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 THE VIRGINIA IDEAL IN CONTRAST WITH THE 
 PRUSSIAN THEORY OF THE STATE 
 
 Address of Harrington Putnam, LLD 
 at the commencement of 
 
 WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LEXINGTON VA 
 
 JUNE 12, 1917 
 

 WITH JUSTICE PUTNAM'S 
 COMPLIMENTS 
 

 "US 
 
THE VIRGINIA IDEAL IN CONTRAST WITH THE 
 PRUSSIAN THEORY OF THE STATE 
 
 May I at this time say how highly I value the 
 honor of being invited to speak to you at this com- 
 mencement — a distinction entirely undeserved. 
 
 My subject is the Virginian ideal of the State, as 
 contrasted with the Prussian theory of government. 
 By the term, Virginian, I refer to the great thought 
 of Jefferson, that the consent of the governed shall be 
 real and actual. That thus the State may advance in 
 equal step and act by the determination of a con- 
 vinced and willing popular majority. 
 
 In this place and presence, it would be vain to 
 attempt to restate the germinal idea of Jefferson, so 
 new, so bold, and at its original utterance so discon- 
 certing to rank, caste and privilege. His vision was 
 of a finer social order toward which for centuries we 
 shall hardly attain. Fortune and rank were not to be 
 the measure of individual political rights. For every- 
 one's protection all are to take part in setting up a 
 government whose laws all are loyally bound to 
 accept and obey. 
 
 To you of Virginia, Jefferson was accepted as the 
 champion of human rights, the reformer of abuses, in 
 short, the prophet of our dawning liberties. But in 
 Massachusetts and in other Eastern States, I am 
 grieved to say that even to his death he was regarded 
 by those of the "standing order," as the disturber of 
 the peace, the violent demagogue, the enemy of all 
 rank and authority. In England his name was 
 coupled with the levelling ideas of the atheistical 
 
 3 .-' 
 
France of 1793. Even his national policies were 
 there distrusted as aimed in aid of France, and hence 
 anti-British. Yet amid it all, he went on, composed 
 and serene, laying deeper an abiding foundation for 
 this new state of the Western world. 
 
 Living in happiness under this system, we have 
 beheld with deep solicitude a contrary trend in Prus- 
 sia. In 1848, that fateful year to so many European 
 states, the head of the Hohenzollern house took a 
 step, momentous for his country. The unrest of the 
 time shook every Continental throne. A convention 
 had met at Frankfort on the 31st of March. It sum- 
 moned a National Constituent Assembly to be chosen 
 by manhood suffrage. This Frankfort Parliament 
 drew up a modern constitution, with an hereditary 
 constitutional Emperor, responsible to a parliament. 
 Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia declined the 
 offer of that crown. This King was a confirmed 
 believer in the "divine right," and fearful of the forces 
 of modern democracy. He was also loyal toward the 
 Hapsburgs, that ancient and decaying house, with 
 its impressive past, that was still the titular head of 
 the so-called Roman Empire. So under the influence 
 of his Junkers at home, and the retrograde ideas of 
 Vienna, the King for himself and the house of 
 Hohenzollern refused to drop fictions, and become a 
 constitutional sovereign over a free enlightened 
 greater Germany. Fearing the excesses of liberal- 
 ism, terrified by the revolutions about his doors, he 
 chose the separatist Prussian state rather than yield 
 to the risk and turbulence of a German parliament. 
 A distrust of a government working out its will 
 through the tedious struggles of parliamentary 
 debate was not the only dread felt by the advisers of 
 this Sovereign. Prussia had a powerful land-owning 
 aristocracy who then, as now, were intensely jealous 
 
