THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GIFT OF Estate of Mary Kings ley \ A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO 0.^/. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR BY CARLTON J. H. HAYES PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA. UNIVERSITY AUTHOR OF "A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE" THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 All rights reserved Copyright, 1920, Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1920. <^^i^^ GIFT PS3.\ TO THOSE STUDENTS OF HIS WHO LOYALLY LEFT THEIR BOOKS AND PROUDLY PAID THE SUPREME SACRI- FICE IN THE CAUSE OF HUMAN SOLIDARITY AGAINST INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY THE AUTHOR INSCRIBES THIS BOOK M909074 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/briefhistoryofgrOOhayerich PREFACE The following pages constitute a connected story of the late war from its origins to the conclusion of the Peace of Versailles, not for the edification of ''experts," military or other, but rather for the enlightenment of the general reader and student. A "definitive" history of the war will never be written ; it is much too early, of course, even to attempt it. All that the author has here essayed to do is to sketch tentatively what seem to him its broad outHnes — domestic poHtics of the several belligerents no less than army campaigns and naval battles, — and in present- ing his synthesis to be guided so far as in him lay by an honest desire to put heat and passion aside and to write candidly and objectively for the instruction of the succeeding generation. The author is under special obligation to Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Company for the kind permission which they have accorded him of drawing freely upon the articles on ''The War of the Nations" which he wrote in 191 4, 1915, and 191 6 for their invaluable New International Year Book. In the opening chap- ter of the present work the author has also incorporated a few paragraphs from the last chapter of his Political and Social History of Modern Europe, to which, in a way, the Brief History OF THE Great War is supplementary. Carlton J. H. Hayes. Afton, New York, April 5, 1920. vu CONTENTS CHAPTER I. The Great War Comes The General Cause : International Anarchy . The Immediate Cause : Germany . The Occasion : The Assassination of an Archduke II. Germany Conquers Belgium and Invades France Mobilization and Strategy The Conquest of Belgium The Invasion of France . German Gains in the West — and Failure III. Russia Fails to Overwhelm Germany The Russian Invasion of East Prussia The Russian Invasion of Galicia The German Invasion of Russian Poland The Security of Serbia IV. Great Britain Masters the Seas Importance of Sea Power The Participation of Japan The Conquest of the German Colonies Turkey's Support of Germany Germany's Counter-Offensive on the Seas V. The Allies Endeavor to Dominate the Near East Allied Optimism in the Spring of 191 5 The Attack on the Dardanelles .... Italy's Entry into the War VI. Russia Retreats Mackensen's Drive : The Austrian Recovery of Galicia Hindenburg's Drive : The German Conquest of Poland Revival of Political Unrest in Russia Failure of the Allies to Relieve Russia VII. Germany Masters the Near East .... Decline of Allied Prestige Bulgaria's Entry into the War and the Conquest of Serbia PAGE I I 7 13 21 21 27 30 37 41 41 43 50 55 58 58 62 65 69 73 ■'80 80 S3 89 99 99 102 107 112 121 121 124 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Failure of the Allies to Relieve Serbia: The Salonica Expedition vm. Completion of German Mastery of the Near East Germany Fails to Obtain a Decision in 1916 Teutonic Optimism at the Beginning of 19 16 . The Difficulty at Verdun : "They Shall Not Pass" The Difficulty in the Trentino : Italy's Defense The Difficulty in Ireland : Suppression of Rebellion Difficulties at Sea: The Grand Fleet and the United States Government IX. The Allies Fail to Obtain a Decision in 19 16 Attempted Coordination of Allied Plans . Simultaneous Allied Drives: The Somme, the Isonzo and the Sereth The Participation and Defeat of Rumania Stalemate and the Teutonic Peace Drive X. The United States Intervenes .... The Stakes : Isolation or a League of Nations ? The Occasion : Unrestricted Submarine Warfare The Problem : Preparedness .... 1917) 917) XI. RussLA. Revolts and Makes "Peace" Destruction of Russian Autocracy: the March Revolution Disintegration of Democracy: Political and Military Experiments Dictatorship of the Bolsheviki: the November ( Revolution Defection of Russia : the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk XII. The Allies Pave the Way for Ultimate Victory Allied Plans and Prospects in 191 7 . The Lesson of the Hindenburg Line Recovery of Allied Prestige in the Near East . Seeming Obstacles to Allied Victory XIII. Germany Makes the Supreme Effort "Whom the Gods Would Destroy" The Drive against the British : The Battle of Picardy The Drive against the French : The Aisne and the Oise 129 134 143 143 J48 156^ 158 162 '168 168 171 181 191 201 201 213 219 225 225 231 246 252 261 261 272 281 287 299 299 304 3^3 CONTENTS a CHAPTER PAGE The Drive against the Italians : The Piave . . .317 The Final German Drive: The Second Battle of the Maine . 