THE KAISER'S WAR Treitschke : His Life and Works. This book contains the biography of the German Philosopher, and a selection from his writings, amply evidencing the Pan- Germanic doctrine of the man whom Lord Acton pronounced to be "the one writer of history who is more brilliant and powerful than Droysen, and who writes with the force and fire of Mommsen." Demy 8vo, with Frontispiece, 7, 6 net. "The most reliable and accessible military history of the war." Professor ALISON PHILLIPS in the " History of Modern Europe." The Franco-German War, 1870-71 Edited by Major-General Sir F. Maurice, K.C.B. Plates, Maps, Portraits. Imperial Svo. 2i/-. The Diplomatic History of the War Edited by M. P. PRICE, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. Medium Svo, 7/6 net. The Empire and the United States: A Review of their Relations during the Century of Peace following the Treaty of Ghent By William Archibald Dunning, Ph.D., LL.D. With an Introduction by the Rt. Hon. Viscount Bryce, and a Preface by Nicholas Murray Butler, LL.D., D.C.L., President of Columbia University. Octavo, 8/6 net. LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN AND UNWIN, LIMITED. THE KAISER'S WAR AUSTIN HARRISON WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FREDERIC HARRISON LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & "UN WIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET W.C. * First Published . . November 1914 Second Impression . November 1914 [All rights reserved] PREFACE Six of these chapters are republished from the English Review, in certain cases enlarged. On their appearance I was charged by some of my Liberal friends with Germanophobia. 1 I hope this is not so. Up to the outbreak of the war I was in correspondence with good "pals" of mine in Germany; I have known many happy days there, I admire numbers of German things which I do not find in this country, not the least of which is a factual honesty of thought [Germans have been consistently honest in their attitude, our professional politicians have not] ; as I have loved so also I have learnt there. In many ways the German attitude towards life is more pleasant than ours, certainly more intellectually stimulating. But that has 1 In Germany, my works on Germanism were intelligently, almost sympathetically, discussed, whereas here they were ignored. 5 89680^ 6 PREFACE nothing to do with the question any more than German music the really great thing that Germany has given to the world has to do with Potsdam. A people may be exceedingly learned and intellectually admir- able, yet politically vile. I submit that the doctrine of Deutschland iiber Alles has proved itself to be vile. At any rate, that interpreta- tion of civilization imposed upon the German people by a military Monarchism, which they in turn have been educated to believe they were destined to impose upon Europe and Great Britain, is the cause of the present war. In this little volume 1 I have tried to explain its significance and intention, though it has been set forth again and again by the German professors, politicians and spokesmen, militarily, politically, and (as they say) faculta- tively. It is the gospel of force summed up by General v. Bernhardi in these words : " Might is the supreme right, and the dispute as to what constitutes the right is decided by the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically just decision, because its decisions rest on the very nature of things." 1 Too repetitive, I know. PREFACE 7 It is because I realized fifteen years ago that the Germans held that point of view that I did what I could to awaken public opinion to its danger. I believe if five years ago we had seen through the German purpose and answered it with conscription, this war would not have broken out. I know that if the Allied Armies fail to impose their will upon the Germans, the Germans will impose theirs upon them. And that would mean the end of all national liberty in Europe on land and on the seas. AUSTIN HARRISON. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE . . . . .5 INTRODUCTION. By Frederic Harrison . n I. WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL . . *7 II. THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY . 47 in. THE KAISER'S FAILURES . . -73 IV. INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY . . . IOI V. "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS " . . .132 VI. THE GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED . .158 VII. THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM . . .187 VIII. ENGLAND AND GERMANY . 2IO INTRODUCTION THE enormous ambition imputed to the German War Lord, the inhuman barbarities charged against German troops, are crimes against humanity so revolting to our age that good people at home even now can hardly believe such folly and such wickedness to have possessed a great and highly educated people of modern Europe. There have always been a few indepen- dent observers who have known Germany at home, have read their Press and their writ- ings, and have studied their history during the whole reign of the Kaiser. Of these the author of this volume, for ten years a journa- list in Germany and Austria, is certainly one of the best informed. In his books, The Pan-Germanic Doctrine (1904), published anonymously, England and Germany (1907), and in numerous articles in the magazines and in the English Review, 12 INTRODUCTION of which he is editor, and in constant articles in the Press, he has endeavoured to explain from his own personal knowledge the tre- mendous conspiracy which the German mili- tary and naval leaders were concocting against the peace of Europe, the independence of States, and especially against the British Empire. In spite of the opposition of igno- rant Pacifists and blind Economists, he has for ten years exposed the whole machinery of German hostility, and above all, the schemes of William II and his nautical experts to wrest from Britain her Colonial Empire and her command of the seas. The immense amount of first-hand knowledge which he has acquired in all these years abroad he has now reduced to a summary in this volume. The reason that the English public and many old-fashioned English politicians have been so blind to German designs is mainly that there are two, indeed we may say three, distinct peoples in Germany, and that no one who does not know Germans at home can realize how completely the whole nation is under strict military discipline. English professors, scholars, men of science, are INTRODUCTION 13 entirely absorbed in the learning, industry, and ingenuity of German intelligence. They have no means of knowing how completely these able and cultivated pedants are the servile creatures of the State. English politicians know there are four millions of voters who call themselves Socialists and vote against the Emperor and all his Ministers. Englishmen cannot understand that a solid body of one hundred Members of Parliament have as little say in policy as a Poplar vestry. And the travelled English gentlemen and ladies who visit German theatres, baths, and galleries are delighted by the friendliness, culture, and organization of all German institutions. To them it is inconceivable how these highly trained, and often rather gushing, people can become murderers and robbers the moment they put on the Pickelhaube. Yet so it is. Germans of all orders and ranks, professors, artists, workmen, bourgeois, and lawyers, are all simple privates in the tremendous army worked by the military caste which for a generation has menaced Europe and befooled the British public. And this book will explain to the reader how this terrible 14 INTRODUCTION infatuation of modern European society has come about. For my own part, ever since the great Franco-German War of 1870-1, I have constantly warned our people at home what the new Empire inaugurated at Versailles in January 1871 meant for Europe and for ourselves. The article I published in December 1870 in the Fortnightly Review reads now almost like a protest against the savageries and the menaces of the war to-day. I followed this up by an article in February 1871 in the same review illustrating the folly and the peril of our standing aloof to see France ruined. I even said in 1871, "The dream of a North German is a great navy and power at sea " " the new Empire of Germany is thus, in its origin, a menace to Europe" "a military empire has but one career to run that of Napoleon I." These articles of 1870 and 1871 were published under the editorship of John Morley. They have been re-issued in my book, National and Social Problems (Macmillan, 1908), and in the Introduction to that volume I reiterated the same warning. The story of my own efforts to open the eyes of Governments and the public INTRODUCTION 15 as to the fatal policy of the Kaiser, in books, in articles, in letters to the Press, are described in my Autobiographic Memoirs, vol. ii, in Chapter I. I have done all I can to open English minds to the peril. Only last year, in January 1913, I published an article in the English Review which reads to-day almost like a regular report of what we have just seen taking place. Since the war began, the editor of that review, in a series of most instructive articles, has exposed the whole history of the Kaiser's attack on civilization and the British Empire. That is "the enemy"; and that is what we are fighting to maintain. But my own know- ledge of Germany and its War Lord is far inferior to that of the author of this book. He has lived amongst them as many years as I have lived with them for months. And his know- ledge of their Press and their diplomacy and institutions is far greater than mine. He is indeed one of the very few experts in the institutions and organization of modern Germany. And I heartily commend to the attention of the English public the record he has compiled in these pages. FREDERIC HARRISON. WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL NOT a few people in this country - are-. st;li harbouring the delusion that 'the war is the act of a small set, called the Military Party, in Germany which, as a nation, was forced into hostilities in obedience to the Higher Command. Till the Kaiser declared war it is the fact that half our present Government, the majority of Liberals and vast numbers of Englishmen engrossed in games, party politics, and in their own private businesses, did more or less sincerely believe in the pacific attitude and policy of Germans, based largely on the great success achieved by learned and material Germany a success which, in truth, has been the outstanding phenomenon of this century. Only the other day, artistic and wealthy 18 THE KAISER'S WAR London was applauding Strauss to the roof. A short while previously England was feasting the discoverer of 606. History seemed to have become the monopoly of the Germans. In all our libraries, laboratories, schoolrooms, operating theatres, and cloisters of thought and research the German method, German thoroughness, German comprehension stood of distinction. Assyriology, Egyptology, . the Holy Book, these things h'ave ' been* : German, the affair of the Privat- dozent. In music, Germany led supreme. Most of the authoritative works on painting, architecture, lore, legend, philosophy, disease, political economy, Byzantinism, the interpre- tation of Shakespeare, the classics, the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Moors, the Goths, the Early Britons, the Popes, and the Infidels these things belonged to the higher criticism of the Germans. The world's science, the world's knowledge, the world's upper civili- zation seemed to be the vested right o; Teutonic industry. Even Social Democrac) was a German invention. What ecclesiastical controversy there ha* been during the last decade has beer WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 19 carried on by Germans Professor Harnack became the Emperor's chief apologist of divinity, and in his wake all other professors aspiring to Royal favour were set to fumble at the mystery of creation, and did so under the inspiration of Treitschke, Bernhardi, Chamberlain. But these writers we did not read ; we only knew them by name. Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Stirner, Nietzsche, Eucken no wonder our professors thought " Smellfungus " the most harmless and learned man in the world. No wonder our school- men looked at the Germans through Carlyle's hero-worshipping glasses. In almost every department of thought and study the student, like Goethe's Wagner, had to turn to German books of reference and erudition. Pianos, toys, chemistry, dyes, everything cheap, every- thing ingenious, they came from Germany. For authority, we referred to Germany, from old masters, prints, statues, or papyrus, down to what English schoolboys designate as " stinks." Even on art the German influence has been supreme. All the nouveau art business emanates from Germany, from Austria origin- 20 THE KAISER'S WAR ally, to be exact the Secessionist, Impres- sionist, Bavarian school of commercial cheek and blather, which was raging in Vienna in 1898 when I was learning the German grammar there. At that time Weininger with his philosophy of the whore was the hero at Vienna, and greater than he was the Englishman, Houston Stewart Chamber- lain, whose book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, threw the Kaiser into such a paroxysm of delight that he ordered it to become the standard work of German national opinion at all universities, schools, and centres of education, himself paying for 80,000 copies. After Weininger came Wedekind, also a Jew, and with his play, Springs Awakening, Berlin founded the "new" movement of eccentricity, so much so that, not to be outdone, the Kaiser, who annually refused to bestow the Poetry prize awarded by the Goethe Literary Council on Hauptmann, immediately caused gilt crowns to be placed on the marble statuary of some of his pet forbears in the " Avenue of Victory. " The Kaiser's gilt art proved infectious. There \ WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 21 came Reinhardt, the Cabaret craze, the all- night dancing saloon life of Gross, or Great Berlin, while long before Marinetti, German journalists wrote onomatopoetic rhapsodies which have quite outshone anything the Italo- German school have since attempted. The point to notice and it is worth noting is that this German tinsel art movement I spread over Europe. The Venetians began / to talk of their obsolete canals and ridiculous Doge's palaces. Legless tables appeared on the market. There was to be no line, symmetry, contour in art. Mysticism, table- turning, spiritism became the craze, and Frau Rose, the beautiful, made a fortune till one day she imposed on the public too far, when the police interfered and locked her up. The movement was eagerly seized upon by commercial enterprise. What the other day here we were gibbering about as the new decorative art, "new" poetry, " new " brushwork, the new furniture, the Sadic- Salomic school, in short all this came from Germany, where it flourished five years ago. Poets began to declaim against rhyme, beauty, reason. Byron was dubbed an "old fogey," 22 THE KAISER'S WAR Tennyson a mere jingler. The thing was the label, and the more eccentric the work perpetrated the more the Berlin, Bavarian, and Viennese public acclaimed it. Art broke out, as it were, the object being to reverse all the old forms and standards, and so escape from all the old difficulties. Long before the Parisian cocotte took to the " new " art in Paris, Germany literary men wrote music, and German musicians composed literary pieces, and German painters, under the inspiration of Simplicissimus and the Munich school, painted in conic sections, and a very profitable trade it was to both producers and middlemen. All this "new" psychology, new drama, new art impertinence is German. Whether the thing be called Secessionist, Pumpernickel, or Vorticist, its German brand is unmistakable ; it comes straight from Bavaria, kibbled from the vats of Munich. 1 It is interesting, how- ever, to note that Paris never stomached the full text of Wedekind's play on the stage, a fact which we who are apt to judge the 1 See Kandinsky, The Art of Spiritual Harmony. (Con- stable.) WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 23 French by the atmosphere of their comedies may well remember ; nor has Paris ever in- dulged in naked "culture" evenings and the aestheticism of the " Virgin and Sandal" coteries, who thought they were going to turn the capital of Bavaria into the art centre of Europe. It is worth while observing these things because they all contributed to promote the idea of German peacefulness and culture, hypnotized, as we were, by German civilization which had spun its patterns of materialism over all forms of aesthetic life west of Russia, poisoning the creative wells. Part of the gigantic German bluff, this German art move- ment was essentially the imposition of swagger, derivative of the Jackboot of militarism. If we can see now the cheapness of this spurious artistry of Deutschtum or Germanism, it is none the less curious to realize our escape from the Germanic myth which for a decade has held half Europe in thraldom. The newness of it exercised the fascination of all novelty, in particular upon theorists, individualists, and idealogues who pullulate in this island. We heard vague rumours of 24 THE KAISER'S WAR Bavarian art, we saw the German imprint on all our calicoes and calculations, but for some odd reason very few of us ever went to Ger- many or studied Germany, nor, despite the attractions of " all-night" Berlin, has that city ever attracted "society" or even the traveller; moreover, latterly our Press has tended more and more to suppress the German " end," so that we never realized how Germanized even our art was becoming, or what the Germans at home were in the least thinking about. The higher criticism was grateful to Germany for having re-introduced us to Shakespeare, our theatres were grateful to Germany for having introduced us to Bernard Shaw. Sumurun appeared, and we delighted in it ; the Greek play came over, and we raved ; the " Miracle " theatricality came over, and we cast up our eyes to heaven. In the concert world no Englishman stood a critical chance unless he had a rich man behind him. *$ Thus on art and life, on learning and thought, on all scientific and intellectual activity, the truth seemed to come out of Germany, though, as a fact, for the last thirty years (since the Kaiser came to the throne) no great German artist, writer, WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 25 musician, thinker, poet, painter, sculptor, or philosopher has appeared those whom we recognize as notable belonging all to the former generation, the generation of German humility. To this must be added the Norman Angell theory. For some years past it has been noticed that diplomacy had lost its old-time status, that finance capitalistic industry, enter- prise, interest and industrialism had assumed the position formerly held by diplomatists. So intricately and indissolubly connected had the network of Trade, Capitalism, Revenue, and Credit become internationally, that language, the Flag, Governments, statesmen, and policy seemed no longer to represent the power of nationality growing more and more democratic, material, cynical, and "civilized," as the result of the great facilities for travel, communication, and knowledge of other peoples opened up under the driving power of the new philosophy of economics which, in all its aspects and interests, was selfish and material. This Mr. Norman Angell I explained rightly enough. 1 Mr, Angell may be described as a sentimental material- ist ; that is to say, he sees life (like Marx) economically, but applies to its solution sentimentality. 26 THE KAISER'S WAR Where he went wrong was in his own illusion of the illusion. He saw only money, interest, materialism, credit he forgot the will of man. He looked on the world with the vision of the bucket- shop. It never occurred to him to consider that as materialism breeds materialism and no rich man has ever yet been known to say that he was rich enough, so also has no people. He forgot Germany, the German Army, the Kaiser, the German intention. With the habitual one-sidedness of the theorist, he left out of his accounts the human side of man in his admiration for the machine ideology ; the truth which all history has shown again and again that the world is controlled and moved ulti- mately by ideas and not by matter. Side by side with the growth of industry, there has gone Militarism, the European heritage of Bismarck. This is where the broker philosophy of Mr. Norman Angell failed. He thought that wealth was stronger than man, that matter was greater than the spirit. And a great many people agreed with him. They, too, believed that Pluto- WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 27 cracy was a bigger thing than mind. And, theoretically, the premiss looked plausible, if only for the reason that war in Europe threatened to bring ruin to the very Captains of Industry who swayed its governance. Then, too, the European system of Alliances seemed to provide a sure guarantee of con- tinued peace. The idea of war appeared incredible. Men never stopped to consider the psychology of capital, to reflect on the methods of capitalism as ruthless in their economic incidence as the murderous work of armies. On paper no Power seemed more dependent upon material prosperity, upon business and credit, than Germany with her Ballins and Banks, 1 her world-penetrating ramifications of commercial interests, her inter- dependence upon the arteries of sea-borne trade and exports, under the personality of the Kaiser surrounded by the great Jewish creators of wealth whom he had publicly made his personal friends. An epigram of Mr. Balfour that the point of European danger 1 In Germany, these are largely loan and speculative concerns; the so-called D Banks created a panic just before the war and "cleared" themselves. 28 THE KAISER'S WAR now lay on the contact margin of the lower and higher civilizations was accepted as the true wisdom. Numbers of 1 Englishmen held the opinion that England ought to be asso- ciated with " German civilization." Though the French Revolution gave to Europe most of the ideals she is to-day actually fighting for, Party Liberalism in this country has con- sistently looked askew at France and, with- out all question, has striven to come to an understanding with Germany, even on so dangerous a question as the number of ships of war. Our professors agreed. There was the Protestant idea, the schoolmistress notion that the French were not so " moral " as they might be, our inveterate Puritanism which controls so powerful a section of English party politics, and then, of course, there was the academic theory. On the surface things looked entirely pacific and promising. A better feeling to- 1 One of the great difficulties serious political writers in England have had to encounter is the cynicism introduced by the paradox school of writers who in their literary search for brilliance have lost touch with earth, to the bewilderment of the public. Clever young Liberal politi- cians overflow with this paradox " litera-too-re-la-dy." WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 29 wards us was apparent in German policy. The stay-at-home theorist argued that Germany would never risk the breakdown of her magnificent trade and commerce for war which would bring about the Armageddon talked of by " journalistic Germanophobes." The traveller and sciolist came back from a little tour in Germany with gushing reports of German order, cleanliness, civic adminis- tration and prosperity ; with stories of Bavarian insouciance ; how that Prussian economic professors would sit down with their wives, after a nice cold supper, at the piano to play Bach and Brahms ; of kindly incidents and legendary anecdotes, all point- ing to the homely proclivities of Goethe's people. We saw fat Germans in patent- leather boots drinking beer on the way up the Shreckhorn in Switzerland, and in truth they looked harmless fellows. They swarmed over all North Italy. In London they waited upon us, shaved us, managed hotels and restaurants for us with commendable intelli- gence. The best spy-glasses and spectacles were German we looked through them benevolently. Our daughters went to 30 THE KAISER'S WAR Dresden to "finish," and came back love-sick for the German uniform. In the minds of six Englishmen out of ten the thought was upper- most that Germany was a God-fearing country, torch-bearer of the super-civilization. When Lord Roberts spoke to us of our national responsibility in trust of the Entente, of the necessity of a Citizen Army, we scoffed ; even on Jingo platforms the word Conscription was taboo, though all Europe kept on arming to the teeth and no other Power on the Con- tinent in the least shared our opinions either about Germany or the Kaiser. Those of us who tried to warn England of the growing danger were denounced as " fire-eaters " and " party mongerers," so much so that not a few of us, Liberal in spirit, Free Traders and democrats, found ourselves between two stools, ignored by Liberalism because we insisted upon the German intention, ignored by Conservatism because we were not Food- taxers. The German question, in fact, has been for years past a party affair with us. When my father wrote his prophetic warning last year in the English Review (January 1913) several old Liberal friends of his WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 31 gravely asked me whether it was " fair on him not to edit the opinions of a man grown palpably old." Pro-Germanism actually be- came a political conspiracy, and there can be little doubt that had the German Emperor not been so badly informed about the Eng- lish character, and so waited for a better opportunity to create the " Greater Germany," he would have had an excellent chance of hoodwinking us into some form of neutrality which would have signed the death-warrant of the British Empire. How has this nightmare come about? How is it possible that this intellectual, scientific, artistic, musical, Social Democratic Germany assaults civilization and deports herself on the field of battle with the savagery of the Huns ? What is the Ger- man case? The answer is quite simple. We were deceived because we judged the Germans by our own ethics and standards ; because we neglected to look at the map of Europe ; because we never realized that scientific, musical, bacteriological, picture-dealing, plea- sure-loving, professorial, learned and cultured 32 THE KAISER'S WAR Germany not only possessed no political power in the Fatherland, but was herself intoxicated with Germanic Imperialism. We saw and admired the individual : Sudermann, Ehrlich, Koch, Strauss, Ballin, Krupp, Zeiss, Zeppelin we forgot the design and edifice built up by Stein and Scharnhorst, York and List, Moltke and Roon, Bismarck and Treitschke ; the Death's Head Hussar school governing and propelling the national pur- pose under the supreme control of a religious mystic. We forgot that Germany has not, and never did have, either a free Press or what we under- stand by public opinion. Till the translation the other day of Mr. Chamberlain's book, how many Liberal politicians knew even of its existence, or, if they had got through it in the original, in the least realized that a tract (for that is what it amounts to) so one- sided, so vainglorious, so unphilosophical could become the Bible of sixty odd million people celebrated for their intelligence in all Europe ? Our professors who knew Germany from the library, our Liberals I who knew 1 Our Liberal Press has taken its opinions from the WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 33 Germany from theory, our Puritans who judged Germany through Protestantism, none of these people ever gave themselves the trouble to study Germany "on the spot"; to follow the German Press ; to grasp the meaning of the system of absolute personal government ; to reflect on Germany's geo- graphical position hemmed in in the centre of Europe ; to ask themselves the very simple question, " What is the object of the Ger- man Army and Navy, if not as the weapon of offence ? " Here we have Governments who possess real power, constitutionally changing and exchangeable. We have Proconsuls, opinion, a more or less independent Press (politically, at any rate) ; we have individuals who matter, policies which prevail, systems which apply, standards which hold ; we have 11 sport " and all the potentialities of popular government. But Germany has none of these things r not one. When the Berlin Socialist Bernstein, the Economist Gotheim, from Pro- fessor Delbriick, etc., and not from the Englishman in Germany. Oddly enough, Germans judged England by Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, Mr. Keir Hardie, Mr. Master- man. So theorists addle theorists. 