 4 
 
of its class privileges. They scorned to yield any of 
 its comfortable prerogatives to popular demands. So 
 ended the hopeful effort to liberalize north Germany 
 in 1848. The electoral law of April 27, 1849, divided 
 the Prussian electorate into three classes, and con- 
 fined the voting power to property, or official and 
 professional position. In the resulting election the 
 conservatives revised the 1848 constitution per- 
 manently along those reactionary lines. By that 
 determination, a growing modern state deliberately 
 chose to turn backwards and yield to land-owning 
 feudalism. The tendency of its nobility and military 
 class has thus drawn Prussia steadily against the 
 currents of public thought in England, France and 
 especially Italy. Prussian Junkers have been able to 
 dominate the kingdom, except that in recent years, 
 Junker conversatism has found an ally and some- 
 times a rival in the aggressive manufacturers of 
 Westphalia and West Prussia. 
 
 Many great Englishmen, certainly until this war, 
 distrusted democracy, though that opinion was more 
 implied, than openly expressed. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, though starting out as a radical, 
 came to the opposite extreme in praise of force. He 
 lauded strong rulers whose methods savored often of 
 despotic tyranny. His "Life and Letters of Crom- 
 well" appeared in 1845. He vigorously extolled 
 Cromwell, in his swift suppression of the much talk- 
 ing Long Parliament. At every opportunity he there 
 set forth the ways of the strong man in contrast with 
 the average parliamentarian, with his narrow 
 obstructive and time-wasting methods. Cromwell 
 was held up as the ideal centralized executive. His 
 iron rule was in military disregard of representative 
 methods, and in contempt of the democratic theory- 
 
 5 
 
of deferring measures until they should first gain 
 popular assent. 
 
 Later Carlyle centered his life for a score of years 
 on his magnum opus, the "Life of Frederick the Great 
 of Prussia." The first two volumes appeared in 1858 
 with succeeding ones coming out in 1862, 1864 and 
 1865. We Americans know from De Tocqueville and 
 other writers upon our own institutions, how a 
 foreign author may appeal to a people, whose life 
 and political ideals he glorifies. Carlyle's accelerat- 
 ing influence on Prussia has not yet been fully 
 appraised. He set forth that ideal of Prussian 
 enlargement by force of arms with such enthusiastic 
 approval, that his entire biography is dominated by 
 Frederick as a soldier. He has but slight mention of 
 Frederick's undeniable civil reforms. He justified 
 Frederick's policy from the start in that audacious 
 seizure of Silesia, and passed lightly over much of his 
 devious diplomacy. As an offset to the unethical 
 taking of Silesia, Carlyle arrayed the many advan- 
 tages acquired by Silesia from German occupation, 
 when rigid and exact civil methods supplanted the 
 Austrian laxities of administration. 
 
 Early in 1862, Bismarck as premier of Prussia, de- 
 termined on its expansion by means of conquest. He 
 planned military enlargement in many directions, but 
 first towards an outlet to the sea. His plans not then 
 being acceptable, the house of representatives voted 
 down his proposals for increased taxes. His secret 
 aims he was unwilling to disclose in parliament. So 
 calmly ignoring these parliamentary defeats, he con- 
 tinued year after year to levy the illegal taxes in spite 
 of the protests of the liberals. Prussia had no 
 Supreme Court to stay such encroachment. To turn 
 people from this defiance of the constitution, Bis- 
 marck then used the politician's old expedient — the 
 
 6 
 
recourse to a strong foreign policy. This led to the 
 aggressions upon Denmark in 1864 to 1866, by which 
 Prussia took Schleswig Holstein and rounded off her 
 Baltic territory. Then parliament faced about, and, 
 in the triumph of conquest proceeded to ratify the 
 taxes already imposed and paid. We know the short 
 and decisive war waged against the Austrian power. 
 And twenty years after has come out to the world 
 the cynical revelation how the alteration of the Ems' 
 dispatch, which Bismarck and Molke contrived, 
 adroitly precipitated a declaration of war from 
 France, in which neutrals might see Prussia as the 
 country attacked. 
 