320 XIV. The Allies Triumph and Central Europe Revolts . 326 Allied Victories in the West 326 Allied Intervention in Russia 334 Allied Triumph in the Near East : Surrender of Bulgaria and Turkey 342 The Collapse of Austria-Hungary: Resurgence of Op- pressed Nationalities 348 The End of Hostilities : Flight of William II . . .356 XV. A New Era Begins 365 The Settlement 365 The Losses 388 Landmarks of the New Era 395 Appendix I : The Covenant of the League of Nations . . 413 Appendix II: American Reservations to the Treaty of Ver- sailles 424 Appendix III : Proposed Agreement Between the United States and France 428 Select Bibliography 431 Index 437 MAPS IN COLOR PRECEDING PAGE 1. Europe, 1914 i 2. Germany, 1871-1914 7 3. Austria-Hungary, 1914 . . 15 4. War Area of Western Europe 27 5. War Area of Eastern Europe . . . . . . .41 6. The Ottoman Empire and the Balkan States . . .81 7. Central Europe, January, 1916 143 8. Central Europe, March, 19 18 299 9. Europe, 1920 365 10. Colonial Dominions of the Great Powers . . . . 401 SKETCH MAPS PAGE 1. Farthest German Advance in France 34 2. Allies' Western Front, December, 1914 • • • • 37 3. Japan's Position in Relation to Korea, Kiao-chao, and China 63 4. German "War Zone" OF February 18, 191 5 .... 77 5. The Dardanelles Campaign, 191 5 86 6. Habsburg Territories Promised to Italy by the Allies . 93 7. The Austro-Italian War Area 96 8. Eastern Battle Front, 191 5 103 9. The Second Battle of Ypres, April-May, 191 5 . . .116 10. The Allied Offensive in September, 191 5 . . . .119 11. Serbia, 1914 128 12. Asiatic Turkey, 1914 138 13. Mesopotamia and Its Strategic Position .... 141 14. Battle Lines around Verdun, 1916 154 15. The Russian Drive ON THE Styr, 1916 172 16. The Russian Drive on the Sereth, 1916 . . . .173 xiii xiv SKETCH MAPS PAGE 17. The Italian Campaign AGAINST GoRiziA 175 18. Battle of the Somme 179 19. Rumania and Transylvania, 1916 186 20. German "War Zone" OF February I, 19 1 7 .... 214 21. The Western Front near Arras and on the Aisne . .273 22. The Heights of the Aisne 275 23. Battles of Messines Ridge and Ypres 279 24. Battle of Cambrai . . 281 25. Scene of British and Arab Advance in Palestine . . . 286 26. The Austro-German Invasion of Italy 295 27. German Gains, 1918 305 28. Second Phase of the Battle of Picardy 309 29. Scene of the Last Austrian Offensive 318 30. Scene of the Last German Offensive : The Second Battle OF THE Marne 323 31. Principal Changes in Western Front from August, 19 14, TO November, 1918 327 32. The St. MmiEL Drive OF the Americans . . . .329 33. The Franco- American Offensive on the Meuse and in the Argonne 333 34. Allied Intervention in Russia. 339 35. Macedonian Front at Time of Bulgaria's Surrender . . 345 36. Progress of British and Arab Offensives in Turkey, October, 1918 347 37. Territory Occupied by the Allies under the Armistice of November ii 358 38. New Western Boundaries of Germany 374 39. New Eastern Boundaries of Germany 375 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR I A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR CHAPTER I THE GREAT WAR COMES THE GENERAL CAUSE: INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY Self-interest was the dominant note of the years imme- diately preceding the outbreak of the Great War. In economics and in pohtics, among individuals, social classes, and nations, flourished a self-interest that tended more and more to degenerate into mere cynical selfishness. Pseudo-scientists there were to justify the tendency as part of an inevitable ''struggle for exist- ence" and to extol it as assuring the "survival of the fittest." Economic circumstances had provided the setting for the dogma of self-interest. The latest age in world history had been the age of steam and electricity, of the factory and the workshop, of the locomotive, the steamship, and the automobile. It had been the age of big competitive business. Between the capitalists of the new era had developed the keenest rivalry in exploiting machinery, mines, raw materials, and even human beings, with a view to securing the largest share of the world's riches and the world's prestige. It was a race of the strong, and "the devil take the hindmost." Competition in big business gave manners and tone to the whole age. It inspired a multitude of mankind to emulate the "captains of industry." It furnished the starting-point and the main impulse for the development of the doctrines of Social- ists and of Anarchists and of all those who laid stress upon "class consciousness " and " class struggle." It even served to set farmers against manufacturers and to pit "producers" against "consumers." To secure power and thereby to obtain wealth, or to secure wealth and thereby to obtain power, became the more or less conscious end and aim of individuals and of whole classes. 