Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/128

114 and ministers; how the kings consult with and advise each other direct; how they pass judgment on every political occurrence from the point of view of the interests of their dynasties; how they turn a solid and united front to the movements tending to arouse the people to a recognition of their strength and rights, and how they allow themselves to be influenced by petty whims, by personal friendships and dislikes, in the most important decisions, involving the destinies of millions. Public orators, abound in phrases, the representatives of the people declaim in Parliament; the Cabinet ministers make public the result of their discussions with solemn gravity; they are all convinced that they alone have the power to guide the destiny of the nation; but in the mean while the king is smiling contemptuously and writing confidential notes to his royal friends across the border, concluding with them informally, all sorts of alliances and exclusions, wars and treaties of peace, conquests and renunciations, limitations and concessions to freedom, and when the plan is all decided upon, it is carried out, the Parliaments can say what they please.

They experience no difficulty in finding plenty of tools to do their work in the correct, constitutional way; a hundred where they need but one, are at their disposal, and in case of necessity it does not require very much of an effort to change the currents of public opinion. Thus it happens that the sovereigns who are supposed to fill only an ornamental position in the state, limited by the constitution to a mere existence without any political significance, are the ones who cast the deciding votes in matters of state, at the present time as well as during the Middle Ages, at the present time even more than ever before, for never was the combination between the monarchs of Europe as firm as today, never before did they