 For nearly fifty years, we adherents of the Vir- 
 ginia idea, have had before us the impressive 
 spectacles of the growth and prosperity of Germanic 
 institutions working on lines laid down and minutely 
 dictated by the sovereign proclaiming a divine right 
 which it became impious for the subject to question. 
 
 Yet with this ideal of a state thus controlled 
 directed and minutely regulated, we have witnessed 
 surprising results and primarily in a state-wide 
 inclusive system of common education. Matthew 
 Arnold, fifty years ago, put words in the mouth of 
 his imaginary Prussian Arminius, that their educa- 
 tion 
 
 "means, that to ensure, as far as you can every 
 man's being fit for his business in life, you put 
 education as a bar or condition between him and 
 what he aims at. The principle is just as good 
 for one class as for another, and it is only by 
 applying it impartially that you can save its 
 application from being insolent and invidious. 
 Our Prussian peasant stands our compelling him 
 to instruct himself before he may go about his 
 calling, because he sees we believe in instruction, 
 and compel our own class, too, in a way, to mak< 
 
it really feel the pressure to instruct itself before 
 it may go about its calling." 1 
 
 For the needs of labor came a well organized scheme 
 of relief in the system of Workmen's compensation 
 and pensions for the sick and aged, which we are 
 copying in our industrial communities. 
 
 However, our survey of Prussia calls for deeper 
 questions. 
 
 Does the central power show a faithful adherence 
 to its own laws? Does it submit to constitutional 
 limitations? 
 
 Here we may go back to Carlyle's amusing story 
 of Emperor Sigismund at the Council of Constance. 
 In his attempted Latinity that august ruler admon- 
 ished the cardinals to abolish schisma, using it as 
 feminine. When a cardinal reminded him "Domine 
 schisma est generis neutrius," the emperor calmly 
 replied "ego sum rex Romanorum et super gramma- 
 ticam !" 
 
 At that same Council, Emperor Sigismund did 
 more than break the rules of grammar. You will 
 recall that on his Imperial safe conduct Johann Hus 
 from Bohemia had come to the Council. This 
 Emperor broke his pledged word and left Hus to be 
 executed. 
 
 Although Sigismund was not a Prussian, the high 
 officials of that country have shown a fondness for 
 the word "super" as allowing them to override the 
 law. At a pinch they break the letter of their laws, 
 by resorting to what they call a law of necessity, 
 Notrecht, which conveniently helps them out. 
 
 Here in America we forget that in 1914 Germany 
 was theoretically under the written constitution of 
 1871. In it were embodied many solemn bounds 
 
 1 Friendship's Garland, Letter VII, ed. 1898, p. 266. 
 
 \ n 
 
against absolutism. But in spite of these paper bar- 
 riers, the Prussian State has grown into what a 
 recent writer calls "an absolute power, responsible to 
 no one, with no duties to its neighbors, and with only 
 nominal duties to a slightly subordinate God." 2 
 
 Article Eleven of the German constitution de- 
 clares : 
 
 "The consent of the Federal council is necessary 
 for the declaration of war in the name of the Empire, 
 unless an attack on the territory or the coast of the 
 confederation has taken place." 
 
 In attacking France and Russia without having 
 summoned the Federal council, the Emperor violated 
 the constitution. Can we doubt that such a council 
 would have checked the impetuous war party at Pots- 
 dam? It cannot be maintained that the Kaiser acted 
 upon any alleged compulsion from Austria, with 
 whom the treaty of alliance had been made purely 
 defensive. Some of his apologists offer the lame 
 excuse that France had opened hostilities by her 
 aeroplanes flying over the German border. Others 
 however more boldly declared that French troops 
 had already actually crossed the frontier. None of 
 these pleas have been proved. Some day it will be 
 shown that the declaration which has plunged all the 
 world into war, came from this unconstitutional fiat. 
 
 Here then is the outcome of that theory of the 
 Prussian high control. 
 