2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR Trade — the veritable red blood of modern industrial life — has not been, and from its nature cannot be, narrowly national. Not only must there be commerce between one highly civiHzed nation and another, but there must Hkewise be trade between an industrialized nation and more backward peoples in tropical or semi-tropical regions. The modern business man has need of raw materials from the tropics ; he has manufactured goods to sell in return; most important of all, he frequently finds that investments in backward countries are especially lucrative in themselves and stimulative of greater and more advantageous trade. So self-interest has been pursued abroad as well as at home, and usually with the most calamitously anarchical results. Whatever restrictions might be imposed by a strong national state on the selfish activities of its citizens at home were either non-existent or ineffective in restraining them wherever govern- ments were unstable or weak. In backward countries the foreign exploiter often behaved as though "getting rich quick'' was the supreme obligation imposed upon him by the civilization whose representative and exponent he was. The natives suffered from the unregulated dealings of the foreigners. And the foreigners, drawn perhaps from several different nations, carried their mutual economic rivalries into the sphere of international competition and thereby created "danger zones" or "arenas of friction." After 1870 this aspect of capitalistic imperialism was increas- ingly in evidence. Any one who would follow an outline story of the exploitation of backward regions by business men of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the United States would perceive the process and would appreciate its attendant dangers. Any one who is at all familiar with the "arenas of friction" in Egypt, in China, in Siam, in the Sudan, in Morocco, in Persia, in the Ottoman Empire, and in the Bal- kans would be in possession of a valuable clew to a significant cause of every war of the twentieth century, particularly to the chief cause of the Great War. What had complicated the situation was the fact that trade, though in essence international, had been conducted in practice on a national basis, and that foreign investors had been per- petually appeahng for support not to an international conscience and an international poHce but to the patriotism and armed forces of their respective national states. In other words, anarchy had continued to characterize international politics as well as domestic economics. THE GREAT WAR COMES 3 There was no international organization. There was no general authority for the determination of disputes and for the regulation of world interests. There were at the opening of the twentieth century some fifty states, in theory absolutely inde- pendent, sovereign, and equal. In fact, the fifty were very unequal and even the strongest among them was not strong enough to maintain its independence should the others unite against it. Yet each proceeded to act on the assumption in most cases that it was self-sufficient and that its own self-interest was its supreme guide. Running through the whole anarchic state-system, as woof through warp, was the doctrine of nationality. It is a common- place to us that a compact people speaking the same language and sharing the same historical traditions and social customs should be politically united as an independent nation. To the nineteenth century, however, nationalism was a revolutionary force. At its dawn there was no free German nation, no free Italian nation. But the all-conquering armies of the French Revolutionaries brought to the disjointed and dispirited peoples of Europe a new gospel of Fraternity, that men of the same nation should be brothers-in-arms to defend their liberties against the tyrant and their homes against the foreign foe. Poetry glorified the idea of national patriotism, religion sanc- tioned it, and political theory invested it with all the finahty of a scientific dogma. Within a century, the spirit of nationality produced an independent Greece, a Serbia, a Rumania, a Bul- garia, a Belgium, a Norway, an Italy, a Germany. Each nation — old and young — was proud of its national language, its national customs, its frequently fictitious but always glorious national history, and above all, of its national political unification and freedom. Everywhere the doctrine of nationality has brought forth fruits in abundance. It has awakened all peoples to national self -consciousness. It has