3 34 THE KAISER'S WAR Magistracy some years ago elected a Burgo- master, the Emperor refused to sanction his appointment, so that for a year or so, Berlin had a Burgomaster only by reputation. When the Kaiser wrote a ballet, a hymn, a war poem ; designed a steeple, a hospital, a stomach-pump, a church, or a group of statuary, not a man in Germany dared raise his voice in protest, except the Socialists, who, branded as outside the civic pale, came to be regarded as the platitude of Parliamentary opposition, which, in turn, barring the noise and time wasted, had no effect upon anybody. The seeming paradox of modern Germany has been this utter divorce of sane and intelligent opinion from the machine which runs and directs it. If we consider that every second man in Germany has an order, a title, a ribbon ; is a servant of the State ; is neces- sarily a soldier ; and is consequently so bound socially and professionally to the integument of the State administration, vamped of all power of political criticism, protest, or initia- tive, we can get an idea of the remarkable singleness of power wielded by authority, which thus arrogates to itself not only the WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 35 rights of administrative function, but abso- lutely dominates the national design. In France, which has something of the same system, this influence is neutralized by the elective form of government, by the liberty of the Press, by the idea of the Republic. But in Germany there is no Government other than the Kaiser. There is no opinion on national policy other than that fabricated in the Foreign Office. There is no national code of right and wrong, as we enjoy it with our Ethics of Games. There are no independent voices, for the simple reason that all men capable of independent initiative either join the Socialists or get caught in the coil of the State. And it is here that our theorists went so egregiously wrong. 1 They never understood the reason of German State Government, either the power of the Imperial machinery or the uses to which it was applied. Let us look at it now for 1 Books will no doubt some day, be written about this singular hallucination of British Liberal opinion which " believed " in Germany. How a man like Mr. Haldane came to be taken in is past understanding. I never knew any clear-headed man who had been to Germany, who was not convinced of the German war intention. 36 THE KAISER'S WAR a moment and see what is meant by the position of the Kaiser as absolute War Lord. First, the machinery. Now this consists primarily of the active military and civic authority in the Empire. The Kaiser is able to dictate because, acting with and under him, the entire organization of State and Munici- pality, of Province and district, with all power of office, privilege, or position, are vested in the two services, whose motto is "implicit obedience " ; in the Bureaucracy, with its thousand grades of governmental officials ; in the aristocracy, the Landrathe (the vice comes of the Normans), the Church, the Law, Conscription, and the throttling agency of titular snobbery, all acting centripetally in trust of the Emperor. With this control of the national power, political, social, economic, and administrative, the system owns the police, the Imperial Bank and, through its arteries, the financial resources of the country, the entire Railways and Canal systems, the Postal and Telegraph services ; has a military lien on all big ships of the great shipping companies, the sole right of con- ferring the thousand-and-one titles every WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 37 second German aspires to ; the sole right of bestowing orders ; the monopoly, in short, of all civic position and preferment outside the artistic and purely business world. Under the system, all education and the Universities stand in the Imperial bondage. The Schools being all State schools, the entire education of Germany is so controllable from above. History has thus been taught in the schools on extreme Pan-German lines ; in every school the German boy has been taught to regard England as the great enemy of Germany, and any professor who ventured to counteract the stream of lies introduced into the modern German curriculum would have lost his position at once. The Law, too, being part of the Governmental system, every judge, barrister, solicitor, and lawyer's clerk is a number in the regimental State machine ; and the same applies to the Church, the income-tax collector, the Revenue taxation department, and to all officials, down to the office-boy in the post office, and all who wear the State uniform. As the military class takes precedence of all others, gives the tone socially and matrimoni- 38. THE KAISER'S WAR ally to all strata, all conditions of civil life are permeated with the military and bureaucratic spirit, ribboned together in a maelstrom of snobbery, social and professional ambition, with its inevitable and calculated effects upon marriage and consequently upon the whole education, attitude, and position of German women. Thus, through all forms of civic life, Germans are held in servility, in disciplinarian control under the drill of the system which constitutes the greatest organization of masonry that the world has ever known. To understand what this means we must realize that every schoolgirl aspires to marry a lieutenant ; that every lawyer, every articled clerk, every postman, every fireman, every railway man, every school-teacher, every forester, every tax-collector, every University lecturer (as the State servant of Empire) regards himself as an integral part of the administration, necessarily and disciplinarily obliged to act and think accordingly. All professional careers are in this way controlled by the upper organization ; all bureaucratic employment, advancement, and success ; all judicial, ecclesiastical, educational, and adminis- WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 39 trative activity, with the inevitable forfeiture of all freedom of the Press and all know- ledge from the outside. Every Backfisch is caught in its web ; every eager youth, every anxious mother. The gigantic official world of Germany takes its politics from the Army, while the Army takes it from the Emperor, who so exercises an autocracy greater than any Tsar of Russia or Sultan of Turkey ; in very truth, the Monarch of all he surveys. Apply this system to government, and it is easy to see the immense power of the Sovereign will, and the curious servility of the people who submit to it. It means that no official, no judge, no cleric, no professor, no writer, no intellectual, no man with any social ambition can possess national freedom of thought or expression. The women naturally follow the drum. The Press serves the servers in sequacious deference. The one opposition all these years has come from Social Democracy, ostracized and impotent. Such is the German governmental machine. And such is the reason why individual intelli- gence, scientific ability, the German artists, the German men of learning, not only possess 40 THE KAISER'S WAR no public right of say or political authority, but are not even voices crying in the wilder- ness. In Germany, with her academic system of grooves, pigeon-holes, and departmental specialization, the men of Fach or culture are relegated to the confines of their respective faculties. A botanist is a botanist, and so on, and nothing else. Against the uniformed drill of German administration, with its myriad ramifications acting and reacting upon every branch of office and civic responsibility, the German creators are powerless, nor have they ever made so much as an effort to assert themselves or protest. To accept, to serve such is the motto of German civil life. Had the. Emperor Frederick lived, other conditions might have arisen, and the present war might never have occurred. But with the advent of the Kaiser to the throne the era of the political placeman, of vainglorious mediocrity began. For twelve years now there has been no policy in Germany other than that directed by the Emperor. For twelve years now the national conscience has accepted that policy the man of letters, the seer, the teacher, the artist, the individual who complained had WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 41 nothing before him but economic disaster. Drunk with the success of 1870, the German people have placed their souls in the keeping of the Kaiser. Even the thoughtful among them have acclaimed the pan-German attitude. As for war, for the national right to strike, all Germans, arming and prepared, accepted it as the national destiny. They were not opposed to it, because out of war all the material greatness of modern Germany had arisen ; because the profession of war was the historical mission of Prussia and the political heritage of Bismarck. The whole German race has been saturated with this, the Kaiser-idea. It is no exaggeration to say that 90 per cent, of all Germans since Algeciras have yearly expected the present war, have known that sooner or later it was bound to come, and have in every respect sanctioned the military preparedness made for it. No people in history has ever been' so conscious of the national aim which intellectual Germany and the Press have expounded for the last twelve years on the racial lines laid down by Treitschke and Chamberlain. War had become the truth THE KAISER'S WAR and fate of the German people. No nation ever went into war with a clearer sense of its national responsibility. No ruler ever declared war with a fuller weight of support behind him, with feller intention to destroy, with more calculated racial deliberation. There is one other aspect which deceived us the religious side. Here again the Germans stood in sharp contrast with Ger- manism, which always spoke of itself as acting " with God." The modern German is purely cynical and irreligious, but he still reads his Goethe and still preserves the "two souls" immortalized by the poet. It has been said, in consequence, that this is the war of Atheism. Nothing is further from the truth. The Kaiser, who is a religious fanatic, has invented and superimposed upon his people a religion of his own the religion of the righteousness of war. Though, philosophically, Germans have shaken off ecclesiastical dogma, they are in this sense the most religious people in Europe in that they associate the majesty of the Hohenzollerns with the divinity of an historical mission. Any one who has ever WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 43 heard a German speak of " Unser Kaiser" (Our Emperor) cannot have failed to realize the curious religious mysticism connected with his personality, which, if its reason con- sisted mostly in sentiment, was none the less the religious sentiment of Germany and be- lieved in almost as a fetish. The Army, the bureaucracy, the aristocracy, the professors, all cultivated this gospel, like the fighting Cardinals and Popes of old. Through it, the flag was held in some mysterious fashion to be God's own flag. Through it, the divinity of the Hohenzollerns came to be the mad- ness of Empire. And through it, every political act, every Imperial speech, and the whole national direction came to be regarded as in some special measure the will of the Almighty, by whose divine grace the Kaiser spoke to his people in terms of sacrosanctity. God, as we know, can be construed in many ways. We neglected to inquire what was the particular construction of the Divinity actuat- ing the Emperor. But the Germans knew well enough, and when the Kaiser, on the night of the declaration of war, spoke to them from the balcony and bade them " Go home 44 THE KAISER'S WAR and pray, and God will be with us," we may take it that the German nation antici- pated that, as God had enabled them to win in 1870, so he would lead them through Belgium to Paris and the coasts. So all these years, while we have been thinking what " nice people the Germans are," how " musical," how "homely," how " splen- didly vital," how "cultured," etc., Germany has cut her teeth on the religion of war, in expectation of the call of destiny. All these years, while Liberalism I has looked to the " good clever " Kaiser with his sympathetic Lutherism, and we have clung, like barnacles, 1 In an article by Mr. H. G. Wells (The Nation, Septem- ber 1 2th) I read a phrase which ought to be framed in the National Liberal Club " the superstition of natural virtue has been the curse of Liberalism for a century and a half." It is that curse which has led so many good men to see only the German creators, instead of seeing Germany ; which explains why Liberalism is so often wrong in matters of foreign policy, because it sees sentimentally, whereas other peoples don't. Liberalism does not assume that virtue, however, in its home political opponents. As the result of this war whole silversides of Liberal theory will have to go root and branch, with its spirit of compromise derived from Rousseau. It will have to return to the hardier truth of the Englishman, Cromwell, who saw life as a soldier. WORLD-POWER OR DOWNFALL 45 to her materialistic " civilization," real Germany the Germany of the Kaiser and of the pro- fessors, of the German Church and the German Army has been arming for the great " opportunity," for the conclusion with England and Europe, which, " with God's help," was to liberate the Greater Germany. Every German knew this. It stands recorded in a thousand German books, in every speech and action of the War Lord since he came to the throne. War was not only the Idea of Germany, it was her religion and State science. More. It had become the article of national faith in every professorial Chair in the Empire. Years hence, no doubt, the historians will search anxiously for some justification for the German outbreak, as they will strain their talents to explain the paradox of the two Germanics the one all industry, culture, crea- tion, and commercialism, the other the implac- able militarism of Potsdam. They will delve in vain. The truth is simply this. The whole machine of German government, life, adminis- tration, and organization was founded and run for the purpose of war, and was so accepted 46 THE KAISER'S WAR by the German people. In that spirit and for that end young Germany grew up and served, and neither reasoned nor doubted. Under the Emperor Germany, grown unutterably brutal, arrogant, and material as the result of her victories and the national militant training, was one corporate offensive arm ready at any moment, in any cause, and anyhow to strike to strike first and to strike hard. The national reason, sanity, morality, honour these things Germans entrusted to the Kaiser. As every able-bodied German was a soldier, so he was the obedient and unquestioning gun- carrion in the Hohenzollern predestined fight, as General Bernhardi wrote, for " World- Power or Downfall." II THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY IT was Karl Marx who first used the term, the " materialistic conception" of history, in his great economic work Capital, which ever since has been the gospel of Social Democ- racy. He meant by materialistic that the ethical powers of consciousness and will were losing their influence in the modern world of industry and capitalism, and that the more intensive the concentration of capital became, the more widespread would be the misery, degradation, and slavery of the wage- earning classes, leading thus inexorably to (his theory of) class warfare, culminating in the bursting of the capitalist integument through the pressure of the revolutionary socialization from below. Like all fatalistic 47 48 THE KAISER'S WAR doctrine, it was a comfortable, fascinating theory, giving birth to the speculative idea of a Millennium when the expropriators would be expropriated, and in the establishment of the true Collectivist State every producer would have a fair share in the profits of labour. All moral agency was eliminated, for Marx saw in the modern world only the power of capital materialism. Purely cynical as regards all ethical forces, whether religion or idealism, he recognized merely matter, and thought that, in con- sequence, matter alone could destroy matter. The conditions governing the world being economic, so necessarily the solution of their problems would be economic materialistic. Hence the inevitability of revolution the law of force. Few Englishmen are at all aware how profound the influence of Marx has been on German thought, which, as a fact, has assimilated his materialistic meaning of history as a specifically national idea. Treitschke, in the domain of statecraft, was impregnated with it. Again and again he preached the doctrine of matter. 4< Among all political sins, MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 49 the sin of feebleness is the most contemptible ; it is the political sin against the Holy Ghost." It was not a new idea in Germany by any means ; indeed, throughout Prussian history force has been held up as the axiom of State reason, from the days of Frederick the Great's father, through Lagarde, 1 List, and the Swedish poet Arndt, who first sang of an " All Germany," to Clausewitz with his famous words, "A people can only hope to take up a firm position in the political world when national character and military tradition act and react upon each other," down to Bismarck and his " Blood and Iron," when German hopes were at last realized. The difference between the economic fatalism of Marx and the political fatalism of Robertus- Treitschke- Bismarck, and latterly Chamber- lain who epitomized and popularized the 1 Paul de Lagarde (with Frederick List) was the first Pan-German historian. His Deutsche Schriften outlined the whole Pan-German policy which has since been followed. In 1853, he pointed to the colonization of Asia Minor as the most important aim of Germanic policy, which had first of all to Germanize Austria. To be noted is that this remark was made thirteen years before Konig- gratz. 4 50 THE KAISER'S WAR theme, lay merely in the end in view, Marx aiming solely at the emancipation of Labour, whereas the poets and historians thought only of the ''freedom" of the Germanic peoples. In their interpretation and applica- tion of the means, these men were all in agreement. " Power has to apply itself," wrote Treitschke. Even Luther regarded war as " divine, as needful and necessary to the world as eating or drinking." The main distinction between Marx, who advocated class-warfare, and Bismarck, who advocated national warfare, consisted in the definition of the warlike right which, with Marx, be- came a non-human and organic necessity, while with Bismarck it was a volitional agency. To a people flushed with victory, consoli- dated for the first time in history, the doctrine of war as a fatalistic necessity seemed plausible and flattering. It dispensed, as it were, with the moral element, simplified the philosophy of life, and gave the Germans, who ever since the Thirty Years' War, had been a torn and divided people, disintegrated with religious feuds, personal and " Particulate " MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 51 bickerings, jealousies, and petty quarrels, a standardized creed of nationality, which up till 1870 had been utterly lacking. After the war the Saxon could meet the Bavarian and talk nationally ; the Hamburger, who in Gladstone's days used to play cricket " like an Englishman " (as the Prussian said), consorted with the Catholic of the Rhine, and for the first time found a common theme, a common sympathy, a common bond of memory in the strenuous days of Sedan. The working-classes accepted the new purpose of nationality because in con- ception it accorded with the law laid down by Marx, in which disciplinarian organization and control in the supreme interest of authority played an essential part. It is difficult for us to realize the novelty of the sense of nationality given to Germans by Bismarck, or even remotely their pride in it. To the German of that generation, idealist, dreamer, Philistine, and peasant, who had never known a single flag, a single policy, a single enthusiasm, the idea of race unity came as the revelation of a new Faith. He looked at the map of Europe with 52 THE KAISER'S WAR incredulous surprise. His Germany, the divided Germany he had known, one indi- visible whole acting on one racial idea this he had never understood ; never even so much as contemplated ! The simple Michel felt like a man who has suddenly been left a fortune. It was his, all his, a huge German Empire, no longer a congeries of Principalities. It was good to be feared and respected by the Powers ! Obviously it was not for him to argue about the manner of its creation. Nationality had come by the sword, by the grace of God. Who was he to question the righteousness of the means which had made it? How was he to know whether Bismarck had moral right on his side or not ? What was moral right ? Why bother? There was the fact. God had blessed the Germanic Union, for otherwise how could it have taken place ? Absolutely unaccustomed to freedom of political thought before 1870, he was all the more willing to acquiesce in the fate which had brought him so much success after 1870. Bismarck had been right, and Moltke had been right ; no doubt the Emperor would be right also. MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 53 What war had given the Germans, they would hold by war. So the materialistic view found easy credence among the general public. Planted on unsuspicious, curiously ignorant, and traditionally servile soil, the doctrine of the successful State struck deep root in all classes of the people. It became the policy of German writers to enforce upon the German nation the comfortable beliefs that ignorance was bliss, that success lay in uninquiring acceptance of the State economy, that opposi- tion, even criticism, constituted an act of treachery to the great cause of united Germany marching forward now in the wake of her history. The Germans, who are congenital theorists and, politically, the most ignorant, undis- cerning, and uneducated of any people in Europe, thus saw in the materialistic view a practical idea which all could understand, and which appealed to their natural passion for the great and the towering, traceable in the massive stones and thrusts of the old Gothic art. The idea of a mission in the world, of organic cataclysms, of mystical inevitability, of a Fate leading them on to higher purposes 54 THE KAISER'S WAR of existence these thoughts delighted and intoxicated, even if they rather terrified, the Germans, so suddenly and generously Provi- dence had filled the country with good things, so completely life and the meaning of life seemed to have changed for them. Naturally quarrelsome, jealous, warlike, and idealistic, the German people found themselves cut off from the ordinary outlets of their activities which hitherto had found expression in internecine strife dynastic, princely, religious, and tribal ; and that particular German charac- teristic which may be described as the game of insult and injury. Great masses of men came together for the first time, astonished to think and speak of themselves as Germans. The reasons for their petty quarrels had gone ; there was no longer a centrifugal interest with- in the interest; the "evil eye" of German Particularism which had been the bane of Stein, of German parochialism, of German schism, had disappeared. As Marx taught the masses to trust in Fate, so Treitschke inspired the classes. But Bismarck was no Pan-German. In one of his most thoughtful utterances he expressly stated MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 55 that "even victorious wars can only be justified when they are forced upon a nation, for we cannot foresee the cards held by Providence so nearly as to anticipate the historical develop- ment by personal calculation." And the statement is notable. It draws the line sharply between what we call Bismarckianism and Pan- Germanism. It shows that Bismarck was no mere adventurer, but a statesman recognizing human limitations, the psycho- logical and ethical factors ; in no sense of the word a Materialist- Fatalist, such as Marx and the Chamberlain Pan-Germanic professorial school which has since formulated the German State policy. When Bismarck stopped at the seas, he did so for military reasons. His last legacy to Germany was caution : never, for any reason, to risk war with Russia. His militarism was politically sane. It is unthink- able that Bismarck would have declared war against the Dual Alliance, for instance, unless with the certain knowledge of Italy's active participation in the fight on the side of Germany. The idea of engaging England as well would, we may be sure, have been regarded by him as madness. Whatever he 56 THE KAISER'S WAR was, Bismarck was no fatalist. It was not until he had left the Chancellorship that the new gospel gained currency ; that the young Emperor was able to come forward and speak to his people intoxicated with the material- istic