德:morality
能:capacity
何:which / which kind of
In ancient china, if a person want to be a leader, such as a mayor, a king, he must have two things: 德 and 能. Furthermore, 德 is more important than 能, meaning that a leader could have no 能 but he must have 德. This is why we put 德 first ---- because it is more important.
何德何能:which kind of 德 and which kind of 能.
When we select a person to be a leader, normally he should be modest. For example, we are a team, and I say that you can be our leader, then you can say: no, I am not good enough ---- now you are modest. In chinese, we say: 我有什么样的品德和什么样的能力,去担任这个职位呢? ------- meaning that I am not good enough, I can't be the leader. For this case, we have a 成语:何德何能 to express the same thing.
e.g.
- "plz be our leader."
- "我何德何能,做大家的领导呢?"