inspired noble and glorious deeds. It has stimulated art and literature. It has promoted popular education and political democracy. It should have led, not backwards to eighteenth-century indifferent cosmopolitanism, but forwards to twentieth-century inter-nationalism, to a con- federation of all the free nations of the world for mutual co- operation and support. Hither, on the eve of the Great War, it had not led. And this was the tragedy of nationalism. Nationalism was utilized too often to point citizens to what was peculiar to their own nation rather than to what was common 4 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR to all mankind. It served to emphasize the exclusiveness of each state and to promote selfishness in a new and national form. It led nations which had not yet achieved complete unity and inde- pendence, like the Irish, the Poles, the Czechs, the Serbs, and the Rumans, to combat more fortunate nations ; and among the per- fected nations it aroused such selfish intolerance as to render them tyrannical over dissident minorities and to cause them to enter- tain the notion that they were manifestly destined to impose their own brand of civilization or Kultur upon, if not arbitrarily to rule over, ''inferior" races. Nationalism, moreover, prompted whole peoples to give patri- otic support to the pretensions of their relatively few fellow-citi- zens who in less favored lands were seeking profits at the expense of natives and perhaps of neighbors. The foreign tradesman or investor was under no obligation to an impartial international tribunal : he had only to present his international grievances to the uncritical and sympathetic ears of his distant fellow-nationals, with the usual result that his cause was championed at home and that redress for his real or fancied wrongs was forthcoming from a single one of the fifty sovereign states. And when tradesmen or investors of other nationalities appealed from the same distant regions to their several states, what had been an arena of economic friction between competing capitalists in backward lands speedily became an arena of poHtical friction between civilized sovereign states. In this fashion the spirit of nationalism operated to reenforce the anarchy both of international politics and of international economics. Modern imperialism, curiously enough, became an arc on the circle of exclusive nationaHsm. It was a vicious circle, and the only way to break it seemed to involve the method most terribly anarchic — employment of brute force — war ! It had been in view of this grim eventuahty that in the nineteenth cen- tury every sovereign state had been arming itself and utilizing every landmark in the progress of civilization in order to forge instruments of destruction. Imperialism — Nationalism — Mili- tarism — these three stalked forth hand in hand. Armed force was comparatively Httle used ; its mere existence and the mere threat of its use ordinarily sufficed. Indirectly, if not directly, however, force and power were final arbitrament be- tween each two of the fifty sovereign states. And it was no eu- phemism that every such state was styled a "Power," and that certain states on account of the thickness and weight of their ar- mor and the success that customarily attended their threats were THE GREAT WAR COMES 5 popularly dubbed *' Great Powers." In a world like this there was little chance for international order and security. It was in- ternational anarchy — and that was all. For many generations before the Great War the delicate rela- tions between the jealously sovereign states — aptly called the ''balance of power" — had been manipulated by a professional class of "diplomatists" with the aid of military and naval attaches and of spies and secret service. The customs and methods of diplomacy had been determined in large part at a time when they conformed quite nicely to the purposes and ideals of the divine- right dynasts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when democracy was constantly preached and increasingly practiced, they might have seemed old-fashioned and anachronistic. To be sure, there were some modifications both in the objects and in the methods of di- plomacy : as a result of the industrial changes in our own day, economic questions provided a larger and more attractive field for tortuous diplomatic negotiation than mere dynastic problems; and by the use of the telegraph, the telephone, and the cable the individual diplomatist was kept in closer touch than formerly with his home government. Still, however, the diplomatists were mainly persons of a class, elderly, suave, insinuating, moving mysteriously their wonders to perform. Democrats who in many countries had laid violent hands upon innumerable institutions of despotism and had brought most matters of public concern to the knowledge of a universal electorate, hesitated to assail this