 Behind this sinister attitude we may discern the 
 egoism of the "superman," who is above restraints 
 of law, human and divine. Its justification, excuse 
 or palliation, is in the naive plea of its own wants and 
 necessities. 
 
 As civilized war becomes unfavorable on the sea, 
 this state turns back to the usages of the uncivilized. 
 
 2 The War of Ideas, p. 7, London, 1917. 
 
 9 y 
 
By warring upon merchant vessels, Prussia reverts 
 to the piratical methods which civilization long ago 
 banned from the wider paths of commerce, and 
 which remained for the Barbary corsair and Malay 
 pirate. 
 
 At such departure from the jura belli, the outside 
 world has looked with horror. It has not only 
 recorded the treatment of Belgium and the civil pop- 
 ulation of the French occupied territories. It has 
 also beheld the wholesale massacre of unresisting 
 Armenians attended with atrocities that cannot be 
 publicly described. 
 
 Here we have the fruitage of the Prussian political 
 ideal. If we trace back this foul manifestation to its 
 deeper source, shall we not find that it comes from an 
 inner sense of superiority, perhaps insidious in its 
 claim, but still an assertion of mastery over one's 
 fellow men — a claim that assumes that only we and 
 our caste are fit to rule; and you peasant subjects are 
 to humbly obey and realize the greater destiny we 
 have planned to achieve by iron, and by your blood. 
 
 On this arrogancy is reared a state that demands 
 to impose its kultur over its neighbors. And when 
 they decline, it professes surprise at their want of 
 appreciation of this offer. But the evil of this atti- 
 tude is more than international. The inward effect 
 of mental arrogance is perhaps its worst consequence. 
 The Prussian spirit has alienated foreign lands, 
 negatived her diplomacy, and appears now to cloud 
 her future commerce, just as Prussian attempts to 
 colonize have always suffered from the hard, cruel 
 methods, and the inability to enter into the life of 
 the native under its forced rule. 
 
 Leaving public policy, and coming to speak of 
 individuals, is it not eternally true that the chief foe 
 of peace, and greatest hindrance to our personal well 
 
 10 
 
being is this spirit of pretension? Such a claim of 
 intellectual, financial or social superiority has divided 
 and disturbed communities. Most odious is it in 
 matters of religion, where it often betrays the strange 
 weakness of its possessors. 
 
 In the world over, can you find a greater contrast 
 than that of the Prussian ruler, pretending by divine 
 power to dominate Europe, and the patient mag- 
 nanimity of Jefferson, perhaps when in office, the 
 most bitterly assailed of all our Presidents? 
 
 If there be an intimate and necessary relation 
 between the spirit of pretension and the Prussian 
 arrogant manners, we may be permitted to refer the 
 youth of today to Jefferson's avoidance of such social 
 claims. The simplicity of his public conduct before 
 the delivery of the great inaugural in 1801 is known 
 to every schoolboy. On that day he went forth for 
 that ceremony from Conrad's plain boarding house 
 on Capitol Hill, where by preference he always sat 
 at the foot of the long table of thirty boarders. 
 
 If we may compare military men, where have we 
 seen among German war heroes the name that may 
 for a moment compare with those of Lee and Jack- 
 son ? Can I add anything to the tributes to General 
 Lee, that Southern commander who stood primus 
 inter illustres? As time goes on, Lee's character, pure, 
 flawless and exalted, even transcends his military 
 triumphs. Jackson's personal life was so modest and 
 free from every pretension that his brilliancy in the 
 field came as a fine surprise. But it was no secret to 
 those who witnessed and shared the inspiration he 
 imparted. 
 
 An American of the North as well as of the South 
 can treasure the memory of the two commanders 
 whose tombs have made this Lexington sacred, as- 
 
 11 
 
the first blood of the Revolution has hallowed the 
 Lexington of Massachusetts. 
 
