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No. 17. | Vienna, 25 April 1902. | 6th Year

Grand Duke Frederick.

In these days the whole great German people bows in reverence before an ideal figure among princes. And not the German people alone. From every quarter of the civilised world where there is a sense for the noblest of a ruler's virtues, exercised in wisdom and humanity, heartfelt sympathy flies to the people of Baden, to whom it is granted to celebrate with festivity the fiftieth jubilee of their Grand Duke's reign — to their own honour and in thanks to their Prince. For the Grand Duchy in the south-west of Germany has come to flourish in all that makes up the spiritual and material welfare of a country through this radiant man, whose rule upon the throne is at once so gentle and so dependable, so fruitful and so gladdening, as the sunshine that gleams over the crests of the Black Forest firs.

In our age of jubilee festivals there is no lack of reigning jubilees. But that of Grand Duke Frederick is a jubilee of quite especial delight. Not merely because the Grand Duke has adorned the throne for fifty years, for in that his people of Baden alone would have cause to rejoice. Nor merely because well-earned historical fame and national gratitude wreathe his aged brow, for it befits the German people to remember that for all time. No, it is because Grand Duke Frederick, in all the hours of his reign, even the most fateful, has remained the splendid human being who from his throne felt with and lived through, far out into every distance, whatever of hope and resignation, of encouragement and disappointment, the course of history has mingled with all the joy and all the sorrow of the nations in our troubled time — it is for this that a peculiar lustre surrounds his shining figure on the fiftieth anniversary of his accession. All the good and the free, all who hope and all who strive in the civilised world, greet him with gladly flashing eyes and devoutly stirred hearts as the model among princes, beside whom wisdom and goodness, justice and compassion sit upon the throne. Macte dux!

Hundreds of pens are astir in these days to record what Grand Duke Frederick means to his people of Baden, what he means to the German nation, and what he means to his time. And truly, there is much in him to praise. "Were I the Black Forest!" begins a splendid poem of Ferdinand Freiligrath addressed to the Swabian poet to whom Grand Duke Frederick showed favour and esteem at all times. That poet was the Jew Berthold Auerbach. And for five-and-twenty years another Jew, Ellinger, sat among the Grand Duke's counsellors in the Ministry at Karlsruhe. We do not cite these two examples in order to thrust a single circumstance into the centre of our consideration. We cite them to show how remote from this noble prince has ever remained the prejudice that poisons our age. Grand Duke Frederick is one of those eminent human figures to whom Schiller's words apply: "For behind him, in unsubstantial semblance, lay that which binds us all, the base." This his people of Baden knows and feels, the most advanced of all the German stocks in culture, welfare and education. Already in the first years of his reign the Grand Duke spoke, on a solemn occasion, the unforgettable words: "I cannot find that there is any hostile opposition between the rights of princes and the rights of the people." A pupil of Dichtmann and of Ernst Moritz Arndt, he had come straight home from the University of Bonn to take his seat in the First Chamber of the Baden Diet, and a little later to take the reins of government into his hand as Regent for his incurably stricken brother. And however difficult and weighty with responsibility the task became amid the stormily swelling movement for German unity, precisely in the south-western corner — "under the cannon of Strasburg" — Grand Duke Frederick never for a moment ceased to remember his own saying: "We must all prove ourselves true friends of freedom — of that freedom which governs itself, and of that progress which, springing from insight into what is needful, realises itself in sober regard for the law of the State."

We do not relate at length, because all men know it, how with never-failing wise resolution he furthered national unification from his throne,