprudent in showing it to a few of his fellow pupils.

For once they had me. Gneisse demanded a prosecution. The Secretary of State tried to make the pedant understand that he was about to cover himself with immortal ridicule. But in vain. The Public Prosecutor's office had to intervene. Nobody can imagine what that trial was. My counsel Preiss and Blumenthal, riddled the director with epigrams. It was pitiful to look at the wretched man whilst he strove, with the most imperturbable seriousness, to ward off the shafts of the defence. The president had several times to threaten to clear the court, so noisily did the public which had crowded there give vent to its amusement.

The case came on twice. Hansi had been condemned in July to pay a fine of 600 marks. As I was, in that month, protected by my Parliamentary immunity, they could not bring me to trial until the recess of the two Chambers in September. So Gneisse was obliged to submit twice to those painful sittings.

Nevertheless, the court sentenced me to two months' imprisonment and refused my application for a cross-action. The offence had been very insignificant, but the sentence appeared to everyone, even to the immigrants, to be very severe.

The day after my condemnation the German officials entreated me to ask for a pardon. During three months, I was the object of the most earnest solicitations on the part of the authorities — and even the members of the Ministry — who feared the effects of any condemnation on public opinion. To put an end to them, I gave myself up as a prisoner on December 15th, at Colmar.

A few days before I had had an interview with Herr Petri, the Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, and had asked him, as a matter of curiosity, if I should be allowed to read and write in prison. The next day the Governmental organs reported that, fearing the severities of the penitentiary regime, I had humbly solicited the Minister's kindness, Thus the Germans always remain faithful to themselves. They are obliged to besmirch the reputation of their adversaries when they cannot subdue them.

I immediately sent a letter to Herr Petri, declaring my firm intention to be treated as a common prisoner. At the Ministry they were very worried by this new prank. The Reichstag was sitting at the time and the Landesausschuss was about to meet. They feared that questions would be asked.

On entering the prison, the governor had me immediately examined by a doctor. The interview was comic in the extreme.

"You suffer from stomach troubles/' said Dr. Steinmetz to me, peremptorily.

"Not at all," I replied. "I'm as solid as the Pont-Neuf."

"But look at that swelling at the bottom of your ribs."

"I'm rather stout."

"It's a certain sign of difficult digestion, arising from dilatation of the stomach. The restaurant keeper who usually supplies the prison will bring your meals. Moreover, manual work would depress you. You will therefore be free to follow your habitual occupations. But as your stay here will be of short duration, it is needless to ask you to put on the usual prison dress."

That very evening they brought me a second mattress again by doctor's orders. I was, in addition, authorised to receive three newspapers regularly.

The two months passed all the more rapidly because my lawyers and a few other friends came almost daily to bring me news of the outside world. It was thus that I heard that at Strassburg, at the opening of Parliament, my colleagues had placed a magnificent bouquet on my seat, and that Gneisse had once more served as a Turk's head for speakers during the Budget debate.

My term of imprisonment came to an end on February 15th, 1910, at 5.45. At four o'clock my warder came to tell me that a huge crowd was assembling in front of the prison. When I came out five thousand people were there to cheer me. A little girl, dressed in white., presented me with a bouquet. A carriage was waiting for me, and by my side Hansi, my friend Bourson, and my colleague Haegy took their seats. During half an hour the horses had to proceed at walking-pace through a crowd which grew denser as we approached the Rue Roesselmann, where I lived with my mother. At our flat, where every piece of furniture was covered with flowers, M. Rene Henry presented me with a superb statue of Jeanne d'Arc, on behalf of a group of French Deputies and journalists; whilst Hansi, in the name of a group of inhabitants of Colmar, handed me a bronze representing the patron saint of Alsace-Lorraine, St. Odile. The people of Strassburg had sent a bust, "L'Alsacienne," by Ringel d'lllzach.

The next day the entire Press of the country filled its columns with a narrative of this spontaneous demonstration. The anger of the pan- Germans passed all bounds when, having gone to Paris a few days later, I received at my hotel a delegation of students of the Sorbonne, who came to present me with Larche's "Guerrier."

My imprisonment had another and a much more appreciable result. The Journal de Colmar had been a daily for several months past, but it still appeared in a small size. My friends gave me a great surprise by buying the machines necessary for transforming it into a sheet the size of Le Matin. So henceforth I had a more serious fighting organ at my disposal. On coming out of prison I changed the name of my journal, which became Le Nouvelliste d' Alsace-Lorraine.

What the Government had feared had come to pass. My conviction had turned against my persecutors.

Let me recall an incident a propos of this which made rather a stir. The wife of the Statthalter, Countess Wedel, a most amiable Swedish lady who had always striven to establish cordial relations between her husband and the Members of Parliament, used to give every year a soiree, at which she distributed, in the form of objets de cotillon, little souvenirs to her guests. Those who were unable to be present at this evening party received these little presents by post. Now, the Countess thought fit to send me in that way, whilst I was in prison, a silver match-box bearing her monogram. The gift was accompanied by a very friendly letter, in French, containing the following words, "If you would feel transitory satisfaction, take revenge; but if a durable satisfaction, pardon." Now, one of my lawyers, having come to visit me in prison, saw the Countess's souvenir and read her letter. He committed the imprudence of whispering a word about it to a German colleague, whom he thought was an honest man. This fellow, however, could think of nothing better than to send a fiery article to a pan-German sheet, to protest against "this scandal." For several weeks Countess Wedel served as a target for the fury of all the scribbling patriots on the other side of the Rhine. It would have required very little more to make this stupid affair the cause of a Ministerial crisis.

Of my journalistic life, which, however, was very fertile in little incidents, I will say but a few more words. I was taking my holidays in Switzerland at the beginning of July, 1914, when I received from M. Helmer, Hansi's lawyer, a letter containing the following words, "Take care! The action against you for high treason is still pending. The French translator to the Leipzig court told me last week that he was instructed by the tribunal to translate into German the lectures which you delivered last year in France. You would do well, therefore, to put your papers in a safe place, if you have not already done so. At the close of the parliamentary session they will certainly make a domiciliary visit at your house."

I returned to Colmar immediately. I am very conservative by temperament. My correspondence for twenty years, which will enable me to reconstitute in part the political history of Alsace- Lorraine during that long and interesting period, was heaped up in a large box which at all cost had to be sheltered from German curiosity, for among the letters thus collected together there were enough to compromise a hundred of my friends.

I had already been the Victim of a manifest theft on the part of a German employee at the printing-office of my paper, this man having appropriated the bag in which I kept the thousand to fifteen hundred letters I had received from Alsace- Lorraine and France on leaving prison. The odious fellow found, however, in this voluminous correspondence only one really interesting document, a visiting card bearing a few amiable words from Baron von Bulach. Needless to say, he hastened to communicate it to the pan-German organs, thus causing the greatest annoyance to the Secretary of State.

On July 15th (note the date) I handed the box containing my letters to a friend, who undertook to send them abroad. Now, at the goods-office they asked him to inscribe on the way-bill the following mention, "Unpolitischen Inhalts" ("The contents are not political.") Nothing can prove more clearly that, already at that time, Germany foresaw approaching international complications. My friend, in ignorance of the contents of the box, filled up the form, and the package was able to cross the frontier before the opening of hostilities. When, on July 31st, the German authorities made a search at the offices of the NouvelUste and at my private residence, they found, therefore, that the bird had flown. I had prepared for them a single but rather disagreeable surprise. On my desk, placed well in view, was the correspondence which I had exchanged during preceding years with Baron von Bulach. I doubt whether, on reading it, they experienced an unmixed pleasure.