 Should we be asked to compare an active political 
 leader of America with those who have been directing 
 the policies of Prussia, then I cannot present to this 
 company a better subject than a former President of 
 this University, William Lyne Wilson — whom I may 
 call a man of my own day. By his unselfish efforts 
 he gave incentives and a pattern writ large to the 
 young man who may enter politics. From college 
 life, he served in the Confederate army. Next he 
 was Latin professor. It was, however, from West 
 Virginia that he entered Congress. His life seems 
 happily to have alternated between a University and 
 high political trusts. Could an intellectual leader like 
 him have a more rich and fruitful career than in such 
 an interchange of activity? To have seen and 
 listened to him, as has been my good fortune, was to 
 feel his intense earnestness. He brought to his coun- 
 try's call, every power, even to the sacrifice of health 
 and life. He was not the man of a "fugitive and 
 cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed." I 
 cannot omit to mention the inspiring address he gave 
 twenty-five years ago this July at the Chicago 
 National Democratic Convention. His was the 
 appeal, the key note, that lifted that assembly to new 
 purposes. I might speak of his brilliant service in 
 Congressional debate. It was his zeal that 
 almost cost him his life, when he had charge of that 
 revenue measure known as the Wilson Bill. In every 
 high post he put forth the same devotion, with the 
 unselfish purpose to give himself unsparingly to 
 what he felt for the highest good. 
 
 The young men of this University are highly 
 privileged. By associations daily renewed, their 
 endeavors may be linked with the memory of inspir- 
 
 12 
 
 ) ~! 
 
ing leaders. The successors in the direction of this 
 University are uplifted to carry on the tasks by the 
 examples of those who left the public arenas for more 
 enduring service in the classroom. 
 
 But the advocates of the Prussian ideal of the state 
 —the believers in a personal central regnant figure, 
 point to the partisanship of a democracy. Often our 
 party strife has not spared the President. We are 
 not awed by sight of imperial majesty. They charge 
 that in the nature of things we must fail in attaining 
 the last and finest touch in the thrill of devotion to 
 a crowned central executive and fountain of honor. 3 
 This may be a real loss. We cannot deny how party 
 feeling often divides us. We were not reared in the 
 inherited fealties of old Japan where in 1869 the 
 loyal daimios surrendered political power and their 
 property revenues to the Mikado — then assuming 
 his full sovereignty— with these touching acknowl- 
 edgments of their submission and dependence: 
 
 "Our dwelling place is the Emperor's land. The 
 food which we eat is grown by the Emperor's men. 
 How can we call it our own? We now reverently 
 offer up the list of our possessions and men, with the 
 prayer that the Emperor will take good measuresfor 
 rewarding those to whom reward is due, and punish- 
 ing those to whom punishment is due. Let the civil 
 and criminal codes, the military laws, all proceed 
 from the Emperor. Let all affairs of the Empire great 
 and small be referred to him." It ended with the 
 expression that "with fear and reverence we bow the 
 head, and do homage, ready to lay down our lives in 
 proof of our faith." 4 
 
 3 It is by the superior goodness that medievalism ascribed to the king 
 that he is above human laws and all constitutional restraints: 
 
 "Quid enim opus est prescribere illi, qui suapte sponte praestat mehora 
 quam exigunt humanae leges? Aut quae temeritas sit ilium hominem 
 constitutionibus adstringere quem certis argumentis constat divmi spintus 
 afflatu gubernari?" Erasmus, Convivium Religiosum, in Coll. Famihana, 
 
 ed. 1712, p. 149. . ,„,,,- .« 
 
 4 Redesdale's Memories, vol. 2, p. 475-4/0. 
 
 13 
 
 ^ 
 
History has since shown how sincere and loyally 
 the subjects of the Mikado fulfilled this pledge. 
 
