Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1899 — ALIENS IN AUTHORITY. [ARTICLE]

ALIENS IN AUTHORITY.

Various European Countries Have For* eigners to Rule Them. In nearly all European-countries the prominent positions in. public life are held by persons of foreign extraction. Of course, in countries like Austria, Switzerland, Turkey and Russia, in each of which the intermingling of nations almost amounts to the confusion of nationalities, this is not so surprising. But who would imagine that the highest official posts in the German empire have been, and still are, held by men who are aliens? The last chancellor of the German empire was Count Caprivi de Montecuculli, a Sardinian, many of whose relatives still hold high posts in Italy. Count Bronsart Schellendorff, one time minister of war for Germany, is l the descendant of an old French Huguenot family. Again, neither Moltke, nor even the man of “Blood and Iron,” Bismarck, was a German. Both were bom in Denmark, of Danish parents. Moltke’sdistinguished military career commenced in the Danish army. Subsequently he became a Prussian officer. In Italy we find morethan one minister of French extraction, and no end of high functionaries who are merely naturalized Germans and Austrians. Both Messrs. Brin and Morin, admirals of the fleet, and men who have been in their time minister of marine, are of French origin, and the one has a brother in the French army, the other one in the French navy. Baron Blanc, the former minister for foreign affairs in Italy, is likewise a Frenchman and a Savoyard, too, and hails from the native place of the late President Grevy. Unlike Germany, France takes the majority of her great men from British sources. The late Marshal MacMahon, one time president of the republic, was of Irish descent, and Senator Waddington, formerly French ambassador to the court of St. James, is the son of an Englishman. At least a dozen general officers in the French army are in reality Germans. Prominent among them we find Gens. Muller, Metzinger and Gebhardt. Sweden’s chief foreigner is King Oscar, a descendant of a very humble French shopkeeper.—Pearsons.