fatalism of Marx and Treitschke with the religious fatalism of a Christ : " I am not come to bring peace on earth, but a sword." In the personality of the Kaiser the Germans found the leader they were looking for : a man who palpably had the stomach of a Frederick the Great, a " true Prince," as rumour quickly named him, a figure in armour ever dear to a German's heart, romantic as the lore of mythology. The Germans have always been hero-worshippers, as Carlyle found. Yet the Emperor alone could not have effected much had it not been for the new Idealism which had come into the minds of Germans as the result directly of success and indirectly of the materialistic philosophy. It is vulgarly assumed that Nietzsche is responsible for the German war-spirit, but that is an error. In a sense, Nietzsche certainly stood for the principle of power intellectual power as against the doc- trine of servility, acceptance, and conserv- MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 57 atism ; but it was to be the expression of humanity, not of nationality much as De Quincey defined literature as power. In Schopenhauer a similar thought is expressed. His " will to live" is quintessentially Nietz- schean as opposed to Kant, whose last words were written on "universal peace," and Herder, who denied the nobility even of nationality, and the grand cosmopolitanism of Goethe, who, illogically enough, himself bowed graciously to kings while repudiating the idea of boundaries. The train of thought of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Max Stirner, with his egocentric theory, contained none the less essentially the spirit which Wagner developed in music and his glorification of German mythology ; which Marx applied to economics in his gospel of fatalism ; which Treitschke sanctified in his force doctrine of history ; which Fichte postulated in " Germany's realization of her natural boundaries " ; which Bismarck codified in the new policy of Might versus Right ; which, lastly, the Kaiser enun- ciated with the sanction of the Holy Book, crying, " Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." It was the great reaction against the inter- 58 THE KAISER'S WAR nationalism of Goethe and Kant, brought into being by the realities of the men of action who made the German Empire. The ele- ments had long been there. York, Scharn- horst, Stein, Clausewitz these were all men of the Bismarckian stamp, crushed and kept under only by Napoleon. Prussia, which arose out of the warlike spirit and achieve- ments of the Mark Brandenburg, had always stood in Europe for the principle of war, for the right of force and conquest, and when Germany was welded together it was intel- ligible that Treitschke should see in the con- summation of German strength and solidarity the continuity of warlike evolution under the guiding nucleus of the King of Prussia. Nor must it be forgotten that German his- torians and German philosophers have always descried the "finger of God" in the affairs of men and of Germany, and that this spirit of fatalism is conscientiously present in all their thoughts and writings. Kant never shook himself free from the idea of the divine creation of the world. Giesebrecht taught consistently the " favoured -nation " doctrine of German history in which the inscrutable MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 59 will of the Almighty was manifest. The historian Sybel was quite solemn in his assurances about " God's " victory in 1870. Bismarck himself never tired of speaking of his "old Master sleeping with God"; indeed, the Emperor William I was canonized long before his death. The German soldiers of 1870 sang hymns on the battlefields. In German literature, the idea of " God and Fatherland," " with God and King," of God identified in some particular way with the German people, finds persistent expression, due, no doubt, largely to the German feeling for mythology and the mystical, and the symbolic strain in German thought : due, of course, to the hideous memories of the Thirty Years' War with the Lutheran tradi- tion of German Protestantism standing in the centre of Catholic and "barbarian" Europe for the truth. Odd as it may appear, the materialistic con- ception of history invented by Marx has not only influenced modern German thought in a way inconceivable to us, who imagined Marx to be a mere literary agitator, if any- thing violently antagonistic to all principles 60 THE KAISER'S WAR of order and nationality, but has also fitted in very sympathetically with the physical teaching of history, in that both the material- istic and the "revealed " gospels of Germanic culture were based upon fatalistic notions of historical inevitability. It enabled Treitschke to reconstruct German history on a single line of national or racial continuity, to claim Charlemagne as the direct forbear of Frederick the Great, the Hohenstaufens and Bar- barossas as the historical torch-bearers of the Hohenzollerns, to find in the great period of shame and silence the needful humility imposed upon Germans by God, now once more united in the chain of their destiny. To the Kaiser, this attestation of history was bread and wine, investing him with the aureole of the Godhead, and it was in this spirit that he built his Avenue of Victory to teach his people the historical significance of Prussianized Germany. It was this new spirit of semi-religious, semi- mythological vanity superimposed on the naturally sentimental and fatalistic Schwdr- merei or dream-enthusiasm of the Germans which led them to read the history of MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 61 mediaeval Europe as a whole, as a connected story of Germanic effort crowned in the halls of Versailles, to look upon the young Kaiser as the Lohengrin of the German mission. In all this the memory of Luther figured con- spicuously. To keep alive Lutheran Pro- testantism became the tradition of Germanic culture. Here again the Kaiser fretted every chord of German sentiment. And the Germans were reminded notably of the fact when the Kaiser, on the three hundred and eighty-first anniversary of the nailing by Luther of his ninety-five theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg, terminated his address in the " Church of the Redeemer" at Palestine (October 29, 1898) with Luther's words : " Das Feld muss er be- halten" (This field he must hold). This was history-making after Treitschke's own heart. In his role of the " Pope of Witten- berg," taking under the Imperial aegis the powers of Islam, the Kaiser struck the missionary note of new Germany entering upon her quest of racial " manumission." At the time, German newspapers wrote that it was an index of the Majesty entrusted by 62 THE KAISER'S WAR the divine will to Germany to bring into her fold the infidels and children of error, and so spread the grandeur of Teutonic cul- ture over the earth in realization of the All-German destiny. People who ask how it is possible that so remarkably intelligent a nation as the Germans should be deceived as to the motive of the Kaiser's purely spectacular and political visit, must try to remember that humour is not a German characteristic, and that, applied to the personality of the Emperor, it constitutes a penal offence. A nation which believes in a Socialist Millennium, which on similar fatalistic grounds is ready to credit German Imperialism with divine inspiration, which has come together nationally, as it were, overnight and in despite of itself, which is naturally prone to see a mythical power in all life's purposes and manifestations, such a nation is not likely to possess much insight into the psychology of peoples, to show much intuition in the interpretation of other men's affairs, to see impartially or to draw logical conclusions. As the Minnesdnger spirit of contemplative Germany had died out in the MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 63 roar of battle and success, a new philosophy of manhood was needed, a new meaning of history. The passive or quiescent spirit of old Germany had no longer any vanity. *' To be or not to be," that was the thing, in harmony with the action of her soldiers, and it was with this idea inspiring them that the Germans founded the philosophy of Valour. In the " Will to Power" sanctioned by her philosophers and economists, and illustrated by divine teaching, intellectual Germany found a cut-and-dried system of nationality adaptable to the idealistic tradition, credible and mentally suggestive if only by reason of its palpable success. Out of this curious amalgam of metaphysical indefinite- ness and fatalistic positiveness cultured Germany received a national cohesion and incentive which, before Treitschke and the present Kaiser, had been entirely absent. It was not merely a German Empire that had been created ; it was a Germanic idea, a new theory of national being. As a new principle of life, it was at once acceptable to German intellectuals, to whom it gave a " point of view " at once philosophical and practical. 64 THE KAISER'S WAR If the Greeks had a theory of life, why shouldn't the Germans ? Thus, as an idea, it became what Germans call " facultative," giving rise to a school of thought, to a philosophy which had the German merit of metaphysical and practical speculation. From the economic side as laid down by Marx; from the historical side as written by Treit- schke and, very particularly before him, Frederick List, the father of Pan-Germanism ; from the philosophical side as deducible from popular and muddle-headed ideas of Nietzsche; from the practical side as realized by Bismarck, Moltke, and the Armies ; from the mytho- logical-religious side as demonstrated by the Kaiser, the Lutheran soldier of modern Germany. The nobility of war as opposed to the theory of Pacificism is, of course, a very old idea, worn threadbare by Frederick the Great and emphasized by Napoleon again and again. As an argument it is difficult to refute, nor must it be forgotten that throughout history Christianity has been a fighting State institu- tion. All the virtues are brought out by war : courage, hardihood, self-sacrifice, endurance, MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 65 pity, charity, mercy, nobility, strength the parts damn it ! of a gentleman and of chivalry. However this may be, the German materialistic conception was a throw-back to what may be termed synthetic mediaevalism. Hence the Emperor's insistence upon such phrases as the " Mailed Fist," the " Gauntlet of German might," a spirit at all times curiously pronounced in the German veneration for their Feudal Castles (Ein feste Bitrg ist unser Gott is one of the great Lutheran hymns) ; the passionate sentimentalism attaching to the Rhine, the Black Forest, the Wartburg, the Brocken, the traditional joviality associated with German drinking songs, wine cellars, beer, hock, and monkish cheer, the German metaphysical interest in ghosts, spirits, haunted heaths, and the Devil immortalized by Goethe, the German curiosity into the past and the future, the German attachment to the trappings and pomp of mediaeval ceremony, the German fealty to the dead. This intellectual sentimentalism, which the Kaiser found it so easy to play upon, is revealed in the grandeur of their martial songs and the reverence with which they sing them 5 66 THE KAISER'S WAR " Die Wacht am Rhein" " Zwei Grenadiere" " Deutschland uber alles" " Heil Dir im Sieges- kranz" these are no ordinary songs of Patriotism. They are pregnant with old German thought and tradition. Like the melody of the Lorelei, they reflect the deep roots of German romance, of German thwarted loves and ambitions ; they are the living voice of the old Gothic cathedrals. No country in the world has such cherished traditions as the Germans. There is a quality in their music which seems to spring out of the memories of the soil, of the castles, of the Father Rhine. The students at the Universities meet and drink precisely as their ancestors did in Luther's time. Lore, sentiment, tradition, antiquity these are a national cult, visible in the national respect for learning and " pedagogics. " It is no exaggeration to say that the Germans are still steeped in mediaeval thought and habit, the proud and conscious " Barbarians" of Europe. So in the young Emperor they saw nothing untoward or artificial. He seemed to Germans to stand at their head as the very Geist of their genius, the incorporate figure of the true German valour, armed cap-a-pie like MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 67 some heaven-sent emissary of Wotan to bring deliverance to his people. Bernhardi's guiding principle that " the maintenance of peace never can or may be the goal of a policy," thus seemed to Germans and the professors to be an axiom in con sonance with the national greatness, as biologically it was the law of existence. All life was parasitic, aggressive. All values changed. Progress, after all, merely signified the evolution of the fittest, of the strongest at any given stage. Acquiescence was only another term for stagnation and decay. In all things there was a destiny. They looked back upon the greatness of the British Empire and saw that it had been won by enterprise and force. They looked upon their own interrupted history and saw that it was the toll of national dissension and disruption, the sorrow of disunity. And now at last Germany was one, increasing by leaps and bounds as the result of war. " We were not because we never willed it to be " such was the new German thought in the years immediately after Sedan. "We must be if we will to be " such became the German 68 THE KAISER'S WAR national philosophy based upon the fatalism of the materialistic conception. Speculative!} 7 , it is thus a positive philo- sophy in contradistinction to the negative theory of Pacificism. The precise opposite to Utopianism, it appealed to Germans by its martial spirit of religious and racial romance ; nor can it be said to be unintellectual, since this aspect of " playing with destiny," which renders Kriegspiel so fascinating a diversion to both soldiers and civilians, provides the agreeable mental stimulant of thinking dan- gerously. In every University it furnished a new chair, a new philosophy, a new field of discussion. The ideal of a fatalistic German culture became the fashionable argu- ment of the day. To apply the brute prin- ciples of an enlightened and scientifically organized Mediaevalism was a conception inherently Germanic both in scope and grandeur of view, as in practice it seemed all the more realizable the deeper the corroding tenets of humanitarianism sank into and enervated the other nations of Europe less young and virile with hope. Thus the purely military policy of the Kaiser became to the MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 69 professors an anthropological theory of race and numbers, of mass superiority and con- centration trained in the service of destiny a sort of scientifically organized Volker- wanderung. And this aspect of the question exercised the Gelehrten, or learned men of Germany, neither more nor less than notions of world-peace and disarmament provide theorists of the opposite school with mental pabulum and initiative. Look where he would, the German saw around him the all- present fact of German strength, German materialism, German success, achieved because as a nation they had at last realized the meaning of the Great Elector's words when he bade them " remember to be Germans." The man who found Marx too fatalistic to be scientific discovered in Treitschke a gospel even more romantic and idealistic. If he was religious, he worshipped the Kaiser ; if cynical, he read Nietzsche ; if open-minded, he heard in Wagner the trumpet blare of German arms and victory ; if purely scientific, he sat in his study and wondered ; if philosophical, he wrote an anti-criticism of another professor's theory of 70 THE KAISER'S WAR " pragmatic " colonization ; if nothing much anyway, he wore a Kaiser-binde, or moustache- strap, and waxed up his manhood in the likeness of the Kaiser. Meanwhile, the soldiers prepared for their " day.' 1 And the Father Rhine flowed onwards to his mouth in alien lands. And the Crown Prince said openly : " What is the use of this great army if it is not to be employed ? " to which the women and young Germany vociferated Amen. Philosophically, it is thus only another theory that has gone wrong in the world, gone wrong because it left out of account the moral forces of mankind, and so the beliefs, and the powers behind those beliefs, of other peoples. The attempt to impose a resuscitated, up-to-date Mediaevalism upon Europe is in reality only the modern form of the Crusading spirit, for William II of Germany looks upon himself as surely in- spired by God, as did Richard Coeur de Lion. Those who think that this will be the last European war will be wise to bear in mind the Crusading aspect which, in the eyes of Germans, is its justification. I MATERIALISTIC HISTORY 71 cannot believe it will be the last Crusade in the world, whether of a culture, a philo- sophy, or a religion. To the Germans, we must remember, victory meant all three. The conquest of Western Europe was to be parenthetically the vindication of the higher Germanic thought in the interests of humanity, first as the prelude to the destruction of British sea-power and the " lower " Anglo- Saxon ideal, and so upwards to the super- structure of Teutonic civilization. Nor should we forget that its failure for fail it will is not due to anything necessarily wrong in the theory, but solely because in its mad- ness under the direction of a vainglorious Absolutism it had lost all practical sense of proportion and military potentiality and, becoming reckless and over-confident, so outreached and defeated itself. " Those whom the gods love go mad." That is all. In the Kaiser's war system of culture we have only another proof how dangerous it is when little men, vested with great powers, play with the thoughts and ideals of great minds and fashion them after their own ends. We may say this at any rate. If the Germans 72 THE KAISER'S WAR have made the greatest physical effort of national expression recorded in history, they will also have welded together in one com- mon truth and usefulness the spirit and idealism of Man. Ill THE KAISER'S FAILURES WHEN Oscar Wilde wrote that "nothing succeeds like excess,'* he was certainly not thinking of Germany, yet no phrase can better describe the Kaiser's attitude since he came to the throne, or that of his people. Till the war of 1870, the Germans regarded themselves as so many tribes Bavarians, Swabians, Franks, Saxons, Frisians. Goethe was the pure cosmopolitan. Even after the period of " storm and stress," Fichte's appeal to Germans to rid themselves of "tribal particularism " roused no feeling of nationality, which was called into being by Bismarck's policy of blood and iron executed with such signal success by the German Armies. From the hour of the proclamation of Empire at Versailles, the Germans began to " re- write " 73 74 THE KAISER'S WAR history. Spreading from one success to another, Germany (men wrote) woke up "to win to her destiny." Everything seemed to go right, to prosper, to develop. The decade 1890 to 1900 was the most intoxicating era of success ever achieved by any people in the Old World. The young Emperor seemed to be a ''chosen" leader and creator of nations. Always prone to mystical exaggera- tion, the Germans began to search for a new definition of the word Success, and found it in the Wagnerian cult of mythology and heroics the theory of stature, size, force, and quantity leading to the All-Germanic doctrine of civilization, the expression of which lay in the arrogance and giddiness of excess. At one time all the Germans were to be " reclaimed," in America and elsewhere. The colonization of Brazil became a serious tenet of German policy, and with it all the Low German peoples were to be united, at first economically, then politically in which com- prehensive scheme of aggrandizement the Flemish of Belgium, the Dutch, the Danes, and Germans of Switzerland were to be included together with the Mouth of the THE KAISER'S FAILURES 75 Rhine the Tiber of New Germany and, lastly, the Mouth of the Danube on the way (through the German-protected Mohammedan- ism of Turkey) to the strategic lines of India. .It was here that the German Emperor caught, so to speak, the ear of his subjects. Bismarck and Treitschke had both stopped at the seas. The theory of "satiety," which was the governing principle of Bismarckian statecraft the idea that Germany in her position of encasement in the centre of Europe could never successfully become a Great Sea Power was immediately pro- claimed to be anachronistic, incompatible with the new political science which had come to regard the reclamation of Germans in foreign parts as the right of integral Pan-Germany. In the year 1896, the Kaiser gave formal expression to the new policy which has ever since been the corner-stone of the Imperial design. ' 'Out of the German Empire a World- Empire has arisen. Everywhere, in all parts of the earth, thousands of our countrymen dwell. German riches, German knowledge, 76 THE KAISER'S WAR German activity all make their way across the oceans. The value of German possessions in the seas amounts to many thousands of millions. Gentlemen, the serious duty devolves on you to help me to link this Greater German Empire close to the home country by helping me, in complete unity, to fulfil my duty also towards the Germans in all these foreign parts." Thus was the policy of reclaiming Deutschtum propounded. At the time it created a prodigious sensation throughout Germany. It was recognized as the new programme of Imperial Government. And the first political act of the Kaiser in assertion of his views was the celebrated telegram, in 1897, to President Kruger. 1 Immediately, as the result of the Emperor's initiative, intellectual Germany set to work. It being the object to educate German opinion, to rouse the old Philistinism of provincial Germany into /jffitfingT^conscious- ness, a new political terminology arose in which such expressions as " the manure of 1 This telegram was drawn up as a deliberate manifesto of German policy, as Sir Valentine Chirol has explained. THE KAISER'S FAILURES 77 German culture," " the dynamics of World- Power," " the all mission of United Germany," " the anthropological concep- tion of history," and so on, figured as popular head-points, all political writings being couched in the dithyrambic style which seemed best fitting for so victorious and God- like a people. The Kaiser set himself to prove that he was the best orator, the best newspaper correspondent, the best traveller, the most brilliant personality in Europe. The idea of " mass power " rapidly penetrated into every form of German expression. The " historic claim " of Germanism appeared in the huge statuary with which the Emperor inundated Berlin ; in the colossal emblem to Bismarck placed in front of the tower of Victory ; in a bewildering shower of professorial pamphlets scattered broadcast over the land ; in a deliberate policy of excess ; in the cult of brute force, materialism, display, and vulgarity ; and when it became known that it was the Emperor's wish to make Berlin the gayest and most " vicious " city in Europe, Germans felt indeed that their young Emperor was a "fair knock-out." 78 THE KAISER'S WAR Let me relate an example of the Emperor's policy of educating Germany. At one time the Kaiser thought he would make a " Rotten Row " of his Avenue of Victory, and establish a " five-o'clock parade " of the kind we are accustomed to " after church" on Sundays round the statue of Achilles. Police orders were given that between 4 and 6 p.m. there would be a cortege of elegant vehicles, and that only " gentlemen in silk hats " were ex- pected. The result was comic and dangerous in the extreme. The Berliner, always ready for a new sight, appeared in tens of thousands all the charwomen, the riff-raff of the town, the idlers, the lower middle-classes with their wives and families, in such masses that the couple of hundreds of police detailed off to guard the " gentleman's parade " found them- selves mobbed and powerless, pushed into the flower-beds, knocked against the gleaming statues of the Electors which adorn the two sides of the Avenue, unable to stem the mob of onlookers, not one of whom ever possessed a topper, not one of whom understood this new interpretation of Germanic culture, and not a few of whom issued from the melde which THE KAISER'S FAILURES 79 ensued with sore heads and bloody noses. As a newspaper man, I was present. When I emerged, my silk hat was smashed in ; my purse had been stolen ; I had a nasty bruise on the forehead ; I had to fight my way out of the fray and narrowly escaped receiving a cut from a policeman's sabre. For a week the Emperor tried the experiment of "gentle- manizing " Berlin, and then he gave it up. It was one of his many petty failures. The Berlin policeman thought he ought to arrest any man not appearing in a silk hat ; the Berlin public thought otherwise. So ended one of the strangest of the Emperor's numerous fits of political education, and Berlin had a joke the merrier. All this was part of the education movement of Germany. The Kaiser went down to the Charlottenburg School and lectured to the engineer students of Young Germany on the centre-point of a ship's equilibrium. Professors instructed their students in the art of keel- hauling civilization. " Remember you are a German " : these words of the Great Elector were dinned into the heads of the German schoolboys as the morning and evening prayer 8o THE KAISER'S WAR of salvation. The most unpopular thing the Kaiser ever did was when he presented the Order of the Black Eagle to Lord Roberts ; the most popular moment of his life was when a German warship held up one of our mail-boats off Aden. Even the Wilhelm- strasse could not conceal its delight on that occasion. It was the German Navy's first justification, and as such was hailed with delirium. Not long after the " Rotten Row " idea the Kaiser thought he would establish a " gentle- man's " opera-house, so orders were given that in all the better seats the men were to appear " in Frack und Weisser Binde" or evening dress, and all the ladies in d'ecollette. Again as a pressman I went. Nor shall I ever forget the result. When the hour came, copious indeed were some of the openings, but Berlin does not dress for music, and half the ladies had no low-cut evening gowns, and some of them not low enough, while others explained that they were too elderly to appear with " low necks," and others, again, protested that they had not had time to order them. The scene which followed baffles description. THE KAISER'S FAILURES 81 " But I am too old ; I cannot show my wrinkles." " No matter, madam, orders have to be carried out. Here is a pair of scissors," and, so saying, the obliging official pulled out an enormous pair for