last rehc of divine-right monarchy or to trust the guidance of in- ternational relations to an enfranchised democracy which might by the slightest slip upset the balance of power and plunge an anarchic world into an abyss. So the diplomatists in our own day continued to manage affairs after their old models. They got what they could for their fellow- nationals by cajolery or by threats. If they thought they could do more for their fellow-nationals by making special "deals" with diplomatists of other Powers, they did so, and presto! a "con- vention," an "entente," or a "treaty of alliance" defensive or offensive or both. The game had become quite involved and ab- sorbing by 191 4, and quite hazardous. Germany thought she needed aid to enable her to retain the loot which she had taken from France ; Austria-Hungary thought she needed assistance in the development of her Balkan policy ; Italy thought she must have help in safeguarding Rome and in defending herself from possible French or Austrian aggression. So German and Aus- 6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR trian diplomatists formed a "defensive alliance" in 1879, and Italy, joining them in 1882, transformed it into the "Triple Alli- ance." This was the beginning of the ahgnment of the Great Powers in our own generation. Diplomatists of repubHcan France and autocratic Russia cemented the secret defensive "Dual Alliance" in 1892. Diplomatists of democratic Great Britain and oligarchical Japan formed a Far Eastern "alUance" in 1902. Diplomatists of Great Britain and France effected a rapprochement and an "entente" in 1904. To this "entente" the diplomatists of Russia were admitted in 1907. And between Triple Alliance and Triple Entente the balance of power was so neatly adjusted that from 1907 to 19 14 one trivial occurrence after another almost upset it. Of course, the smaller states — the "lesser powers" — were mainly at the mercy of the "Great Powers" and their delicate balance. On the very eve of the Great War diplomatists of Ger- many and Great Britain were secretly negotiating the virtual partition of the colonial empire of Portugal. On the other hand, changes among the lesser powers might produce prodigious dan- ger to the balance of the Great Powers. The defeat of Turkey by four Httle Balkan states in 1912-1913 appeared on the surface to be slightly more advantageous to Russia than to Austria-Hungary, with the result that Germany and her Habsburg ally were thrown into a paroxysm of fear, and one Power after another consecrated the year 1913 to unprecedented armed preparedness. By 1914 it actually required nothing less trivial in itself than the assassi- nation of an archduke to exhaust the imagination and endeavor of the professional balancers between the Powers and to send the diplomatists scurrying homewards, leaving the common people of the several nations to confront one another in the most formi- dable and portentous battle-array that the world in all its long recorded history had ever beheld. Those last years before the storm and the hurricane were indeed a strange, nightmarish time. Man had gained a large measure of control over his physical environment and a very small amount of knowledge about his true political, social, and economic needs. In most countries democracy and nationalism were growing by leaps and bounds. In other countries there was more or less mute protest against interference with national right and demo- cratic development. Everywhere the Industrial Revolution was providing an economic foundation for international federation. Yet the spirit of the age seemed incapable of expression save in institutions which had been distantly inherited and which in most THE GREAT WAR COMES 7 instances had outlived their usefulness. Recurring crises between sovereign states and increasing social unrest in every country- were alike signs of the passing of a worn-.out age and of the coming of a new age which should more perfectly square institutions with vital popular needs and longings. Those three shibboleths of the nineteenth century, — Nationahsm, Imperiahsm, Militarism, — as interpreted in the traditional language of the exclusive state- system, were producing the utmost confusion. Together they embodied the spirit of Anarchy, a spirit that could not perma- nently endure on a shrinking globe or among social animals. To- gether they were operating to produce a cataclysm which should stand forth as one of those great crises in Man's historic evolution, such as the break-up of the Roman Empire, the Reformation, and the French Revolution. And the cataclysm came in the Great War. Its underlying cause was international anarchy. Its stakes were the perpetuation or the destruction of that anarchy. THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE: GERMANY The vices of modern political and economic life might be exem- plified in greater or less