 But are Americans today divided? Has partisan- 
 ship blinded us to duty? How nobly has the defeated 
 party dropped its opposition? Who has spoken of 
 the sacred obligation to go forward in this war for 
 freedom with more kindling patriotic fire, than Jus- 
 tice Hughes? President Wilson today leads a nation 
 one in spirit and purpose — for the first time in its 
 history. And it is most fitting that it is from his 
 great and simple words that the ideals of Virginia, of 
 Jefferson, and of the United States as a whole, have 
 gone forth to all the world. 
 
 To you who are soon to be called to the supreme 
 duty of patriotism, to defend the state by force of 
 arms, and if need be, to offer up your young lives on 
 the altar of freedom and justice, I must recall an 
 ancient instance from your classical studies. When 
 you read Plato's Apology and the Crito, the detailed 
 story of Socrates' sayings in his last days seemed far 
 off and unreal. Perhaps it then had little present 
 appeal. But to you who are summoned to fight in 
 behalf of the country, I may recall Plato's idea of the 
 citizen's duty to his state. In the Apology, Socrates, 
 speaking of his sense of right in the matters charged 
 against him alludes modestly to his military record. 
 He makes this comparison: 
 
 "Strange indeed would be my conduct, O men of 
 Athens, if I who when I was ordered by the generals 
 whom you chose to command me, at Potidsea and 
 Amphipolis and Delium, I remained where they 
 placed me like any other man, facing death, if I say 
 now, when as I conceive and imagine God orders me 
 to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into 
 myself and other men, I were to desert my post 
 through fear of death, or any other fear; that would 
 
 14 
 
indeed be strange." The duty to obey conscience is as 
 imperative as to obey a general and hold a military 
 post. Here the individual is represented as standing 
 out against the supposed law of the State. Under 
 that idea how many misguided ones have wrongly 
 violated the law? To go to the point of resistance 
 has been a frequent excess of individualism in a 
 democracy! 
 
 Fortunately, however, Plato did not leave this 
 as Socrates' last word on civic and patriotic duty. 
 In the Crito he sets forth the obligation of obedi- 
 ence even unto death. On that last day, Crito 
 and other friends visit the prison and tell Socrates 
 they have arranged an escape. He declines. He gives 
 reasons which evince submissive loyalty even when 
 the state may be wrong. Incidentally he casts a fine 
 sidelight on the reverential affection of Greek chil- 
 dren towards their parents. The discussion reached 
 its summit when the "laws," meaning also the insti- 
 tutions of Athens, are personified, and are thus inter- 
 locutors in the perfect form of Plato's dialogue. 
 They say to Socrates that by them he has been 
 nurtured and educated; and to these institutions, as 
 to his earthly parents, he owes his life. He brings 
 out the high thought, perhaps better than anyone else, 
 that to flee away, to disobey, is to do violence to the 
 laws themselves. Every evasion or disobedience of 
 law is an act tending to destroy the authority and 
 hence the enforcement of the law, which is its very 
 life. The laws, thus personified, ask if Socrates had 
 "failed to discover that our country is more to be 
 valued and higher and holier far than mother or 
 father, or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in 
 the eyes of the gods, and of men of understanding? 
 also to be soothed and gently and reverently 
 entreated when angry, even more than a father, and 
 
 15 
 
either to be persuaded, or if not persuaded, to be 
 obeyed. And when we are punished by her, whether 
 with imprisonment or stripes, the punishment is to 
 be endured in silence; and if she lead us to wounds, 
 or death in battle, thither we follow as is right. 
 Neither may any one yield or retreat or leave his rank, 
 but whether in battle or in a court of law, or in any 
 other place, he must do what his city and his country 
 order him, or he must change their view of what is 
 just; and if he may do no violence to his father or 
 mother, much less may he do violence to his country." 
 Feudalism does homage to a man. The idea of the 
 American scholar should be to render as fervent 
 homage to the laws and institutions of his land. 
 Where the law calls he must go. Without obedience 
 to law no system of government can endure. And 
 in this obedience can be best illustrated to our day 
 and generation the Virginia ideal. 
 
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