the operation. " Oh, this is too dreadful! Cut my lace! Show my neck ! Never ! " Shriek followed shriek, struggle followed struggle, but the victims heard the overture, and, to be sure, there was no redress. " Let me help you, madam. See, it is quite easy." Snip went the scissors, off came the lace ; snip went the scissors again, now another piece fell off; snip, snip, fore and aft. The old lady covered up her eyes, from which tears began to flow. " Why, it's a real Parisian frock! Look at yourself, madam ! " The old lady turned to the mirror. What a transformation ! The dreaded salt-cellars were showing; the neck she had never bared to a stranger stood out white against a long V-shaped opening. She felt positively ashamed. She had never shown herself so 6 82 THE KAISER'S WAR since her wedding. And as she stared at herself in the glass, another attendant tucked in the odd bits, smoothed, arranged, and finally, giving her a pat, opened the side door. Setting her teeth, the old lady, crimson with shame, marched in, like a Grenadier going to the front. All round the corridors similar scenes were enacted. The younger women took it in fairly good part. Was it not their Kaiser's wish ? Of course. Berlin was becoming such a " Weltstadt," propriety had to be sacrificed. Snip, snap! " Oh, look at my neck ! " " It's not bad, after all." " What will Hugo say when he sees me so so low?" So the giggling, the protestations, the tears, the Imperial tailory went on. Bare necks, bare bosoms, bare backs, bare shoulders appeared like magic. Round the buxom girls the attendants flocked and cut like demons, snip, snip, in the Kaiser's name. Soon the corridors looked like the cutting- out room of a big clothing establishment. It was wonderful to see the changes effected, the ease with which low necks were fashioned, the adroitness of fingers pulling, tucking in, THE KAISER'S FAILURES 83 rolling up, pinning down. No need for dress- maids ; the German officials performed their office like dragoons* In half an hour all gowns were snipped out and down to the Imperial load-line. The doors were closed. Up went the curtain. The attendants ap- peared with brooms and dust-pans. Long before the interval all traces of the sartorial struggle had disappeared. And I managed to meet the charming lady whose dress I had helped to accommodate, and took her out to supper. So Germanism was made. So the Kaiser ruled "with God." So All Germany became the gospel of the people, with might for right and country. None the less, the Opera House policy failed, and in a short time Germans went to the Opera in their day clothes again, just as they refused to wear the "Cylinder" or top- hat. And now let us see politically what the Imperial course of " excess " led to, what real successes it achieved, what Germany has done since Bismarck left the helm of State to deserve the paeans usually accorded to her. 84 THE KAISER'S WAR Here is a brief summary of Germany's chief failures, all of which are incontestable. It may be dated from the telegram to President Kruger, which alienated British sympathies and first drew our attention towards the personality of the Emperor. Next there was the German blundering over the Spanish-American war in 1898. The question touched the Pan-German idea of reclaiming Deutschtum ; it was treated accord- ingly. There was the incident with Admiral Dewey over Samoa, which led to such un- pleasantness that Prince Henry was dis- patched with an olive-branch to the United States, since when the Kaiser, realizing that America was more powerful than he had thought, started on his pro-American cam- paign of gush and lip-service, a classic example of which he has recently given to the world in his historic confession that his heart " bleeds for Louvain." Slowly, German professors began to understand the meaning of the Monroe doctrine. South America, they saw, could not be turned into a " particulate " colony of Germany. The traditional German policy of " indemnities " gradually lost its THE KAISER'S FAILURES 85 point so far as America was concerned. Even Brazil had to be wiped off the list of potentialities. The Emperor's rude awakening from his idea of an American-Germany caused him " to switch off" in the direction of flattery, and this course he has kept to ever since, the object being to drive a wedge in between the English and German elements in the States ; which seemed to be the only way to counteract the " confounded sentiments of old Monroe.' 1 Still there was what, at the time, was called the Venezuelan imbroglio, when Pan-Ger- manism became very busy. The fussy diffi- culties made by the German Government in agreeing to co-operation with England against Castro's forts was not relished by America. The reverberation of German un- pleasantness over the Spanish war came back from America across the waters. Germans were taught that it was an expensive luxury to meddle in other nations' affairs, and Germany learnt her first Imperial lesson. It proved to the world that America was not in the least afraid of Potsdam. Very plainly, German policy had failed. There is no reason to recapitulate Germany's 86 THE KAISER'S WAR attitude towards us during the Boer war. The point to remember is Prince Bulow's rough rejection of Mr. Chamberlain's outstretched hand in deference to the Anglophobic opinion rampant in Germany a mistake this, which Germans have bitter cause now to regret. Prince Billow acted with the foolish arrogance of a Pan-German professor. The reason he gave out was that Germany was in no mood for Englanderei, and, moreover, had no need of it ; and there can be no doubt that this attitude was dictated by the widespread ideas current in Germany at the time that England was in her decline, and must gradually give way before the mass numbers of more vital Continental countries with their conscriptionist armies and " superior " military science. Then came the Manchurian war, and again the Kaiser failed. First of all, he never be- lieved in war ; secondly, all German military opinion took it for granted that Russia would " wipe out " Japan from the East. She backed Russia, and with the Russian defeat the whole fabric of German Far Eastern policy the policy which, at one time, owing to Germany's seizure of Kiao-chau, threatened to lead to the THE KAISER'S FAILURES 87 general partition of China fell headlong to the ground. She had alienated Japan, who, as the ally of England, policed Far Eastern waters. Thus the German Chinese posses- sions fizzled out in the isolation of a fort which could not even be protected seriously from the seas. The great Waldersee boom, the childish exultations of Germany over the picture repre- senting " Germans to the Front " at the time of the Boxer revolution, had yielded nothing more substantial than a defenceless oasis and the strategically worthless port of Tsintau, shutting out all her dreams of Far Eastern territorial expansion, obliterating the German vista of the Russo-German conquest of China, in which Germany naturally was to take French Cochin-China, and even excluding the possi- bility of international trouble there, ever the axiom of Bismarckian policy. The next move was Morocco, and once more Germany failed, counting on the legendary "perfidy" of Albion, who, instead of leaving the French in the lurch, actually supported the legitimate rights of France. By treating the young King of Spain with contempt the Kaiser turned Spain into an enemy. At Algeciras 88 THE KAISER'S WAR she found Italy coquetting with France ; she began to realize the meaning of the " wooden leg" of the Triple Alliance. Austria, at the time, was distinctly "weak." Germany had failed. Thus in the two great convulsions of the decade, 1898-1908 the Boer war and the struggle for supremacy in the East convul- sions which were bound to alter the balance of power in Europe and in the Far East, and so bound to affect German interests, German diplomacy failed, and the result shook her whole initiative and political prestige. Militarily, too, she has failed in her military judgment of the Boer war, in her military judg- ment of Russia's war with Japan. Thinking that English opinion had ceased to count in military matters, Germany resolutely opposed the big ship policy, with the result that almost as soon as the Kiel Canal was completed, she had to spend enormous sums in widening and deepening it. In Europe her policy, since 1908, has con- sisted in defeat after defeat. The Bagdad Railway policy terminated abruptly in the rails lying on the desert ; her plans for colonizing Asia Minor, for Germanizing the tract of the THE KAISER'S FAILURES 89 Anatolian Railways scheme, refertilizing Meso- potamia, peopling Chaldea, establishing corn granaries in Syria and Babylonia, and material- izing Moltke's dream of German dominion in Turkey all these plans fell through because Turkey was beaten, because once more German military opinion was completely wrong about the Turkish power of resistance, which formed the basis of the Emperor's policy of champion- ing Mohammedanism and pandering to Hami- dian intrigue. Up to the recent Balkan war we may sum up Germany's cardinal blunders thus. She refused England's offer of friendship, because she never believed in the possibility of an Anglo-French friendship so long as Egypt remained a British possession. She con- sistently misjudged the diplomatic game because she invariably misjudged the military powers of the nations involved, and thus found herself cooped up in the centre of Europe, the suspect Power in Europe. That was her position down to the eve of the second Balkan war, which, ending in the rise of a Great Slavonic interest at the foot of Germany, placed Germany before the arbitra- 90 THE KAISER'S WAR ment of war. She had failed in her estimate of that war also. It was always regarded as certain that Bulgaria would win, that Bulgaria could thus easily be made amenable to German shrapnel cajolements, and so take the buffer position of ejected Turkey. The whole German-Austrian policy had been planned with this alternative to Turkey in view. The Bosnian coup was a German affair. Austria's shameless bullying of Servia has been a German affair, with the object chiefly to stiffen the German influence in the Austro- Hungarian Empire and so strengthen the Alliance ; to help Austria, as it were, to surmount the growing ethnic troubles of Germany's " other arm " towards the consum- mation of which the troubled relations between Austria and Italy contributed in no small measure. In every direction, from the date of the Emperor's appearance in World Politics with his congratulatory telegram to President Kruger, German policy has failed, as in every instance her role has been that of the mischief- maker. Her last failure the underrating of the Russian Armies as the result of the THE KAISER'S FAILURES 91 Manchurian war is the central fact of the present military situation, and need not be referred to. Yet in no instance can any positive achievement on the part of the Kaiser be established. From 1897 to I 9 I 4 *he only live things that remain are the blasts of German Grossthun politics, big words followed by colossal blunders. We may cite, among others, " the Admiral of the West," the " Mailed Fist," the Kaiser's admonition to his troops to "deport themselves like the Huns," " Civis Germanus sum," Prince Billow's " granite" speech in answer to Mr. Chamberlain, the Waldersee farce in China, the Emperor's entry into Palestine, his speech at Tangier, the German war panic in 1907, when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman sug- gested general disarmament, the war crises over Morocco, the talk about the colonization of Brazil, of the Euphrates, of Asia Minor a record of perpetual interference, aggression, and diplomatic subterfuge which all ended in German humiliation. With the exception of Togoland, not a German colony ever paid a penny. For fifteen years the Kaiser has sat in Potsdam, like a black panther gnawing at 92 THE KAISER'S WAR his tail, trying to set Europe by the ears, bullying France, deceiving England, goading on the Austrians to push down southwards, now fawning upon Russia, now insolently repelling her, boasting, talking, and disturbing and one by one the peoples have turned from him. Germany's last act of disturbance just before the war was the news that Krupps had ac- quired an interest in the port of Rotterdam, an intrigue which has not yet been explained. No doubt it was of a piece with the policy of the Mannesmann Brothers at Tangier in connection with the Mole ; in keeping with the Agadir flutter and the German aim generally, which consists in keeping a German finger in other men's affairs. Turning to the war, the Kaiser's failures, political and military, are so numerous as to be comic. 1. He understood that Russia was not disposed to fight. 2. He believed that Belgium would not oppose the march of the German armies through Belgium would not dare to. 3. He thought that civil war would THE KAISER'S FAILURES 93 break out in England the moment Ulster saw England occupied with international complications. 4. He thought the Liberals would be able to prevent Great Britain participating in the war on the side of France. 5. He thought Sir E. Grey would regard the infraction of Belgian neutrality as a " deplorable diplomatic incident" but not as a casus belli. 6. He thought that Italy would be obliged to " come in " on the German side. 7. He expected to induce Turkey 1 to create diversions threatening Egypt. 8. He anticipated Servians war with Austria would automatically lead Bulgaria to try for " her revenge." 9. He expected the Poles to rise up in rebellion against Tsardom. 10. He counted on Dutch benevolent neutrality. 11. He counted on serious trouble in America owing to the German and Irish interest, which would strain the relations between Britain and the States. 1 Successful. 94 THE KAISER'S WAR 12. He expected trouble in India. 13. He expected if England was drawn in, that the Boers l would demand their independence. 14. He reckoned upon grave tension between America and Japan. 15. He thought at the last moment he could terrify or bribe Great Britain into a position of neutrality. 1 6. He thought that Russia would be paralysed as the result of revolution timed to break out this autumn. 17. He thought both the French and English had become " soft," and so little disposed to put up much of a fight. 1 8. He thought it not unlikely that Japan and China would take the oppor- tunity to attack Russia. 19. He thought the mere idea of German mobilization would strike such terror in the modern capitalist world that no Statesman would venture to face an European war. 20. He thought that English credit would be shattered. 1 Partially successful. THE KAISER'S FAILURES 95 21. He thought that God would favour German arms. 22. He thought that neither France nor Russia nor England were prepared for war. So much for the political side, in the main calculation of which the Kaiser and his advisers were wrong. Let us look at the military aspect. 1. The Kaiser counted on military terror to overawe Belgium, and so permit the German armies to enter France within a week of the declaration of war. 2. He thought, since Mukden, that the Russian armies were worthless against German troops. 3. He counted on the traditional six weeks' mobilization muddle of the Russian armies. 4. His military estimate of the Russian full mobilization, allowed the Germans two clear months to pulverize France before returning to meet the Russians. 5. He regarded Russian strategy, 96 THE KAISER'S WAR tactics, and officers' leadership as alto- gether inefficient. 6. He thought the German Armies, penetrating through Belgium, would bring about the first decision within eight days, leading to general de- moralization before the slower French mobilization could be effected. 7. He counted on the Crown Prince's Army breaking through the French lines in the centre and so rolling up the French into a second Sedan, which would leave the way straight open to Paris. 8. He was told the Germans would be in Paris in seven weeks. 9. He counted on an immediate in- demnity, as the result of the capture of Paris, of a couple of hundred thou- sand pounds. 10. He thought England would never venture to send over an Expeditionary Force until the German Navy had been destroyed. n. He thought that such an Expedi- tionary Army would not matter in any case, being composed of "mercenaries." THE KAISER'S FAILURES 97 12. He thought the Austrians would push right through Servia. 13. He counted on the Hungarians holding the Carpathians, and the Austrian Armies the Eastern frontiers for quite three months until the German troops could return from Paris to bring about the necessary decisions. 14. He expected his submarines and torpedoes to wear down the British Navy till the sporting chance for the main fleet became a reality. 15. He utterly despised British general- ship and the British military powers (vide his order to crush " England's con- temptible little Army"). 1 6. He despised French generalship and the French soldier. 17. He thought the German individual soldier was worth any two of the Allies, and that the German command would prove Napoleonic in its rapid and astonishing superiority. 18. He thought the Krupp artillery 1 almost unfairly superior to any other in existence. 1 It is very good. 7 98 THE KAISER'S WAR 19. He thought the German war system of motor-cars, cavalry raids, spies, airships, bomb-throwing, and terrorization would upset all the French plans and throw their armies into panic. 20. He thought the British Navy would lose about a Dreadnought a day through mines. 21. He thought the Zeppelins would set London on fire, using Ostend and Antwerp as bases. 22. He thought the German Armies irresistible, if only because a Moltke led them. Let us stop there. Let us also remember this. If the main German military calcula- tions went wrong, it was due to the heroic defence of Liege, which held up the whole German advance for two weeks ; thus allow- ing the French mobilization to complete, allowing England to send over her Expedi- tionary Force, allowing Russia to get in an attack, and so upsetting irrevocably the entire German campaign. But for Belgium, the Germans might have achieved their end and THE KAISER'S FAILURES 99 pulverized the French. As it is, the war was lost to Germany the hour that Belgium rejected Germany's ultimatum. Yet more twaddle has been written about the Kaiser than of any Sovereign since Napoleon. No man living ever had greater opportunities, finer material to etch upon, greater freedom, and greater responsibilities. With the smallest amount of political and worldly astuteness he could have placated France, made friends with England, until his Navy was really able to sail out into the open and meet us, and very likely have created the larger Germany. That he failed is due simply to his inherent littleness and to his overpowering vanity. In reality, he is the creature of his age the age of advertisement, false values, Press sensation, talk, and shallow- ness. Everything he touched he vulgarized, like the no^weau riche of the time. He has turned Berlin into a sink of debauchery and plastered the city over with crude and vulgar statuary. The only thing he gave to German manhood is the Imperial moustache and " Kaiser champagne." He has prostituted the seats of German learning ioo THE KAISER'S WAR into schoolrooms of Imperial blather, un- focussed the whole lens of public sanity and usefulness, stifled and held down all that was great and good in the German conscience. Under his shadow not a noble German thought has been born, not a great man has appeared. Like a mastodonic Showman, he has poured out his banal messages upon the stage of an astonished Europe and got a newspaper " par " wherever he looked. That the Germans took him seriously will assuredly be one of the mysteries of civilization ; that he took himself seriously is Germany's un- doing. As he swept away in his vainglorious reign all the old German virtues, so he has gone on stumbling from one blunder to another, the Cockatoo War Lord of Europe. And now the Nemesis that overtakes finally all evil-doers awaits him. Not till he is struck down will the error and falsity that he has set up be removed, and the great German people return to their senses. IV INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY HAVING lived in Germany and in German countries for ten years, I should like to say a few words about the brutality of the " civilized Hun" at war, as I had occasion to notice it only too frequently in times of peace. Let me say at once that I have not the smallest wish to pander to incendiary feeling ; on the contrary, war is war and not a game, nor am I in the least a sentimentalist as regards human life, which, I hold, we moderns value too highly. In every war accusations and counter-accusations of cruelty and malpractices arise, often baseless but only too often justified, and as there are always alarmists, busy-bodies, and sentimen- talists chronically anxious to write to the Press, it is not unnatural that the usual crop 102 THE KAISER'S WAR of thargss fof dum-dum bullets, of women ravished, of old men shot, etc., should appear, with ''authentic " proofs and photographs which leave no vestige of doubt. I have seen what soldiers call a "niggers' scrap" myself, and I know that war is unrecordably brutal, bestial in its incidence upon all con- cerned, and I do not see how it can be helped. It is because I am so conscious of this that I would appeal for calm judgment. I have seen the Cossacks beat men's heads open in the streets. We all heard something of the brutalities of the Allies in the Boxer campaign. Let us remember that the greatest atrocities of modern times were perpetrated by the Belgians in the Congo, and that it was an Englishman, and England, who exposed them. I saw the French behaviour at Casablanca (no prisoners were taken there). Only the other day we heard of the Italian massacre of Arabs in Tripoli. I repeat, war is a disgusting business. It cannot be waged humanely. In modern conditions it is so awful that soldiers never can be induced to speak about it. The shame, however, attaching to such INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 103 acts of vandalism as the destruction of Louvain, Reims, and other towns is another matter. They are facts. They constitute an unnecessary brutality, the psychology of which is worth inquiring into. And that is the aspect of the German method of warfare I would call attention to. In every army there are " brutes." In all wars there are indi- vidual acts of cruelty. These things are in- evitable. They are incidental to mankind. But the German war system is different. The idea of "striking terror" into the non- combatants of an invaded country is an article of the military regulations. It is recognized as a weapon of the German military science, and, as such, was proclaimed to the world by the Kaiser when he exhorted his soldiers to " deport themselves like the Huns " in China, and to " gain the reputation of Attila." That is the point. It is the spirit of German militarism, an idea which, through the Army, has permeated into all grades of German civil life. Now the individual German is not cruel in the sense that the Spaniards, for example, are cruel a cruelty due very largely to the 104 THE KAISER'S WAR Catholic teaching that animals have no " souls" (whatever a soul may mean); for the German is fond of pet animals, and cruelty for the sake of cruelty is not a German characteristic. Brutality, on the other hand, is ; and the distinction is marked, since cruelty may be defined as a passion, whereas brutality is rather a method. The Spaniard, for instance, loves to see a bull's horns disembowel a horse because of the blood thrill the spectacle affords him, nor has the Catholic Church ever raised its voice to teach him better. That kind of fiendish contemplation of suffering is condemned by Germans, who, passively, are not naturally cruel, any more than we are. Actively, how- ever, the case is different, and here, at once, method intervenes. A German who would refuse to attend a bull-fight, a cock-fight, or any spectacle of deliberate cruelty, would think nothing of cutting his horse's back into bleeding weals if the animal jibbed or shied or threw him, his answer being, if you ques- tioned him, that here he was an active agent justified in imposing his will in accordance with the German spirit of force dominion INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 105 raised by the " religious right of war" into a national State philosophy. One may put it in this way. The Spaniard is cruel as a passive agent, the German is brutal as an active agent. I have heard Germans com- plain bitterly of pigeon-shooting at Monte Carlo, which is a passive sport in the sense that there is no opposition, but the same Germans have emphatically justified to me the right of soldiers to shoot at sight all suspected of Franctirage, and to destroy any village or town where civilian acts of aggres- sion had been established, on the ground that any such hostility on the part of non- combatants constituted action, which, as such, should justifiably be met by action or, in plain words, by retributive measures of the most terrorizing kind. It is an attitude which, at any rate, possesses logic, which is clearly understood in Germany, which indeed has come to be an axiom of Germanic civilization and is reflected in all classes of German life. The Kaiser has so frequently given vent to this idea in his numerous exhortations to his people that the Germans may be pardoned 106 THE KAISER'S WAR if, taking their cue from above, they have only too successfully educated themselves up to the Army standard of " ruthless attainment of the end in object " a principle which finds expression throughout all Germany in the phrase "sick imponieren" (to assert oneself) regardless of means or cost. This attitude has a terminology of its own. " Fixieren" to fix a man with the eyes, is a recognized German practice, and has been the sole cause of many a fatal duel. In University corps circles, it is the established way of getting up a challenge, the man who refuses to send round his card to another fellow who has " fixed " him being ostracized as a coward ; and as duelling is the heart's desire of every "corps student," and it is not always easy to find a justifiable motive for challenging any particular man, the simple way of staring at him in a cafe or restaurant has thus become the codicized manner of achieving one's " twenty minutes' slash " at a fellow who otherwise may be the best of comrades. Fighting at the Universities is an associate part of the national education. The fights are not the results of quarrels (though they INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 107 may be) ; they are mostly purely arbitrary -friendly battles, like the old idea of " winning one's spurs," and the scars on a man's face in after life are the signature ol his social status. 