degree by reference to the history of any Power or any country. Obviously they were more developed in the *' Great Powers" than in the "Lesser Powers" ; and of all the *' Great Powers" the most perfect exemplar of nationalism, im- perialism, and militarism, and therefore the most viciously an- archic in international relations, was Germany. It was Germany which precipitated the Great War. Militarism is not merely the possession of large armed forces ; it involves also the exaltation of such armed forces to the chief place in the state, the subordination to them of the civil authori- ties, the reliance upon them in every dispute. In explaining why a given nation may be pecuHarly predisposed to militarism, at least four factors should be taken into account : (i) geographical situation, (2) historical traditions, (3) political organization, and (4) social structure. In every country one or another of these factors has worked toward militarism, sometimes two or three. In Germany all four have been fully operative in that direction. For centuries German lands had been battlefields for aggressive neighbors. Situated in the center of Europe, with weak natural frontiers, these lands had been the prey of Spaniards, Swedes, Frenchmen, Poles, and Russians. From the Thirty Years' War, in the first half of the seventeenth century, down to the domi- 8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR nation of Napoleon Bonaparte, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, most of the German states were at the mercy of foreigners. What international prestige Germans retained thnroughout that dreary period was credited to the military prowess of Austria and more particularly to the waxing strength of Prussia. Prussia had no easily defensible boundaries, and her rise to eminence was due to the soldierly qualities of her Hohenzollern sovereigns — the Great Elector, King Frederick William I, and Frederick the Great. When, in the nineteenth century, the German Empire was created, it was the work of the large, well-organized, well-equipped army of Prussia, and it was achieved only at the price of French mihtary defeat and of diplomatic concessions to Russia. After the crea- tion of the German Empire in 187 1 most of its citizens continued to believe that its geographical position between populous Russia and well-armed France required the guarantee of militarism for its future maintenance. Despite the drawback of their geographical situation the Ger- mans had finally achieved national unification, and among a people zealously worshiping the spirit of nationalism the process by which they had secured national union became their most hal- lowed historical tradition. It will be recalled that the first serious attempt to achieve the political unification of the Germanics was made by the democratic Frankfort Assembly in the stormy days of 1 848-1 849 ; that it represented a combination of nationaUsm and liberaHsm, of the German nation with the German democracy. But this first attempt failed. The second attempt, Bismarck's attempt ^'by iron and blood," was crowned with success. Bis- marck's three wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870-187 1, solidly estab- lished the united German Empire. ''Nothing succeeds like suc- cess," and the three wars simultaneously sanctified the union of nationaHsm and militarism, of the German nation with the Prus- sian army. Moreover, as Prussia henceforth embraced two- thirds the area and three-fifths the population of the Empire and as the Hohenzollern king of Prussia was henceforth the German Emperor, the whole Empire was inevitably Prussianized, and Prussian history and Prussian tradition supphed the patriotic impulse to all Germans. In this way the tradition of miHtarism — the most important one that Prussia had — gradually sup- planted the more cosmopolitan and cultural traditions which had once flourished in southern and central Germany, and in the pan- theon of national heroes all German patriots inscribed tablets to the long line of warlike Hohenzollern monarchs, to the valorous Queen Louise, to Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Moltke, and Roon, to THE GREAT WAR COMES 9 the unscrupulous and forceful Bismarck — a veritable galaxy of Thors and Wodens. With this tradition the poHtical organization of the German Empire was in perfect harmony. Chief authority in the central government was confided to the Bundesrat, a close corporation of diplomatists representing the hereditary princes of the German states, meeting in secret session, and largely controlled by the chancellor, an official appointed by, and responsible to, the king of Prussia. Only secondary authority was intrusted to the popularly elected Reichstag. Prussia, as the dominant state in the confederation, retained her oligarchical and plutocratic form of government, with her parliament elected by the absurd and thoroughly