1 From the Army downwards into the prole- tarian workshop there has come another German practice, what drill-sergeants term "rolling the eyes." Absurd as it may appear, this rolling the eyes is a recognized German sign of temper, the prelude to disciplinary chastisement. The sergeants use it to awe and hold in the men. Thus if a private, struck on the face by a corporal for having a button off his coat, shows resentment by rolling his eyes, he is liable to further correction, as the corporal would be if he rolled his eyes at a sergeant, and the sergeant would be if he rolled his eyes at a lieutenant, or a workman would be for rolling his eyes at a foreman, or a waiter for rolling his eyes at a head waiter. All this, 1 These duels are admittedly maintained to keep alive the fighting spirit, the bravura of brutality. Any one who has ever seen a Mensur or fight must have been struck with the brutishness of the proceedings, the onlookers all swilling beer and the floor as bloody as the shambles on killing days. io8 THE KAISER'S WAR of course, comes from the Army. It is the civilian's way of showing what a soldier boy he is. It is the idea of authority enforcing the respect of " implicit obedience/' and it goes right down into the homes of the people. With this there is the forefinger sign, the most common gesture of modern Germany. Symbol of punitive discipline, used as a menace and a warning, it is the sergeant's first admoni- tion. The recruit, say, fails at the parallel bars. Amid a volley of oaths the sergeant shakes his forefinger at him. He means " take care." " If you do it again it will go hard with you." The next step would be the rolling of the dread man's eyes. Petty as such a detail may appear, in reality it is interpretative of the modern German attitude and of much that is now astonishing and revolting the world. All over Germany mothers shake their fore- fingers at their children. All over Germany men shake their forefingers at those beneath them. It is the national gesture, like the Frenchman's shrug of the shoulders, and means just the opposite. " We Germans fear God and otherwise nothing," was one of Bismarck's historic phrases. The shaking of the forefinger INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 109 is its expression. It represents the civic counterpart of the military doctrine of " striking terror," whence it derives. In a word, it is the justification of the bully, the social gesture of the strong man who dominates by force and intimidation. 1 This doctrine of force and terrorization is held not only by the Army, but by all classes in the German Empire. Setting up, as it does, implacable degrees and grades of authority, it naturally leads to its conditional antithesis servile docility with all the evil tendencies and characteristics which inevitably flow from a state of slavery, not the least vile of which is the creation of a licensed brutality towards those whom in turn the bullied feel they may safely bully. The result of this military spirit is the glorification of the martinet. As in the Army the idea of camaraderie between officers and men is quite foreign to the military idea, so in civil life the system of command and bullying, of authority and obedience, obtains to a degree 1 No word is oftener heard in Germany than Beleidigen (to insult). Every washerwoman has her "suit" in the Law Courts. Libel actions are a national institution, the result of envy. no THE KAISER'S WAR unknown and unthinkable in any other country in Europe. If a German wants the waiter, he calls out, " Herr Oder" (Mr. Head Waiter), or the waiter, feeling himself insulted, refuses to come and rolls his eyes. Analysed, the ex- planation is that the simple appellation, waiter, does not convey sufficient respect. The man wants his dignity. Call him " Mr. Head," and he beams, and the reason is that his German vanity has been satisfied. And this curious vanity, derived straight from the military spirit of " enforcing respect," is characteristic of all classes. If you want to please a German, you address him as Von when you know he is a plebeian. You call a youth an " assessor," when you are perfectly aware he has not yet passed his examinations ; in a word, the man who wishes to curry favour always goes one better on the title (socially invariably used), just as a street urchin touting for a copper in London shuts a "gent's" cab-door and apos- trophizes him as "Captain." The singular thing about this childish vanity is that all Germans are perfectly aware of the fraud of flinging titles at people, of calling a man a " Doctor," say, who is known to be a INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY in commercial traveller, and yet it is universally practised ; in fact, the habit is so common that if you want to get anything out of a German, by far the quickest and most practical way is to introduce into the conversation such a phrase as " My dear Count." In one sense it represents the other side of the German forefinger, because it illustrates the very curious effects of their impositional system of respect, each man endeavouring either to enforce or tender it, a social condition thus leading to perpetual confusion and uncertainty, due to the danger of giving offence and the penalties attaching thereto, out of which probably the habit has grown of always going one better to avoid unpleasantness. These military idiosyncrasies, however droll they may appear superficially, are none the less characteristic of the German spirit of life based on entirely erroneous conclusions of Neitzsche's Superman conceived quintessen- tially as an intellectual. When Nietzsche wrote, " Be hard, my friends/' he meant that a man was to be hard on himself, not in the least what the gregarious " blond beast" (as he called his fellow-countrymen) interprets 112 THE KAISER'S WAR as the German Zeitgeist, which in its modern military garb has led to a social system of formality, lick-spittle, bullying, and brutality inconceivable to any one who has not lived in Germany and studied the system at work. For an Englishman to understand the nature of this code, he must try to conceive of a nation of sixty odd million schoolboys acting, as schoolboys do, on strict and traditional lines of what is called " form." Let him recall his old House, and he will remember that if the big boys happened to be industrious, the whole House would be industrious too ; and if they happened to be " raggers," why, the whole House would rag likewise. So it is with Germany, only the big boys there are the Kaiser and his Army. Now the drill watchwords in the Army are three: (i) Implicit obedience; (2) ruth- less carrying out of orders ; (3) terror. Right through Germany these principles are acted up to with a brutality only rivalled in the ferocious times of Peter the Great. Every year men kill themselves or die of the treat- ment received in the Army ; and though things got somewhat better recently owing to INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 113 the powerful agitation of the Socialists, not- ably of Bebel, who never tired of showing up the scandals and denouncing militarism, the fact is admitted by Germans that the brutality of the Army non-com, is excusable only by its results. I am not going into that question here ; the facts are notorious. The note- worthy point about this brutality is that it is condoned and justified as a necessary evil of the system. It has led not only to an extraordinary brutality of manner and attitude among the people, but to positive ferocity. Anything more sickening than the brutality with which horses are treated in Germany it would be difficult to imagine. In the Army horses are not " ridden in," they are flogged in. I have seen refractory horses flogged by German dragoons with heavy thongs till the beasts, who were tied up, shrieked. When I subsequently complained to an officer of the regiment to which the men belonged (whom I happened to know), he smiled at me con- descendingly. " We Germans don't mince matters," he explained. " Horses have to be licked into shape. The sooner they learn 8 114 THE KAISER'S WAR what is wanted of them, the better for them " ; and he added, "We don't want circus horses in our Army, like you English." That was all " draufschlagen " (impose yourself by force). The horses were refractory beat them, beat them till they bled with sores ; perhaps next time they would be more amen- able. The military equestrian method goes right through Germany. If a horse stumbles, the driver rolls his eyes, gathers up the reins, and beats until he is out of breath ; nor would any one in the street venture to protest. I have had many rows, even combats, with Germans on this score. Here is a scene, a common sight all over the Fatherland. Hav- ing unloaded the sand from his cart where a house was being built, the driver was merci- lessly flogging his two horses to extricate the vehicle, all four wheels of which were thickly embedded in sand carelessly left in front of them. As I watched, another man came up with another whip, and the two men proceeded to slash at the beasts across the head and under the belly, like maniacs. When, incensed at this brutality, I pushed one INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 115 of the men away, other labourers came up and threatened me with hods and pick-axes, and seeing an officer I ran across to him to beseech his intervention. He politely came, looked at the wheels, looked at the horses trembling and snorting with fear, and then said, in the staccato tones affected by his caste, " Animals not strong enough." Imme- diately the shouting, the thrashing, and the frantic efforts of the horses began again, until at last the sand gave way and the cart got free. Now the point to notice is that all that the officer had to say was that the animals were not strong enough, whereas a spade in one minute would have removed the mounds of sand clogging the wheels, as any one not a brute or a fool would have seen at once. But neither the officer nor the workmen there did so see, because it never occurred to them to consider that aspect. Their attitude was to force the cart straight through, not to give themselves trouble or worry about the feelings of the horses. And all over Germany, wherever building is being done, similar scenes occur daily, and occur deliberately, The drivers take an obviously ii6 THE KAISER'S WAR savage pleasure in flogging their horses through and across obstacles instead of going round them ; the bullied victim of the sergeant feels he has the right to bully his horse or underling on the principle of " smash your way through." The result is that the German working classes are the roughest and most brutal in Europe, despite their Socialism, which for its own ends tends to encourage the brute sense. If we stop to think of it, the German people are only logical in their cult of brutality, which for fifteen years now has been preached as the German spirit not only in the Army and on political platforms, but from the best University Chairs. Nor can there be any question that the German brutality has become not only a pathological symptom, but demonstrably a disease. It is difficult to enter into this side of the question, but a few indications will serve to show that the statement is well-founded. First we may glance at the Eulenburg scandals, exposed by the journalist, Maximilian Harden. Prince Eulenburg was the head of the Emperor's Cabinet, an unofficial body which virtually INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 117 " ran " the Empire. What Harden proved was this : that the fraternity of the " Round Table " were using their immense power for purposes of depravity, carried on in the most open manner at Potsdam, which under their direction was rapidly being turned into a city Sodom. Despite all the official attempts made to quash the law, to hush up the proceedings, to white- wash the Cabinet, Harden was able to bring about the fall of Eulenburg, and the Emperor was compelled to take severe disciplinary measures to purge his entourage. It was all the more serious for him, because his great friend Krupp had committed suicide on a similar charge brought against him some years before by the Vorwarts, and these new scandals threatened to impair the Royal authority The point to be noted, however, is not the scandals so much as the widespread and morbid interest that they provoked in Germany. In this connection the sympathy extended to Oscar Wilde exceeded all limits of literary enthusiasm, and became an intellectual cult employed as a popular excuse for homo- sexuality. Oscar Wilde became in fact what Shake- ii8 THE KAISER'S WAR speare was to Germans in Schlegel's time. People flocked to see SalomJ, which ran for years, to talk psychology and physiology, as if Wilde had been a new saviour of Society. I am not criticizing, but simply stating a well- known fact when I say that homosexuality became rampant in Berlin as the result of the Wilde boom, became, as it were, the "smart thing." Under the supervision of the police, homosexual cafes and dancing places appeared and were regarded with sympathetic curiosity. A kind of psychological craze seized the Germans. Parties of bourgeois families would spend the evening visiting these places to see life, as they put it. In cafes, where only women congregated, there were always well-to-do observers to be seen with their wives and families, lookers-on, as a man here might take his wife to the zoo. Sexual perversity in all its forms became the great topic of conversation. A lady told me quite simply, for instance, that her husband was a pervert, but she did not care, " it was so interesting." Weininger's plays were received with rapture. Kraft-Ebbing-ism be- came a cult. Berlin, which had come to be INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 119 a Gehenna of prostitution and dissipation, boasted of its vices. Soon the question became the matter of scientific study. On all sides warning voices were heard. A nude school came into being, an idea derived from the classic dancing of Isadora Duncan. Naked parties were given. A small set, calling themselves votaries of " physical culture," gave nude soirees. And these were not people of the "gay" world. They regarded themselves as perfectly serious and respectable. This nude cult was all part of the Germanic idea of Tannhauser strength. With it was associated the open- air craze, the " sun tan " movement. A couple of years ago I spent some weeks on one of the islands on the North Sea, which in summer-holiday times are full. Every morning the whole male population went into the sea. But the fun came in after the dip ; the idea was to get tanned. For hours together, hundreds of men fat, thin, old and young would lie on the sands, turning now this side now that to the sun's rays, with the object of getting brown. As the Germans are never satisfied unless they are drilling, a 120 THE KAISER'S WAR huge morning drill was arranged. Then they added a band. I shall never forget the sight of a thousand fat, naked Germans solemnly doing the goose-step on the sands while the band played Die Wacht am Rhein. This parade of Rubens' flesh was watched by the women with glasses from the dunes. The thing became a drill ; the older and fatter the man, the more he revelled in this "jolly German performance." The difference between a mixed naked party in Berlin and the German flesh drill on the sands is only one of degree, or, if you will, of bathing drawers. It is the exact opposite to Trouville, it being the German idea to show off the male. People may object that enjoying life, how- ever foolishly, on the sands cannot be regarded as symptomatic ; and that nude parties l are merely disgusting. In Germany, however, " flesh parade " denoted an attitude. For one thing it was utterly new to the German people. 1 Another aspect of this exhibitionism (apart from its aesthetic horribleness, German "tummies" being celebrated for their rotundity) is the want of humour they show. Fancy a Spanish woman doing such a thing ! She simply couldn't. INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 121 Its significance lies precisely in its revolutionary novelty. Germans liked it because it was felt to be expressive of the new feeling of strength, of breaking out, of eccentricity, of reversing all the old standards and ideas which formed part of the materialistic school of thought, prompted by the consciousness of physical and mental superiority over other nations. The nude idea caught on because it seemed to typify the German idea of force. These naked parties were given to demon- strate the magnificent muscular development of the males, the splendid matronly qualities of the women. They were not intended to be " indecent." Their idea was not so much sexuality as plastic glorification to show off the human form, to prove the higher develop- ment of German anatomy, the godlike shape of the German body. And these performances were gone through quite solemnly, as a rite. I mention them here because of their psycho- logical significance, Heaven knows, I am no Puritan ; I do not condemn, I merely wish to point out that in Bismarck's days such things were inconceivable. They would have been entirely foreign to the old German spirit. But 122 THE KAISER'S WAR no one can have lived in Germany in recent years and not have noticed the pathological symptoms in the body politic : the astounding statistics of prostitution, for example, the pre- valence of venereal disease, the remarkable criminal cases in the courts, the enormous increase in crimes such as larceny, embezzle- ment, forgery, theft, fraud ; the terrible amount of petty dishonesty, defaulting clerks, crime with violence and murder, all showing, as German sociologists pointed out again and again, the restlessness, the surexcitation of the new generation. Crime came to be looked upon with a morbid and sympathetic interest, not the fictional interest the stage Sherlock Holmes heroics we bring to bear on mysterious murders (in which our sympathy lies with the detectives) but rather the other way, an interest with the criminals, with crime in its human relation to pathology. Those who are interested and it will form a very interesting study for the psychologist- will find ample material in the brilliant volumes called Kbpfe (3 vols.), or Types, wherein with scathing wit Harden denounces the evils of modern Germany as evidenced by the INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 123 criminals whose careers he depicts with a truly Satanic satire. Let me cite a few examples. Now one of the phenomena of modern Germany is the everyday occurrence of the rape of little girls. Hardly a day passes that some such case is not recorded in the newspapers. Oddly enough, the law is peculiarly lenient for such offences, a few months' imprisonment only being the penalty. Many doctors have pointed out the evil, but no change in the law has been effected ; indeed little notice has been taken of it by the authorities, so absorbed have Germans been in the craze for excess touched even with a kind of pride that modern Germany showed such protean signs of what they affect to call ''psychological manifestations." Without a doubt, this particular symptom derives from the attitude of brutality which, again, derives from the Army. Its chronic nature is, to say the least, symptomatic of German criminology. It must be looked upon as a disease in the German social state. There is, in fact, unmistakable scientific ground for speaking of a pathological con- dition of Germany as the direct product of 124 THE KAISER'S WAR the physical force doctrine. I will just men- tion a few cases in support of this contention. Take the case of the rich banker who was at last arrested and convicted for the violation of some two dozen girls under age. The evidence showed that for years he had indulged in this passion under a regular system of procurage. Those who require details should read Harden's Types. At the time, the papers were full of the most astonishing evi- dence, the most curious thing being perhaps the general indifference of the classes from whom he got his victims. Or, look at the Dippold case. Dippold was a tutor in charge of a rich widower's two sons. One of the boys died of ill-treatment. It was found that Dippold was a Sadie fiend who consistently flogged the boy until one day he killed him. Then there was the case of the countess who foisted a suppositious heir upon her family to obtain a fortune. There was the case of the officer shot in the riding-school ; the case of the major's wife who shot her husband. I cannot enter into these things here. But they are not isolated cases. As Harden maintains, they INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 125 are so unusually brutal yet so common as to constitute a national scandal and indictment of German civilization. We all remember the " cobbler of Koeper- nick," that tricky fellow who turned out the guard and plundered the post office. In many ways he is the product of modern pathological Germany. The matrimonial hunt for the "gold bug," or heiress, on the part of officers is typical of the new spirit. In the old days the German officer was con- tent to be poor. The Social " scandals " in this connection have for years been notorious. In the pursuit of money the modern German has lost his head. Dis- honesty became rampant in the business world. Hundreds of promising young men have "done time" in consequence. If the cobbler personified the upstart spirit of lower Imperial Germany, Eulenburg typified it in the upper classes. It is an easy thing to make a nation brutal. If we want to understand the German attitude we must remember that in Germany the Army not only takes first place but is the life and reason of her being. By the rules 126 THE KAISER'S WAR of the military code an officer is bound to " defend his honour by force." He may not accept an apology in the event of a technical assault. Thus a man who on leaving a cafe, for example, brushes against an officer is techni- cally liable to be cut down. Cases of this kind are of constant occurrence. A year or so back there was a notorious case of a midshipman running his dirk into a soldier who lurched against him in the street. Only a short while back an officer shot a man in a big Berlin cafe who had stumbled over his foot. An insult to the uniform is punish- able by death. A code of this kind is obviously calculated to brutalize harden, Germans say the spirit of a nation. Hence the excessive formality of German manners. The brutalities committed by the German soldiers in the field are the logical result of the German military system. If a nation trained for war is also educated to regard brutality as the necessary attribute of success, it is not to be wondered at if in civil life similar notions prevail, nor, when they do prevail, that they inevitably lead to a rough- ness and coarseness of behaviour of a very INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 127 unpleasant character. One brutality leads to another. So Germans have assumed it as the distinctive virtue of the nation. The truth is that for fifteen years the Germans have been going pathologically mad, carried away in the intoxication of success and vanity, plunging deeper and deeper into the vortices of materialism and human error. The national sentimentality, always near to brutality, has materialized, as it were. To turn Berlin into a bawdy-house of cosmo- politan dissipation was one of the avowed aims of the Kaiser. That his subjects, loosened from all fetters of moral or social restraint, under the spur of Kaiser and God, vied with one another in " making good " the Imperial behest is not the subject of wonder but rather of pity. In fifteen years all the German virtues of centuries disappeared from the land at the will of the military tyrant at Potsdam masquerading in the boots of Bismarck, misusing and demoralizing his people. Many Germans have felt and noted the plague-spot in their centre ; it has been the theme of many books. I am not utter- ing my own opinions, but voicing merely 128 THE KAISER'S WAR what scores of thoughtful Germans have denounced, when I say that since the days of degenerate Rome no nation has presented so cankerous a social sore as that exhibited by modern Germany spoon-fed on exultant Kaiserdom. When the time of reckoning comes we shall have to remember this fact, and give the Germans their rightful chance. What we are fighting to-day is this disease of materialism. What we have to put down is the blackguardism of the Kaiser's " Mailed Fist." Of course, this Mailed Fist doctrine is not Bismarckianism, if in conception it originated from Bismarck's spirit. Bismarck ended where the Kaiser began. It is due to the vanity of the Emperor, with his silly prattle of " Full steam ahead " ; nor can anything be imagined more alien to the austere spirit of Moltke than the pageant of the Kaiser's vainglorious, brag- gart, and brutalized Germany. Both Bismarck and Moltke were great men. But when the Kaiser dismissed the creator of the German Empire, he took all the springs of national life into his care, and he has deliberately poisoned them ever since. The Emperor's INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 129 Germany will stand as a warning for all time to rulers and men, as an example of a magnificent national heritage degraded and dissipated in the pursuits of vanity and materialistic ends, fly-blown in the trail of a religious madman. In the process, every well of German national decency has been polluted. The sturdy military qualities which Moltke gave them have degenerated into arrogance and brutality. The race which Bismarck welded together has lost its conscience and dignity. Such has been the only too easy work of the Kaiser under the convenient falsehood of Kingly infallibility. That is why an Army exhorted by their Emperor to behave like Huns in China may logically be expected to behave like Huns in Belgium. There are splendid soldiers in the German Armies, I know, men of immaculate honour, noblemen in every sense of the term. That the Germans are brave, we see, but bravery is the commonest of all the virtues. It is not sufficient. 1 In the German Armies 1 Bismarck once said in the Reichstag : " All Armies are brave. We cannot claim to be braver than any other European Army." 9 130 THE KAISER'S WAR we are fighting a doctrine of brutality, a national attitude. 1 Though I find it hard to credit the reports of German soldiers firing under cover of flags of truce and the Red Cross, I know that the Germans will not only wage war brutally but pitilessly, as their Emperor has frequently behoved them to. We, at any rate, will keep the flag clean. Let us try and remember that the Germans are a misguided nation suffering pathologically from disease the disease caught from their Kaiser, which may be described as " intelligent brutal- ity." 2 1 Herr Bethmann-Hollweg's recent pronouncement that if the Allies seek to crush Germany " every man, woman, dog, etc., will be armed," reflects this German spirit. If the Allies ever fight in German territory, we may expect to hear of horrors which will stagger the world. 2 When the Hereros in South-West Africa rebelled, General v. Trotha (October 2, 1904) issued this proclama- tion : " The Hereros must now quit the soil. If they refuse, I shall force them with the gun. Every Herero, with or without a weapon, with or without cattle, found in German territory, I will have shot. I shall not look after the women and children, but will drive them back to their own people or shoot them." The German Pastor Schowalter wrote (1907) that about 15,000 Hereros died of hunger on the desert. In addition, thousands died in the concentration camps, thousands in INTELLIGENT BRUTALITY 131 the war. The net result of the German action has been the utter stagnation of labour in German South- West Africa, almost the entire Herero tribe having been destroyed. Dr. Rohrbach, Imperial Commissioner for South-West Africa, reports gleefully on this savagery: "The question is solved. The Hereros have lost their land ; the whole live stock of cattle has been destroyed ; but that cannot be regarded as tragic owing to the splendid fertility of the land, which is now fiscal." Here is a classic example of the German sentiment and red-tape Barbarity so character- istic of the Emperor's people. The word " Fiscal " is enormous. So Belgium is "Fiscal Germany." "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" IN the height of German Anglophobia the aged and venerable Professor Mommsen wrote a pamphlet, which he called " Our Pan-German Idiots." It was time, he said, that his countrymen abandoned the braggart talk of "beer politics" for the clearer issues of civilization in which England and Germany were destined, by all considerations of common interests and culture, to "march hand in hand together." The great historian, of course, could not be treated as a Socialist ; all the same his words fell on unheeding ears and he was rudely taken to task. He had grown old, the journalists wrote, as Napoleon said of Goethe. And when, shortly afterwards, the nonogenarian set fire to his long white locks, peering too close to a candle which 132 "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 133 he was holding while perched on his ladder searching for a tome on the top shelf of his vast bookcase, the Germans did not hesitate to see in the occurrence a visitation of the Almighty displeasure that one so wise and industrious had so little understood the meaning and greatness of German history. Mommsen's incursion into the domain of Real-politik drew upon him public opprobrium in which the Court concurred. The Kaiser, it was understood, "dropped" him, in sig- nificant contrast with the Royal favour bestowed upon the other nonogenarian, the "tiny" painter, v. Menzel, who, as the com- memorator of kings and the Hohenzollerns, was a great favourite of the Emperor ; indeed, it was one of the sights of the Opera House to see the wee little old man popping in and out of the Royal Box notable because Menzel was the only artist ever seen in the Kaiser's entourage (Hauptmann and Suder- mann were always rigidly taboo). The inci- dent shows how curiously intellectual Germany had changed that at the time of Mommsen's protest and warning and in the teeth of the insults heaped upon him in consequence, the 134 THE KAISER'S WAR professorial world took no collective or in- dividual action, neither stood by the his- torian nor sympathized with him, and that, except in the Socialist Press, no writer deemed his utterances worthy of serious consideration or even of criticism. In the howling wilder- ness of anti-English feeling and political blather, Mommsen's earnest appeal was treated with derision as a voice out of the grave of German humiliation, the echo of Goethe and the old cosmopolitanism. "What do you think of our Emperor?" No Englishman went to Germany without being asked that embarrassing question, just as Americans were wont at one time to ask the English visitor whether he "knew Dr. Crippen." Germans never inquired what we thought of German science, of German industry, of German culture, but invariably what our opinion was of the Kaiser, and the individual who expressed himself in derogative terms of His Majesty was often astonished to behold the crestfallen stare of disappointment which came over the face of his questioner. If you criticized, Germans would explain, " Ah, but "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 135 he is still young," the Kaiser had yet to show his genius, one had to admit there was no other Sovereign like him in Europe, he was a real Emperor, a thing to look at, a Prince for all women to admire, and so on ; nor did it matter whether the speaker was a cosmo- politan financier, a professor, or a Bavarian journalist, the Kaiser to these people was a thing apart, an object of awe and veneration. It was not the veneration accorded to the Tsar, who, in the eyes of the Moujik, is as holy as a sacred Ikon, not in the least the symbolic aspect of Majesty which so overpowered the Germans, but absolutely the Imperial personality, the idea that in their Sovereign the essential spirit and genius of new Germany was personified, defiant and unconquerable. In former times, German Schwarmerei found expression chiefly in philosophic, artistic, poetic, imaginative, the civilian activities ; the Frauleins leaned against the window-sills, as Heine wrote, and watched "pale Peter go by " ; it was Gemuthlichkeit, or comfort, which stood for the leaven of good German cheer ; the fellow with the long hair caught the admiring eyes of a social gathering; to hold 136 THE KAISER'S WAR a Chair at a University, to be a musician, a thinker, a scientist, a theologian, and " Ac&/" to be a poet these were the fancies of pre- Sedanic Germany. But when the Kaiser came to the throne a more robustious spirit arose in keeping with the achievements of German arms. Bismarck always appeared in uniform. It became the fashion to cultivate the staccato guttural tones of the regimental commando ; to be abrupt in manner, to be firm, gruff, downright, soldierly ; to walk with the knee straightened, with the shoulders set back and the head held high ; to look boldly, to speak loudly, to think fiercely, like a good well- conditioned sergeant of the line. "Sick stramm halben " to hold oneself upright came to be a national idiosyncrasy. " Fest auf den Beinen " firm on the legs was another maxim taken from the army, and with these military attributes there naturally was added the swagger and gait and stiff saluting ceremony of the officers who, by law, are the first people in the land. These qualities and peculiarities the Kaiser turned into a national institution. Whenever he "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 137 passed the Guard House just by the Branden- burg Gate in Berlin, the guard, who were kept solely for the purpose, went through the traditional Prussian saluting drill to the roll of the drum, ending by standing at the salute with eyes fixed immovably to the right. And this ceremony went on twenty times a day if the Kaiser happened to pass, watched invari- ably by admiring crowds who never tired of seeing the automatic precision of the soldiers (I confess a thrilling spectacle). If a soldier saw an officer in the street, in a cafe, or public place, he had to stand quite still, heels closed, head erect, eyes front, left hand to the side, the right rigidly at the salute. I have seen a man in the stalls of a theatre get up ten times in five minutes to salute officers in this way, most of whom passed on without taking notice. In a country where every seventh man wears a uniform this sort of regimental formality inevitably permeated into civilian life. As the soldiers were cropped on the head, so the civilians had themselves cropped. Every young German cultivated a Kaiser moustache. In the ball-rooms, the man without an officer's drawl had to be very 138 THE KAISER'S WAR rich or good-looking to get the pretty partners. The regimental vocabulary, attitude, address, gait, came to be the thing, kept up religiously by the drawings and jokes in the comic press from which the Germans traditionally derive their political opinions. At Court everything was arranged on a military basis. Ceremony, discipline and obedience were the accepted principles of German official and public life. If you could not be an officer, at least you were a student with a scar ; and so much was this the signet of virility, that men who had never been to a University, but whose trades or vocations demanded a certain social standing, not infrequently slashed their cheeks with a blunt razor to bring about the desired qualification, putting in a little vinegar to keep the wound open. I knew a man who admitted he had got his scar like that, and I had some difficulty to persuade him not to prove on me what an easy operation it was. I recall a curious instance of the German military attitude when, on being measured by my tailor, he congratulated me on the fact that my girth had increased some three inches since his last measurement. "Why, "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 139 you are becoming a Ganzer Mann' (a full man)., he exclaimed. "Good German beer does it. If you go on like that you will be just like one of us." But what has all this got to do with Pan-Germanism, it may be asked? A good deal, as I will try to show. Pan-Germanism, as the gospel of inflation the worship of size, bulk, force, noise, quantity regardless of quality deliberately aimed at the suppression of con- templative Germany and the old German virtues, with the political object of rousing Germans from the torpor of their subjective idealism which had so divided and disinte- grated them in the past. -To effect this object, not only was it held necessary to formulate a new political gospel, but to impose upon the traditionally credulous, easy-going German a theory of national life. The success of military Germany was obvious. But the Germans, as Stein said, are an envious and Philistine nation of dreamers and thinkers. In times of peace the warlike spirit easily degene- rates. Men lose the sense of war. Theories arise, and no people take to theories quicker than the Germans. The thing is, wrote a Pan- 140 THE KAISER'S WAR German, to educate the simple Michel, to show him the sea and the good things to be got from it, to stimulate his intelligence, to batter into him the truth that a man only gets what he fights for in a word, to place him historically "in the saddle." To the Germans this novel idea of their own world importance acted like a dose of strychnine. In the delineation of national success they saw in themselves a people chosen, as it were, to be stronger than other nations, bigger and fitter. Political elephan- tiasis is a dangerous creed to foist upon a country at any time. When preached as a religion by the Sovereign, explained and sup- ported by the men of learning, made manifest and heralded as the working principle of national manhood and dignity, such a doctrine is apt to fall into the cult of the grotesque and all forms of mental extravagance. Few men are above flattery, the Germans with their new-born nationalism least of any. Instil into the men of a nation that they resemble Falstaffs and Tannhaiisers in shining armour, it will become the fashion to pose as such. As types of beauty change and women somehow manage "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 141 to adapt themselves to the particular type in demand, so nations adapt themselves to their purposes. If the purpose is war, the people will be warlike. If the purpose is adventure, as formerly in England, a sporting spirit will prevail. The pride of being is the exact reflec- tion of a nation's face. Now the pride of Germany was vanity. Pan (without our Peter) became the watchword to be Pan-Germans, pan-creative, pan-absorbent. From Germany they were to become All-Germany, from All- Germany the Super- European. And for this end big men were needed, fierce men, strong men, many men, all soldiers in the line of action. It was for this reason that the economic professors gloated over the declin- ing population of France, the " waning " pugnacity of England, the growing softness of life beyond the Fatherland the world's general womanization, as they called it due very largely to American influence. For the first time in his life the big, bony lout of Pomerania found himself a byword of national respect. Germans must win in war, because they alone had the masses sufficient for frontal attacks, for over-riding opposition, for bearing 142 THE KAISER'S WAR down the quality of other armies, for success- fully carrying out the operations begun. All, therefore, that was necessary was a doctrine of success as spur to its realization. So to meet these requirements the theory of scientific over-confidence was established, with kit and ethics to match. I have often discussed Pan-Germanism with Pan-Germans who invariably made a point of explaining to Englishmen the necessity to German expansion of crushing England, a country, they politely explained, which had enjoyed its day and now survived as an impediment to the higher Germanic civilization destined to deliver Europe. They were perfectly serious about this and delight- fully frank. The French, they would say, were a dirty people, numerically declining, unwholesome, a nation of cocottes and chatterboxes. The Russians, why half Russia was illiterate! Moreover, they were savages. From the Balkans, nothing much was to be expected, while the Dutch and the Flemish were ethnically low Germans. There remained Great Britain. It was un- thinkable, they argued, that civilization should "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 143 continue to allow a small and degenerate island people to monopolize sea-power, and so be in the position to hold up the trade supplies of Europe, and throttle economic initiative. As all empires had fallen, so, when its hour was spent, would the British Empire. Such being the law of life, the Germans had therefore every right to fore- stall destiny, as it were, to prepare for the emergency and expedite its consummation. There was nothing hostile in this attitude ; the fittest people always won in the long run. And Germans had become admittedly the fittest ; then, too, they were the most numerous. It was a question of economic pressure, hence a dynamic necessity. Sooner or later, the German and English civilizations would have to settle which of the two was to predominate. They could not endure side by side much longer, because England had become effete while Germany, per contra, was growing yearly more virile and powerful. The German question thus had risen above the ordinary plane of politics, or diplomatic disposition : it had become a fate. Furor Teutonicus was a nobler thing than English 144 THE KAISER'S WAR football. It was intolerable that a nation of sportsmen should keep back the progress of a higher civilization because it happened to have a few more big ships than the Germans possessed. All the economic and ethical reasons of mankind thus stood on the side of Germany, propelled ever forward by her genius, her increasing numbers, her necessity for new lands and new markets, her call, as it were, of history. People who talk like that cannot be ex- pected to show much political sagacity, still less to evince much respect for the feelings of others. In the sententious imagination of the Pan-German the idea of the German mission became such an obsession that he came to look on Europe as a great battlefield preserved by God for the display of Gerhian feats of arms as a kind of apotheosis in the cause of humanity. The German invasion was to be a Holy War, a Lutheran manifestation. A planetary hegemony why not ? Old Europe groaning under what it termed the burden of armaments was in need of a masculine broom, a final sweeping which would liberate and consolidate her. Only the German mind "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 145 could hope to carry out so grandiose a scheme, only German might was fitted to do so. Pan- Germans expressed regret that Englishmen should be forced to lose their Empire, but after all they would be able to attend race meetings and play golf in the German State, which, they understood, were the main things Englishmen cared about. The point was that Englishmen could not play sea-dog in the manger indefinitely and so arbitrarily defeat history. All historians worthy of the name were Germans ; it was unscientific of Englishmen to presume upon German good nature too long. A people which did not play their own Shakespeare was clearly unworthy to possess him. Moreover they didn't, for Schlegel's translations were better than the original. The worst of it was that not until the British Navy was defeated could German world- power come into its lawful rights and rescue what was worth preserving of old English culture. Still there was no cause for appre- hension. It would soon be over on the " Great Day." Krupp would see to that. A decisive battle off Harwich, say, and 10 146 THE KAISER'S WAR Britain would fall. Once the Kaiser had hoisted his standard over the Tower of London the English women would quickly fall in love with the Prussian Garde-du-corps, and there would be an end to the Suffragette "non- sense." The English Army and here the Pan-German invariably ^ smiled well, was it a serious proposition at any time? "Bobs" might be a soldier, but no other Englishman would be except for money. Against the trained soldiers of a national Army a couple of hundred thousand khaki mercenaries would avail little. The notion was preposterous. Englishmen must know then that the war when it came would not be a mere campaign to avenge a wrong ; it would be a movement of racial expansion and conquest conducted to its logical end by the finest soldiers and by the most scientific brains that ever marched forth to battle in history. Men such as Mommsen, Bebel, a few literary historians, a few Free-traders of the old generation, a few soldiers even thought differently no doubt, but cocksureness being a principle of German military science, the Pan-German exposition of the German destiny "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 147 was accepted universally as the correct presentation. The Prussians have always been notorious for big talk. On the eve of Jena, Prussian officers sharpened their swords on the doorsteps of the French Minister's residence. And the Kaiser, in his proclama- tion to his troops (August 19, 1914) command- ing them to " exterminate first the treacherous English and walk over General French's contemptible little Army," expressed the national attitude towards everything English with the traditional swagger of the military caste. In reality a bigger political idiot than the typical Pan-German never trod the earth. If he is to be explained, he may be likened to Micawber, dressed up in jack-boots and a helmet, explaining to Mrs. Micawber the mysteries of the universe. There is some- thing incongruous about a German physically at any time, due perhaps to the physical stiffness of his motions as the result of military drill, and possibly to the roundness of his head. He seems to be ashamed of the human frailties, such as modesty, shame, pity, gentleness, lovableness ; and because by nature 148 THE KAISER'S WAR these things are natural to him, he seeks to disguise them by the heavy manner of the dragoon which makes him ridiculous. No people can enjoy themselves, for instance, so boyishly and rampageously as the Germans, no people at home can be more natural. That is why his public side is so droll. Often his fat face and upturned moustache belie the swashbuckler he would have you take him for, for at heart the German is a good fellow. And when he expounds to you his Pan-German creed it is impossible to get annoyed with him, so careful is he to keep to the forms of argumentative licence, so anxious is he to prove the scientific values of his case, so palpably is he a boaster, and not a good one at that. Sometimes, of course, he is offensive, and then he is unbearable. I remember a particularly noisome specimen, journeying up to Kiel to attend the festivities in celebration of the visit of King Edward. I was travelling with another Englishman and his wife, when a fussy individual entered the carriage and, without a word, shut the window. It was summer; the window on the other side where two German ladies sat was "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 149 closed ; my friend's wife asked to have the window half-open. The moment my friend had so readjusted it, the German shut it up. Again the window was let down, and again the fussy man closed it. " You English want the whole compartment to yourself," he said. " Well, you can't always have your way. I want the windows closed.'* To this challenge my friend re- sponded by letting down the window to its full length. " My wife needs air/' he replied. " Surely you don't wish to inconvenience a lady," whereat the stranger grew very angry. Up went the window and immediately down again. The German ladies began to expostulate. They, too, hated draughts. It was disgraceful for foreigners to behave so thoughtlessly. A fat man in the opposite corner chimed in, while up and down the window went, and every one talked and gesticulated at once. On my suggesting that we should throw this fussy "gent" out of the window, he challenged me to a duel. However, my friend stuck to his window, and we travelled to Kiel in fresh air, nor did I 150 THE KAISER'S WAR ever receive the gentleman's card, so that even the duel failed to come off. The incident is typical of Prussian offensiveness. The dis- courtesy was only done to show us who was master : not because there was a draught. It is this spirit of rudeness which prompted the Kaiser to inform the British Ambassador, on the day after the assault on the Embassy, that he would "never again disgrace himself" by wearing the British uniform. The spirit, again, which led a lunch-table of some twenty Germans the day of the announcement of Kruger's ultimatum to rise up and cheer in my face, which induced Germans to insult Englishmen and women all over Germany at the time of the Boer war. This German rudeness came straight from the example of the Emperor. It is not naturally peculiar to the German character. That it became so general is due to the Pan-German teaching which popularized it as a German idiosyncrasy, the brooch and buckle of a martial race. Anschnautzen (to scold and shout at a man) has of late years been recognized as a good German characteristic ; it is a phrase and habit recognized in all classes. In this accomplish- "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 151 ment the Emperor proudly held himself to be past master. His famous telegram to the reigning Prince of Lippe, when he told him laconically "he had to obey. Nothing more," was proclaimed at the time (some years ago now) as a stirring manifestation of the Imperial energy. So spoke Frederick, it was said, in good German terms. This spirit, the object of which was to inculcate into the people the idea of command, naturally led to inferior imitation which, in the working classes became positively a pest. The wrangling, quarrelling, shouting, fuming, and bickering that goes on in Germany is proverbial. One cannot get on without it. A man has to shout and wrangle or no one will obey him. Germans excuse it by ex- plaining that it keeps alive the elemental side of man. At the Socialist Congresses that I attended, I was always struck by the vitriolic abuse, the hysterical violence of manner of the speakers, put on for the most part as sign of their virility. One might have thought these men would come to blows at any moment. Yet not so. They were, for the most part, in curious harmony. To rise 152 THE KAISER'S WAR in the opinion of their comrades, they had to show good, to prove themselves fighting orators. Noise was essential, dramatic in- tensity, the ferocious manner. Behind this manner there reigned calm itself. When, for example, Bernstein was solemnly impeached, I feared they would tear him in pieces, but it was only a word battle. He was perfectly safe among them, not in the smallest danger. The terrible denunciations of Rosa Luxemburg were only regarded as first-class Anschnautzen y or scolding. The German Socialists made a great noise because it was the proper thing to make a noise, because they would not have enjoyed themselves if they had not made a great noise. All this fee-faw-fum lip-service has been introduced by Kaiserism. It is the civilians' method of striking terror ; big words in civil life are what preparatory shell- fire is in warfare. We have been surprised at the German lie factory, of the way in which prominent German public men have sought to represent the action of England in coming to the aid of France and Belgium as perfidious, sur- prised at the shamelessness, the puerility, the "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 153 futility of the German diplomatic and secret agent attempts in America to falsify fact and stir up ill-feeling, but it would have been far more surprising if Germany had not done so. The boaster is generally a liar. For years it has been part of German diplomacy to poison public opinion, to start scares, to embroil peoples, to create a perpetual atmo- sphere of strife and discord. Ever since Admiral Dewey's rebuff to Germany, the Kaiser has literally grovelled at the feet of Americans to the avowed disgust of the Pan- Germans. The Emperor used to lunch the head of the Associated Press whenever that gentleman went to Berlin. Never did a Sovereign play Uriah Heep to another Power with so strange a want of dignity. If docu- mentary evidence is required, men should read Mr. Douglas Sladen's analysis of Germany's " Secret White Paper" (published as " Ger- many's Great Lie "), prepared for the purpose of deceiving Americans by Prince Biilow, Ballin, Dryander (the Court Chaplain), General von der Goltz, Professor Harnack, Professor Schmoller, Dr. Gwinner, many princes, pro- fessors, and officials, the President of the 154 THE KAISER'S WAR Reichstag, and numerous other learned and prominent Germans assuredly the most pusil- lanimous, stupid, and mendacious piece of official journalism ever concocted by respon- sible politicians to distort the facts as demonstrated by the dispatches of their own ambassadors, and by Germany's subsequent words and actions. All this booby politics is the result of the Imperial example. Here is an incident typical of the Emperor's theatricality. After the Boxer rising in China, Germany, who had not impressed the Chinese much by her " Hun " expedition, was determined to show the world how political humiliation should be inflicted. It was to be a lesson in world statecraft, something to catch the imagination of peoples. So the Chinese were compelled to send a princely deputation to Potsdam to kow-tow before the German Emperor. The German people were astonished. They had never