undemocratic three-class system of voting. The Emperor, in training and profession a soldier rather than a civilian, was commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and his tenure was for life. Under the constitution of Prussia, whose contingent comprised the greater part of the German army, the Emperor- King might apply indefinitely from year to year to the support of the army the amount last voted by the parliament, instead of being obliged to depend upon annual financial grants. The Ger- man soldier took an oath of allegiance to the Kaiser and not to the Constitution. In Germany, finally, the military authorities were accountable for their acts only to military tribunals. Such an affair as that at Saverne in Alsace in 1913-1914 ^ was a clear illustration of the disregard of the mihtary for civilian rights and of the inability of civilians under German political institutions to obtain redress for their just grievances against the military. Most potent of all factors in predisposing Germany to milita- rism was the structure of her society. In Germany more nearly than in any other highly industriaHzed country, agriculture has held its own and the agricultural classes have suffered less in purse and in prestige through competition with manufacturers and tradesmen. Not only have the German farmers preserved their economic independence, but a conspicuous group of them have continued to our own day to enjoy the greatest social pres- tige and to exert the greatest influence in politics. These are the ^ Saverne, or Zabem as the Germans called it, was the scene throughout 1913- 1914 of the harshest and most offensive conduct of the German garrison toward the native civilian population, culminating in the slashing of a lame cobbler by a Junker lieutenant. In vain did the local authorities and even the Reichstag en- deavor to establish the supremacy of the civil courts in handling the situation; the army proved itself superior to the law, and the responsible officers received no part of the punishment which they richly deserved. For a detailed account of the Saverne Affair, see C. D. Hazen, Alsace-Lorraine under German Rule (1917), ch. lO A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR landholding nobles and the country gentlemen of Prussia — the squirearchy, or Junkerthum. From time immemorial they had divided their attention between oversight of their extensive es- tates and the service of their Hohenzollern overlord in his civil bureaucracy or in his army. Unlike their fellows in France no mighty revolution had wrested their lands from them and no republican regime had deprived them of their offices and privi- leges. In our own generation the efficient civil service in Prussia and throughout Germany was still largely recruited from them ; most commissioned officers in the large Prussian army were still appointed from their number ; and they were still utilizing their positions of trust and power in order to serve their own class- interests. The Junkers could afford to be most intensely loyal and patriotic. They extolled militarism, and the extolling of mili- tarism exalted them. Second only to the Junkers in significance and influence were the capitalists, the product of that amazing industrial and com- mercial evolution through which Germany had passed in the last forty years. Not a country in the world had witnessed in so brief a time an economic transformation of such prodigious di- mensions as the German Empire had experienced. Cities had grown rapidly; factories had been reared overnight; mine- shafts had been quickly sunk into the bowels of the earth ; an ever expanding fleet of merchant vessels had put to sea, carrying German manufactures to the uttermost parts of the globe ; tra- ders, suddenly gorged with gold, had speedily turned investors, and, imitating the example of older foreign industrialists, had rushed to exploit Africa and South Sea Islands and China and South America and the Ottoman Empire. The capitaHsts, and the middle classes generally, might have been expected to come into sharp collision with the Junkers, so divergent were the natural interests of the two classes. As a matter of fact they did colHde repeatedly in shaping domestic policies, and much of the internal history of the German Empire from 1870 to 1 9 14 was the story of the conflicts and compromises between theni. One sacred German institution, however, kept the class-struggle within patriotic bounds, and that institution was militarism. German traders and investors, arriving late in foreign and backward lands, usually found the keenest economic competition already proceeding between business-men of Great Britain, France, or some other industrialized Power; and were they to have an equal or a better chance in the international scramble for economic exploitation they would have to invoke GERMANY 1871-1914 Longitude East ENaRAVEO BY BORMAY