heard the word " kow-tow " before. Learned professors explained in the Press its etymology, origin, significance, etc., and when at length the half-dozen mandarins arrived, Berlin was in a state of amused "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 155 commotion. In " shining armour" the Kaiser sat on a throne in the Great Marble Hall (100 feet long) at Potsdam Palace, surrounded by his Generals and statesmen. The Chinese had to enter and leave the hall with the ceremony observed in China towards their Emperor that is to say, they were to retire, bowing all the time, without turning their backs. All this kow-tow was religiously performed. The Emperor never smiled or relaxed a muscle of his face. No actor could have done it better. The whole affair was priceless comedy, for the Chinese did not mind a bit, and when it was over they enjoyed themselves in Berlin exceedingly. An Emperor who will play " King of the Castle " like that is capable of any folly and so many Germans at the time thought. As for the lie factory, that was one of Bismarck's legacies. The object of German diplomacy being to make mischief, all the hackneyed tricks of Bismarck's reptile Press were employed by the Wilhelmstrasse as if the Germans had discovered a new art, whereas all Europe knew the stale moves by heart, and cordially despised them. Only 156 THE KAISER'S WAR a very ingenuous statesman would seek in these days of an argus-eyed Press, equipped with all the modern facilities for first-hand observation, rapid transmittance of news and competitive verification, to treat Europe in the kindergarten way employed by Bismarck and his " little archer." Yet this is what German diplomacy has amounted to since the Kaiser came to the throne. And this is what she has " tried on " ever since her initial attack on Li^ge. Like a naughty schoolgirl, Germany seeks to intimidate the world by " fibs." It is a pitiful spectacle fora great nation. Very different from Luther, who took his stand because he "could not do otherwise." Strangely different from the brave words of ' Bismarck : "We Germans fear God, otherwise nobody/' Mr. Asquith informed the world in his speech (October 2nd at Cardiff) how German diplomacy in 1912 endeavoured to induce England to give an absolute guarantee of neutrality in the event of war between Ger- many and other Powers. A truly astounding proposal put forward with the object of breaking up the Entente in order to allow "OUR PAN-GERMAN IDIOTS" 157 Germany to crush France at her leisure. Had we fallen into the trap, we would have discredited the name of England for a century. It failed because, as usual, the caddish effron- tery of the proposal was too transparent and sinister. Pan-German clumsiness, that is all, on a par with most of Germany's diplomatic attempts to re-insure herself at the expense of other people's honour. The truth is that the Germans had grown so over-confident and foolish that they thought the bluff of physical terrorism would suffice to cower English statesmen into resignation. Bully, boast, and bluff such were the political axioms of the Wilhelmstrasse. And so it has gone on, until every people in Europe came to look on Germany's diplomacy with suspicion and in their own despite united against the sinister Saint of Potsdam. When the Allies have beaten the trash and bumptiousness out of them, the Germans will look back on the Kaiser's reign as a nightmare of shame and insanity. They will curse their " Pan-German idiots." VI THE GERMAN CASE RECON- STRUCTED * CRIMINAL investigation has a well-known procedure called "reconstructing" the crime, a process which, applied to Germany, may enable us to understand the methods and motives of her madness. Let me assume as starting-point of the investigation that we are aware of the three great motives of German military policy (i) the geographical position of a nation enclosed in the centre of Europe, naturally restless and suspect because national consolidation took place after the other peoples had practically come to look on the map of Europe as a fixture ; (2) the guiding principle of (first Pan-German and latterly) German 1 This is an attempt to portray the characters of the people concerned. 158 GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 159 official policy to emancipate the people from the old Prussian tradition of friendship with England, which started at the death of the Emperor Frederick and the advent of the present Kaiser to the throne a policy which deliberately set out to estrange Anglo- German relations by the feverish creation of a Navy capable of enforcing the German will upon the seas ; (3) the logical inevitability of German aggression as the result of the national idea of physical force culture in which war constituted the last and highest instance of the national expression. To these latent, or what we may call geo- graphical, motives both for German military dispositions and for German world-policy, there must be added the three following con- tributory reasons, the result of circumstance and conjuncture. First, the collapse of German aims and ambitions due to the change in the balance of power (1913) owing to (i) the collapse of Germany's friend, Turkey, in Europe ; (2) the defeat of Bulgaria ; (3) the rise of Slavonic power and interest in the Balkans. Secondly, the growing dis- content of the German Army under the in- 160 THE KAISER'S WAR spiration of the ambitious and militant Crown Prince chafing at the enforced idleness of peace when, according to the books, Germany's greatness lay in fighting. Thirdly, the general feeling that war taxation had approached its limits and that the long-talked-of conflagration could not be much further postponed : by the Powers because they resented Germany's gospel of might ; by the Germans who were itching to break out, in which consideration the notion of a possible German defeat was not entertained by any section of the community. Lastly, we must admit another group of motives. The German resentment and sense of political failure so far as her colonies were concerned, her friendships, Alliances, sympathies in a word, results. Again, the public annoyance at the fact that France had passed the three years' service law and was plainly neither crushed nor willing to accept the position of a dependent State; on the contrary, was straining every national resource to arm up to the German fighting standard, thereby necessitating (according to German military theory) the lesson of a second Sedan which should be so decisive as to be final. GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 161 Lastly, the change in German policy towards Russia consequent on the defeat of the Russian armies in Manchuria, since when the tradition of Bismarckian re-insurance with Russia appeared to the Kaiser and to his military and political advisers to have become obsolete and unnecessary. All this we will admit as general motives for war ; then, too, we must take into con- sideration the writings of Bernhardi and the Furor Teutonicus school. Moreover, we know that, early in 1913, the Reichstag passed the Emperor's war loan of over fifty million pounds for " military reasons." Added to which we know from Mr. Asquith that Germany officially asked us in 1912 to give a guarantee of neutrality in the event of war between Germany and other Powers an eventuality which could only refer to war with France, with which nation we stood on terms of honourable sympathy and political union. Yet another piece of testimony must be placed on the link of evidence Mr. Haldane's rebuff at Berlin when the Emperor told him that Germany's military dispositions were Germany's private affair, and no one ii 162 THE KAISER'S WAR else's ; also the persistent German refusal even to discuss the idea of ship-building policy proposed with the bluffness of a schoolboy by Mr. Winston Churchill, So much for Germany's general reasons. Let us try now and place ourselves in the German skin, with access to the Court early in July, when the Emperor began to consider the advisability of warlike action. First what happened just before the war? Well, we know that the head of Krupps came over to England, went about the country, placed orders, was feasted and entertained, visited all kinds of places and peoples, and left behind him very favourable impressions and the usual charming memories. Another visitor came to our shores, Prince Henry. He came to us as a private gentleman, travelled here, travelled there, saw " everybody," refused all ceremony, and delighted us with his frankness and sailor's simplicity, and he, too, left behind him the most pleasant and pacific recollections. The German Ambassador in London was known as a "dear," a gracious gentleman, " really" anxious for friendly relations, and a great favourite in " society." The notion of GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 163 European war seemed ludicrous. So little did our great men anticipate trouble that Sir Ernest Cassel (as one of our leading financiers he naturally would know if war was imminent) was actually " caught " abroad at the declara- tion of war. In short, despite all the cumula- tive motives for war, the appearances were against it. The weight of evidence pointed to peace. Now let us step on our magic carpet and go out riding with the Emperor and Prince Henry shortly after the latter's return from England to the Fatherland. It is a warm day. The trees in the Grunewald are lovely, the scent of the pines is delicious. In a shady clearing of the forest the Kaiser pulls up and turns round sharply on his brother. "You think, Henry, I am safe in assuming that civil war in Ireland is inevitable? Krupp told me so, but then the fellow is not a soldier, and these civilians see so short-sightedly. You say you are sure. Tell me, how so ? " Prince Henry is delighted, and lights a cigarette. He went very carefully into the Irish question, he explains ; saw the highest people interested, and received everywhere 164 THE KAISER'S WAR the same answer. At Lady 's house (she knows all London) he met Lord , Sir R. , that queer fellow , who dines every- where, and lots of others ; they said, " Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." " They hate Catholic Ireland. These chaps are fanatics. The whole Tory Party are behind them. The Army is behind them. Poor Seely had to go, you remember. No Liberal Government dare fight Ulster, and they dare not surrender. England is ' scotched.' There will be civil war and general mutiny among the officers." " And what do the Liberals say, Henry?" " They try to pooh-pooh it. That's the point. They are afraid to strike. So they drift. So they will be drawn into war." "Schon! But von Biberpelz you know the dog, an artful man in his way thinks otherwise. He says English politics are all * spoof/ and that we Germans do not under- stand them. He maintains that Grey is not a humanitarian 'softy,' but really a fanatic, a very fierce chap on questions of honour and paper obligations. And Biberpelz was right about Morocco, you know. It was he, too, GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 165 who told me that the Boers would become good English subjects. Donnerwetter ! he was right there, though who would have thought it?" " Remember the women, Majesty ! A country which allows a few women to terrorize the Government is not going to put its nose into a European war against our troops. They've got Norman Angell bad over there. Now in Ireland they are all arming. Gun- running has become the fashionable amusement. It's the last Tory card. You've no idea how the Irish hate the English. Then there is the Cabinet philanthropists, Rousseauites, disarmament-men, peace and retrenchment politicians, you know. Why, they all play golf half the time ! I tell you I saw the ' swells ' in England, and they all said : ' Ulster means business/ How can they help France, anyway? They could never send over an expeditionary force. And, if they did, what are a hundred thousand mercenaries against our German millions ? No, no. When Lady says it will be civil war, you may take it from me, she means it. She knows. These society women run England." 166 THE KAISER'S WAR " No doubt you are right, Henry. The hour has come. If Servia is allowed to cheek Austria much longer, Russia will get uppish, and our relations haven't been over-good lately. Old Joseph must go soon. Then there will be trouble in Austria. It's the German chance. War would make Austria, as it made Germany. The only question is our Navy. I don't want to risk that just at present, and there is Belgium's Treaty of Neutrality, you must remember." "What of it? In three days we would be in Li^ge. Do you suppose the little Belgians would dare oppose our Prussian Guards ? We would mop up Belgium fiscalize it before England had recovered from the shock. Then Mr. Ramsay Macdonald would break out and stampede the Cabinet. The first shot in Europe would set the Irish off. We could easily get that little affair arranged, anyhow. Once get the war started, and England would be cut off from Europe. As for her Navy, we have mines ; and a few Zeppelins over London would terrify the English. Tirpitz isn't afraid, I know that ; and Krupp swears our guns are infinitely superior." GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 167 " Of course, of course. You needn't tell me that. What can be known about guns we Germans know. How about diversions ? " " Well, there's India seething with discontent. There's South Africa. There's Egypt. We can easily get old Turkey to move in that direction. Italy must come in. We allowed her to take Tripoli. She will have to " " Don't you be too sure, Henry. You remember Algeciras? We shall have to tickle her up somehow. They do hate Austria, and, the worst of it is, Austria does hate her. Anything else ? " " France . . ." " I will wipe out the French. I will annex Belgium, which will mean that Holland will have to belong to the Germanic Confederation. Then we shall be on the highway to England. After Paris, London. It's our German fate, Henry. We'll place Catholic Ireland under the jurisdiction of Bavaria." "Is it all right about Russia?" The Kaiser maintains a long silence. Suddenly he wheels round his charger and canters back into Berlin. That evening there is a dinner-party at the Imperial Palace. 1 68 THE KAISER'S WAR After dinner, the Kaiser holds "military assembly." The Commanding Generals all stand around him. Dr. Hamrnann, Head of the Foreign Office Press Department, is present. Notable are Prince Bulow, Admiral von Tirpitz, the President of the Reichstag, von Mend- elssohn- Bartholdy, and a couple of other leading financiers, Krupp, Dr. Dryander (the Court Chaplain), Dr. Rohrbach, and a Pro- fessor or so. All feel that the Emperor is unusually serious. " I am going away, gentlemen, on my annual Northern trip. Unfortunately I cannot say the situation looks peaceful. There are grave matters in the Balkans to be settled in my absence, which affect our German honour. God will see to them. I will now call upon General von Moltke to speak in the name oi the Army/' Thus solicited, von Moltke salutes, clicks his heels together, and says in stentorian tones : " Majesty, the German Army is profoundly discontented. It sees in your rule a doctrine of peace ; it sees abroad one long continuous act of piratical aggression. France seizes Morocco, Italy pounces upon Tripoli. Russia GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 169 is allowed to establish a Slavonic hegemony at the foot of Germany, cutting out the German road to the Near East. England grows stronger at sea every year and awaits the opportunity to smash our little Navy. In the meanwhile, Germany, as the apostle of peace, is thrust back farther and farther into Europe, insulted by the Anglo-Franco-Russian con- spiracy which aims at her humiliation. I venture to lay before Your Majesty these facts because the German Army is proud and strong, and feels it is insulted. It feels more and more that the legacy of immortal Wilhelm at rest with God is not upheld by the Govern- ment, which spends its time treating with the Socialists, who are the enemies of the State. In the person of your Imperial Majesty's son, the Crown Prince " (at these words the Kaiser glares and pales visibly) " the Armies see, as it were, the arm which will lead them to victory, in the true spirit of Germany's mission. I have observed a good deal of unrest. Your Majesty's officers are openly complaining. Reichsverdrossenheit or the malaise of peace is a bad drill sergeant. I who bear the illustrious name of Moltke i;o THE KAISER'S WAR believe I am justified in bringing these things to your Imperial notice. The German nation stands zu Befehl (at command). It looks to you to lead them." " You speak like a soldier," the Emperor remarks at the conclusion of his General's address ; "now answer these questions. How long would it take the German Army to enter Paris?" At the words, von Moltke starts and seems to hesitate, while Admiral Tirpitz strokes his long, black beard. The Rev. Dr. Dryander helps them out with the interpolation " Through Belgium, naturally, General. With God's help, the Kaiser desires to avoid unnecessary bloodshed." So admonished, von Moltke takes heart. " Liege, Namur, Brussels first stage, one week. First decision on the Aisne two weeks. La Fere, Laon, Reims three weeks decision and annihilation. Before Paris- five weeks second stage. Investment say seven weeks ; capitulation brought about by new guns and aircraft. In all, thirteen weeks, not including guerilla warfare in the centre GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 171 and south of France, or wiping out the French Armies, a process of the third stage, which might take another couple of months." "A four months' campaign, good, and the indemnity ? " " A thousand million pounds, Majesty." " So, so. You are as greedy as your noble ancestor. And England ? " At the question, the Commanding Generals allow themselves an audible titter, Admiral Tirpitz alone preserving an immovable coun- tenance. "The German Army does not recognize militarily the British land forces, Majesty," the second General in Command replies. " The rest is the business of Admiral Tirpitz." The Emperor laughs. "Poor George! It will spoil their English football season. Well, well, it's high time the British had their trousers taken down. Now, Billow, you understand politics. What do you think ? " Prince Biilow advances with ministerial gravity towards the Emperor. "Majesty, what is the specific question?" " Russia, old granite-biter," the Kaiser 172 THE KAISER'S WAR retorts tartly. " Russia. What will Russia do?" -If?" "Well, go on, Billow." "If, Majesty?" " He's a cautious man, this Billow," the Kaiser says as a loud aside to the Com- manding Generals. " If, if why, if I force Austria to assert herself in the Balkans against that little upstart state, Servia, for instance." " By force of arms, Majesty ? " " Certainly. We Germans admit no other force. The question is, if I think a punitive expedition necessary, what will Russia do ? " Prince Billow appears somewhat alarmed. He looks his Emperor straight in the eyes and says slowly " Majesty, it is my opinion that Russia will fight." " Your reasons, Billow ? " " Majesty, all Bismarck's wisdom may be epitomized in one sentence * Never fight Russia.' I have nothing to add. If it is your Majesty's opinion that the Germans can successfully give battle on two frontiers, it is GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 173 not for me to criticize. I leave that to the Commanding Generals." The Kaiser looks very grave at the words, puffs at his enormous cigar, and pauses. " Billow, you were always a Bismarckian. I knew it. But Bismarck never even grasped the necessity of sea-power to Germany. He even went into the colonies half-heartedly. We have done with all that Englanderei. The power of the German Armies to-day is five times as great as it was in the days of immortal William, who led the Germans to victory. You know you said the Russians would eat up Japan. Ha ! ha ! And what happened? Have you forgotten? The little monkeys ate the Russians up. All that the Russians could do was the old retreating game. Do you suppose our German soldiers are not infinitely superior to the Japanese ? Before our Armies the Russians would melt away. That is all we want. We would not follow them into Moscow, like Napoleon. But we would go to St. Petersburg. We would take Finland. We would bombard their ports. We would inflict one or two smashing defeats upon them, which would 174 THE KAISER'S WAR drive them out of Poland, and we would break up the Slavonic hornets' nest in the Balkans." " Remember the Pomeranian Grenadier, Majesty." " Remember the Ides of March, Btilow. You have grown old. So you think Russia will fight?" " 1 do. She has never forgiven us for Aerenthal's coup. We ought to have fought then, for Russia was unready. Grey was very angry about that, too. Don't forget that. These English are great fighters for abstract principles. We should lose our Navy in a war with England. The Anglo -German rapprochement is making marked progress. Old Lichnowsky is a great success in London his wife wears smart clothes, you see. Kuhlmann writes that the peace party is rapidly in the ascendant. The English are growing sick of holding the ropes for France. It can't last long. Trade is splendid. They have quite forgotten our Anglophobia in England. In a few years, we shall be able to satisfy them about the Navy ; I why not 1 See the Emperor's Naval letter about policy and ships, revealed recently by the Morning Post. GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 175 wait, Majesty? Once get England detached, and France would give up the armament race. Then Russia would tail off. I think our German prospects excellent. Never better, if only because the situation is so strained and critical. That is all to our advantage. Patriotism is waning everywhere. In five years the women will sit in Westminster, France will be resigned, Russia in the throes of revolution. Then our chance will come. But now the point of tension is acute. I think we should go warily, all the more as Italy plays cocu to us and is of little military value now. Personally, I don't like the combination England, France, and Russia. I don't think, militarily, it is a nut we can crack, whereas in a few years we shall be able to crack them all separately, one by one." At the conclusion of Prince Billow's oration, the Kaiser strides, in deep thought, up and down the room. " There is political sense in what you say, Biilow, but the immediate ponderabilia are cogent. Servia is growing too strong, too brazen. If Joseph were to die, , anything 1 76 THE KAISER'S WAR might happen in Austria. I don't trust Ferdinand. The next heir is a peace man. We cannot allow Austria to be driven into civil war. Russia is now forced to look to Europe again. She, too has become un- friendly. She is fortifying her frontiers and arming steadily. Her internal situation is very critical. I have it from the best sources that revolution is imminent. You know the principle of statecraft when trouble threatens within, smash it by war without. Now war would make Austria, it might, per contra, save the Tsar. He knows that. He can always count on the Holy War game. I don't like the way Russia is massing troops near our frontiers. She also has got too friendly with England. The Persian imbroglio has not come off. The Army is anxious to avenge itself for Manchuria. And the Slavonic League is growing all the time. Now that Turkey has been whipped, we have lost a faithful ally. We want her back. The Balkans have become altogether too powerful, too successful, too Slavonic. We cannot allow that. Moreover, all the political strategic reasons are in our favour. Russia GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 177 is on the verge of revolution. England is on the eve of civil war. France now is a plutocratic, peace-loving country. One staggering, decisive stroke and the Belgians would be on our side, so would the Turks, with Italy more or less bound to come in. You hear what my Generals say of England's army. True, there is the Navy. But, with God's help, we will save what we can. With the indemnities we shall exact we can build another, three times as powerful. Austria- Hungary could hold up the Russians until we have annihilated the French. My Generals, here, don't anticipate much trouble over that part of the affair. The effects of our entry into Paris would be colossal, poli- tically decisive. We might then make terms with Russia and sweep down through the Balkans to Salonika. Let me hear Hammann. Hammann, what have you to say ? " Herr Dr. Regierungsrath Hammann bows deferentially. " Majesty, all our agents report that England is faced with civil war. The Government is pro-German. The officers in the English Army are in a state of latent 12 i;8 THE KAISER'S WAR rebellion. Any moment blood may flow in Ireland, and when it does, there will be absolute chaos. Kuhlmann is certain about this. Bernsdorff in America is confident that Irish-German American opinion will keep down any pro-English feeling in the States. He has perfected his press organization, and we are now reaping the fruits of it. As for Belgium, England only acts in her own interests. Unless the Belgians dare to oppose our Armies, it is most improbable that England would regard the passage of our troops as a casus belli and if she did, what could she do? On the other hand, Austria is tired of her constant crises and mobili- zations. Our ambassador at Vienna says he is sure he has got the Ballplatz up to the fighting point. He learns that Russia is not ready, but may become nasty, owing to her internal troubles. It is not for me to advise your Majesty. But, in my opinion, the situa- tion for us is favourable. Bethmann-Hollweg is on excellent terms with Downing Street. We could be in France before England had recovered from her surprise. And when she did, she would be engaged with Irish revolution. Such is my humble view." GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 179 The Emperor smiles graciously. " Spoken like a German," he remarks. " I shall have to give you the Red Eagle, third class. Well, Tirpitz, you are silent. What do you think ? " "It is my business to act," rejoins the creator of the German Navy. "We shall lose our ships, I fear. But we have mines. For sure, we will blow up many English Dreadnoughts. In a war of attrition, we might survive. Other- wise, I have no opinion. " " A sailor's speech ! I approve. Now, Krupp, it is your turn/' " The Lord is on our side, Majesty. Under His will, Essen is by far the greatest armament factory in the world. Our new howitzers can eat fortifications. Our new explosives will strike the terror of God into Germany's enemies. Our quickfirers are the best in existence. They will mow down the French. The forts of Paris my "fat Bertha's" 1 will demolish like a house of cards. I can keep 1 "Fat Bertha's" (Dicke Bertha] is the popular name for the great Krupp siege guns, so-called in honour of Krupp's daughter, Bertha, who married von Bohlen, now a Director. It is worth noting how this idea of size is used complimentarily. i8o THE KAISER'S WAR up the supplies. A good war would be a fine thing for our trade. After the Putilov fiasco, I should be delighted to see you whip the Russians. I am anxious, too, to try our metal on the English armour-plates. I don't see any reason why we should hesitate, unless Your Majesty so decides. These peace theorists need a good lesson. They are bad for Ger- many's greatest industry. And Krupps and Germany are one. ' Blood and Iron,' Your Majesty, is Germany's device. I think I can guarantee that the iron part of it will not fall short." " Bravo, Krupp. Old Pan-German rascal. Fabelhaft ! Yes, Bismarck was right there. Blood and Iron Blood and Iron, as the English say, all the way." His Majesty strides up and down, suddenly facing round on Dr. Rohrbach. " Rohrbach, you are a far-seeing fellow. What think you, my dear Geheimrath ? " The ex-journalist, now an important Colonial official, flushes with pride. " Majesty, as you know, I have devoted my life to the German problem. As a literary- economic-historian I " GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 181 " Never mind the introduction, Rohrbach, tell my Generals here what you think would happen if Austria moved southwards puni- tively, of course, mind you. Pun-i-tive-ly ! " and the Kaiser chuckles. " Majesty, as I wrote in the forty-second chapter of my last book on German Culture in Chaldea, 'the genius of the Teutonic race lies in its anthropological manure which, placed scientifically upon ground duly selected, nur- tured and watered, must, by the organic processes of historical necessity and the inten- sive volitional . . . ." " Stop. It is not for you to lecture. What we want to know is, will Russia fight ? " Dr. Rohrbach bows, looks his Emperor in the eyes, and bows again. "Jawokl, I agree with the ex-Chancellor, Prince Billow. She is bound to fight for the Slavonic interest." The Kaiser stops in his walk and faces about. "So /so/ My Ambassador at Vienna does not think so. He says Russia is quite unprepared. What about England?" " The British Navy is still too strong for us." 182 THE KAISER'S WAR "A platitude. I know that. But will it fight ? " " If we invade France swiftly, quite possibly not. I base this opinion on the Irish muddle which will throw the Liberals out." " Enough. That is all I want from you. And you, Mr. President of the Reichstag, what says Your Excellency in the name of the German electorate? You are with us, Hein?" The President draws himself up very erect. " So long as the Father Rhine flows into an alien mouth, we Germans are ready to march with God and Kaiser. It is not for me to judge. But I can assure Your Majesty the Socialists are all right. Treaties of neutrality only exist so long as they are not broken. If we march through Belgium, I don't see who is to stop us. Diplomatic words won't. There is no reason in treaties unless they can be upheld by the sword. That is a principle all we Germans under- stand. As for the advantages of war, we have but to turn to 1870. It is for Your Majesty to decide whether the great oppor- tunity has come." GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 183 " I like your words, Excellency. It is not for you, of course, to judge my Imperial decision. We shall have to call it a Holy War, mark you. A war of defence against Barbarian Russia. I hardly think the English Government will relish fighting on the side of the Cossacks. Eh ? " Prince Billow makes a sceptical gesture. " The point with them will be our access to the North Sea, not Belgium. They will fight for that, Majesty. Believe me. It will be England's opportunity to go for our Fleet. In my opinion, she will take it." At these words the tallest of the Command- ing Generals steps forward proudly. "Los auf England! I say. Let us get to Paris, and we will see." The Kaiser shakes his forefinger chidingly. " No temper. This is not the time. Btilow may be right. The question is : Does Eng- land's interference matter? Militarily, the answer is in the negative." So saying the Emperor notices his financial advisers. " Na ! Mendelssohn," he exclaims, " what about money ? " 1 84 THE KAISER'S WAR " Loans, your Majesty loans. The Ger- man stomach is big." " Ausgezeichnet* Excellent. It can be done?" "All things can be done, if needs be. I cannot say I look forward to a European war. Our trade " " Trade ! Well, there is America, isn't there ? " " There is England, Majesty, too, our great competitor. But it is essentially a naval question. I only speak as a banker. And I do think that the financial difficulties would be terribly serious might even prove disastrous/* " I see. You disapprove." " I won't say that. I fail, if I may say so, to see the necessity of war when we have so many and wonderful results from peace. That is all." " Quite so. But could we fight Europe, say, for a year." "All Europe?" " Eventually. Yes, all Europe." " Majesty, I cannot answer such a momen- tous question offhand. The credit system of the world would be shattered. We should GERMAN CASE RECONSTRUCTED 185 have to resort to Governmental credit. I presume that would be forthcoming." " Of course. We would get it all back from our foes." " Majesty, we can last a year, even two years. But " " Tut, tut ! You see my Generals are laughing at your civilian hesitations. In six months France would surrender. Then, what price Paris, old friend eh ? What price Morocco ? A thousand million indemnity, Moltke says. We will make it five thousand, if you wish." " War is a fearful adventure, Majesty, in the disposition of God. We bankers do not count our chickens before they are hatched." "Mumpitz! You talk like Hamlet's 'Old Mole/ God is with us Germans. He will not forsake us, will He, Dryander?" The Rev. Dr. Dryander folds his hands and shuts his eyes. " Amen ! " he ejaculates, in solemn tones. "Amen!" repeats His Majesty. The Kaiser strides abruptly to the table and bangs it heavily with his fist. " Gentlemen, I feel like Luther. Ich habs 1 86 THE KAISER'S WAR gewagt, mit Sinnen. I have taken my de- cision. To-morrow I leave for my cruise. That will put off the politicians of Europe, and allay suspicions. The mechanism I shall leave to my Foreign Office, with instructions to seize the first fighting opportunity to push Austria into war. I order you all to speak no word to any one of this evening's assembly, to depart and go about your respective affairs. As Dryander says, Amen. Deutschland iiber Alles. So be it. I will inform the Crown Prince of the Imperial decision. To my Generals I say, Be ready. You, Hammann, will bear in mind my irrevocable determination that once we mobilize for political reasons, we will not demobilize. But don't tell Hollweg that. Let him go on mugging with the diplomatists. And don't let Lichnowsky know. He will play goose all the better for being kept in ignorance. Gentlemen, good- night to you ! When we next meet it may be in strenuous times. The watchword out of the Castle to-night is Sedan ! Remember, on the Day, the watchword will be England ! " VII THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM AMONG the academic surprises of the war the breakdown of Socialism in Germany is not the least noteworthy. One often heard it said that German Social Democracy with its great principle of International Brotherhood would prove a national deterrent to any piratical aggression of Junker Germany ; would seriously hamper the military arm ; must inevitably educate the masses up to higher ideas of government incompatible with the martial shibboleths of Pan-German ambition. The prodigious Parliamentary vote recorded by the Party undoubtedly gave support to this contention, which to the theorist ignorant of Germany seemed logical enough. Unfor- tunately, we now know, the only logical thing 1 88 THE KAISER'S WAR in Germany was the Kaiser with his Pan- Germans ; the rest well, it was theory. 1 We went wrong in this country because we were so preoccupied with the " potins " of domestic politics, and because our Press did not regard articles on German Socialism as the sort of stuff the public wanted. The few of us here who tried to point out the sig- nificance of the change that had come over Social Democracy found it hard to obtain a hearing, so blind have politicians, editors, newspaper proprietors, and public men been to the German question the greatest that men who wrote, thought, or spoke ever in history had to concern themselves with in which, it might in this country have been realized, the Party which polled upwards of four million votes was destined to play an important part. Our Liberal Press did devote some attention to the matter, but being more concerned with their own theory of the theory than with intelligent interpreta- tion of fact drawn from Englishmen resident in Germany and otherwise qualified to form 1 Mr. Hyndman did not make this mistake, but then he is not a Parliamentary leader. THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 189 a judgment not necessarily dictated by par- tisan requirements " at home," these Liberal organs quaintly derived their "higher" in- formation from men such as Professor Del- brlick and the Socialist Bernstein Bernstein, in particular, stuffing (and no other word is suitable) our gullible Liberals with notions of German pacificism and German friendship for England, while himself in Germany in- citing the left wing of the German Socialist Party to fall into line with the "practical politics" of modern German Imperialism. Now what Bernstein never told English Liberalism was his own share and success in Imperializing Socialism, a policy which led to a complete change in German Socialist opinion and to his prominent position in the Party there. 1 It is still worth while looking into the question, if only on account of the collapse of theoretic Socialism and the problem which will present itself at the conclusion of the war regarding the Marxian Bible and 1 Bernstein never had much power as a leader. As a writer, however, his influence, direct and indirect, has been enormous. Kautsky, the official theoretician of the Party, has been losing ground all the time. Most of the old Socialist dogma, Germans designate as quatsch (rubbish). 190 THE KAISER'S WAR religion of the masses. To understand the evolution of German Socialism we must go back to the years 1901-2, when the great crisis in the Party theory took place. The author of that crisis was Bernstein, at the time living in exile in England, and it arose over the publication of a treatise he wrote called " The a priori Conditions of Socialism," in which he attacked the whole Marxian gospel. In this nebulous and discursive argu- ment Bernstein exposed the dogma of Marx, the surplus-value theory, the materialistic conception of history the theory, that is, of the inevitable social cataclysm leading (as Marx contended) to the expropriation of the expro- priators through revolutionary class warfare. It was the first German attack on Socialism written by a Socialist, and it came at the psychological moment at a time when German Socialists were rapidly losing the class combative spirit the legacy of 1848 and of Bismarckian oppression ; when already the spirit of new Germany had begun to sap the traditional German virtues ; when the young national opinion had come to look to the Emperor as the chosen leader of the German THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 191 people consolidated by war for greater deeds of race conquest and glory. What Bernstein pleaded for was opportunism in lieu of the doctrinaire class struggle out of which Socialism had arisen, which now, Bernstein argued, had lost its constructive truth in that by its refusal to co-operate with the bour- geoisie, or so-called " parties of order," Socialism necessarily condemned itself to fruitless, because negative, opposition. At the congress at Hanover (1901) Bern- stein was arraigned by Bebel, who, speaking for over six hours on end, anathematized the new teaching as heresy. Bebel's resolution repudiating Bernstein was passed by a majority of 216 to 21, but, in reality, it only amounted to a rebuke, and Bernstein himself telegraphed from London his adherence to it. It was evident at the time that a new era had begun ; that German Socialism was ready to shed not a little of its dogma ; and when in the follow- ing year at Llibeck the whole question came up again, the moral victory undoubtedly rested with what had come to be called " Revisionism." The result of this theoretic controversy was shown in many ways. Bernstein, having been 192 THE KAISER'S WAR pardoned by the Government, had returned to Germany, so that at Llibeck he appeared in person to answer for his " heresies." Instead of being impeached, as the Blanquists in the party desired, Bernstein met merely with oppo- sition, and Rebel's resolution, advocating the subordination of the theory to practice in place of the theory itself acting as the decisive reason, virtually conceded to Bernstein all that he desired and more than he had hoped for. In various ways many of the speakers betrayed a leaning towards a more rationalist Socialism, particularly the Trade Unionists. It was clear that Parliamentary responsibility had killed the old class warfare ; that the Party was beginning to think of itself as a living part of German thought and policy, and no longer as the spirit of revolutionary Proletarianism occupied solely with class warfare and the demolition of the Capitalist State. At Liibeck, in 1902, the party avoided definite results. Bebel seemed to attack with a view rather to defend Bernstein. He was not convicted or reviled, as at Hanover ; he was merely corrected. It had become obvious that the fatalistic theory of Marx was no longer taken THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 193 seriously. In a word, Bernstein left the con- gress with a policy in his pocket, and from that day " Revisionism," or the new purified Socialism, became the intellectual theory of the theory more and more adhered to by the leaders and writers of the Party, more and more acted upon in all practical ways, such as the right to support Bourgeois policy at the polls. The physical force men, however, still predominated. Nor did Bernstein's " Revi- sionism " make more than academic headway until the elections following on the dissolution of the Reichstag in 1907, when the Emperor appealed to the country on the Naval cry of Imperialism. What happened then astonished even the Kaiser. From 79 seats attained in 1903, on a poll of 3,259,000, or nearly 32 per cent, of the whole German vote, Social Democracy sank to 43 seats. The cause of this rebuff was the Imperial idea. Prince Biilow dissolved the Reichstag on the avowed big ship policy. He appealed to Germans to think imperially, to vote for the new Naval programmes ; and for the first time German politicians went "on the stump," as we do in 13 194 THE KAISER'S WAR England, with speeches and a big poster cam- paign. Herr Dernburg, the man who has been sent to America to assist Count Berns- dorff in working the German -American Press against England, travelled up and down Germany making speeches the first time a German Minister ever did such a thing. The Press, acting under the direction of the Foreign Office, organized a huge propaganda ; magic- lantern displays were given in all parts of the country of German battleships, torpedoes, cruisers, with flag-waving, patriotic songs, incendiary orations, and all the paraphernalia of the Navy League and Pan-German organizations. Millions of pamphlets and leaflets were issued illustrating Germany " in danger/' the terrible isolation policy of King Edward, the vital necessity of doubling and trebling the naval arm. Even the Court took an active part in the scare, Prince Billow himself appearing on the hustings. All the societies of " veteran soldiers " were marshalled and paraded about with their medals on their breasts. In short, Germany, for the first time, went election mad. On the night of the elections the public marched with bands to the THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 195 Emperor's Palace, and gave the Kaiser his first Pan-German ovation. At the time, Germans spoke of the "new era" of German Imperialism. The Catholic Centre came back pledged to support any number of Naval Bills in Parliament. The result was startling. The Socialists were beaten beaten fairly and squarely on the cardinal principle of their creed. It was obvious that the working- classes were not opposed to Militarism. From the year 1907 German Social Democracy ceased to exist on the old lines, and became a constitutional opposition party in place of the rigid class anti-national faction under the revolutionary leadership of the veteran Liebknecht. At the International Congress at Stuttgart, Bebel astonished the Pan-Germans by vigor- ously opposing the French motion on the table for International Brotherhood, pleading passionately for the national rights of the army, for nationality, and the flag. The Party began to discuss colonial enterprise. Bebel himself was dubbed the "Chief Revisionist." December 3, 1906, he even went so far as to say that "just colonization," on the English 196 THE KAISER'S WAR lines of self-development and free initiative, would command the hearty support of his Party. From all sections of German Social Democracy, Imperialist tendencies arose. It had become no longer possible for Socialist agitators to capture votes by abusing the Kaiser, by thundering against Militarism, by deprecating the need of more ships, by appealing to the instincts of class warfare. The German workman had grown to be proud of his country's fame. He liked the idea of German ships-of-war. He no longer spoke disrespectfully of the German Mission ; and nowhere was this change of attitude more conspicuous than in Catholic Bavaria, which was in entire agreement with the Emperor's forward policy. In the Party itself it became the mark of distinction for a member to criticize the old theory. Calwer broke out in support of Germany's Tariff policy. Schippel made speeches in favour of conscrip- tion, actually supporting the Minister of War against Bebel in the Reichstag. The whole gospel of Marx became diluted with oppor- tunist makeshifts. If 1907 shattered wooden Marxianism, the next elections vindicated THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 197 Bernstein's Revisionism, and the Party came back in triumph on the Imperialist idea, returned as the one, but now recognized, national opposition open to Germans who, as frequently as not, voted red to keep up the semblance of Constitutional Liberty vested in the impotent debating Chamber called the Reichstag. All kinds of men, German bankers, for example, often voted for the Socialists, not because they wanted Socialism or thought that Social Democracy constituted a healthy potentiality, but simply because, German Liberalism having etiolated into a mere group of dialectical debaters, the Socialists consti- tuted the people's only opposition to the Feudal absolutism of the Kaiser, the sole means of getting home grievances ventilated in fine, the one public platform not directly subservient to official authority in Germany, the Centre always voting Catholic en bloc, and the Right and the old National Liberal Party being avowedly and solidly Ministerialists. Up to 1907 the influence of Socialism on all national questions had been purely negative ; after their defeat, even that 198 THE KAISER'S WAR opposition became controversial. When the disarmament scare arose in 1907, German Social Democracy stood with the nation. I was in Germany at the time. Bernstein him- self told me that the idea of German Socialists wanting to disarm, wanting even to check the Emperor in his shipbuilding craze, was moonshine. I found German Socialists freely admitting as much. The idea of giving back Alsace-Lorraine in the interests of brother- hood and European peace never entered their heads. The notion that the masses were opposed to compulsory service, to Imperialism, to Germany's "right of say" on the seas, to the German " defensive " military policy, was scouted by all the advanced leaders of Socialism in 1907. Bebel l himself stood for a national militia. In England and Germany (published 1907) I wrote : " Socialism is no 1 Bebel was never in doubt as to the disastrous con- sequences of German militarism and repeatedly stated in the Reichstag and elsewhere that aggression would unite Europe against Germany and, in the event of war against France and Russia, would end in the downfall of the German Empire. He admitted, however, that his views were not shared generally by Socialists, and that he could not control the Imperialistic spirit which had intoxicated Socialist and bourgeois alike. THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 199 longer, and henceforth never will be, a decisive barrier to German Imperialism, whatever its course may be, whenever the Emperor may call upon his people to ' realize' it, and wherever he may lead them." And so it has proved. Every German Socialist knew that the German attack upon France would strike via Belgium, and not a Socialist in Germany protested. The Vorwarts, prohibited at all railway stalls in Germany at the outbreak of war, has since been given every encouragement by the police, and can be bought all over the Fatherland. When Dr. Franck was killed at the front, a Govern- ment Official expressed Ministerial grief at the loss Socialism had received. A deputation of German Socialists was sent to Italy to induce their Italian " comrades" to come into the fight with Germany. There has been no insubordination among the masses who made up the last 4,000,000 Socialist poll ; not a Socialist organ has denounced the German onslaught on neutral Belgium or the cause of the war the assassination of a Catholic Archduke. The entire class code has vanished 200 THE KAISER'S WAR with the fatalistic fabric of Marx. At the first shot, confronted with reality, not a theory of Social Democracy, the greatest economic movement and organization in history, survives the gospel of international fraternity is seen to be a hollow thing, unreal and ridiculous. Belgium, the scene of many an International Socialist gathering, the country whither Singer repaired with a party to help his brother Socialists in the great strike of Brussels, has been cheerfully devasted by the proletarians of Berlin and Munich as if Socialism all these years had been the nursery of Imperial strategy and Bebel had been the Kaiser's chaplain Bebel, who for thirty years had denounced with unrivalled eloquence the military "insanity" of Potsdam and predicted the inevitable world-war. All talk, sham, the froth of theory. " Leave the Socialists to me," the Kaiser said in his early days, " I will settle with them." He was right. The great Impresario of Europe knew his business. Before the drum, the whole edifice of Marx and Lassalle, of Engels and Liebknecht, has crumbled down with inglorious precipitancy ; there is not a stone of it remaining. THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 201 Nobody, except an English Liberal, ever expected anything else ; none the less, the problem of Socialism is not thereby solved, nor is the war by any manner of means at an end, nor, in all probability, has the last word of German Socialism been said to the German Emperor. We have yet to see. Strange things may come to pass in the Fatherland. When the German debacle begins, it would not surprise me in the least to hear of a Communist war in Germany, of famine riots, of a proletarian rising against the man and the system responsible for the infamous Ger- man crime against Germany and civilization. But these events belong to the domain of speculation. If, later on, they play their military part in the affairs of Germany, so much the better for the Allies. For the time being, Social Democracy is dead. It has gone because it was a theory that had lost touch with the realities and thought-waves of the time, the survival of a philosophy superimposed as dogma to meet the crisis and coercive legislation of a particular epoch, unadapted and unadaptable to fresh exigencies and conditions which necessarily change and 202 THE KAISER'S WAR modify, whereas theory is a static conception ; because, lastly, German Socialism had drifted away from Marx into the slough of German Imperialism, as far from the ideal which it had set itself to win to as ecclesiasticism has drifted from Christianity. Russia, too, stood on the brink of revolu- tion ; nor can there be any question that it was largely owing to Germany's knowledge of Russia's internal situation that she con- sidered the time propitious for action. What happened in Germany, took place automatically in Russia. The strikes imme- diately ceased. From the hour of the German ultimatum, every moujik in All the Russias kissed the Ikon of War in the name of the " Little Father." As the four million German Socialists marched to the mobilization depots, cursing the name of Russia, so all the Russians, who a day before were preparing for the great revolution which was to free Russia and abolish Tsardom, sung hymns of praise to the Almighty presence calling them against the old enemy. In these seeming paradoxes, which are no paradoxes at all, the philosopher may find reason for contemplation. The THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 203 Germans, at any rate, were under no delusion. Since the death of Bebel, German Socialism has been without a leader. Despite their Parliamentary power, in a country where Ministerial responsibility is non-existent they had perforce accomplished nothing all these years, and latterly their whole philosophy had lost all vestige of the original class fanaticism. Bernstein himself had long ago ceased to be an orthodox Socialist, and was really what we would call a Radical. In Bavaria, under the leadership of von Vollmar, the Socialists were in a chronic condition of revolt against the discipline of Prussian Conservatism. The plain truth is that Marxian Socialism had changed, as the oppressive conditions under which it arose and grew tended to disappear in the orgy of German prosperity and the materialism of the Imperialist idea. Though the German Social Democratic organization was the most serious, the most intelligent, and the most comprehensive in Europe, it collapsed the hour that the Emperor decided upon war in violation of all the principles held up as sacred by Socialists in Germany and elsewhere. As 204 THE KAISER'S WAR Bebel once said, " We Germans are Sieges- betrunken " (drunk with victory). Now that the theory of Socialism, in its international sense, has gone, it will be interesting to see what new gospel will arise from its ashes. In the meanwhile, all that we can find of its attachments are the forlorn and ludicrous figures of Keir Hardie and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald struggling with the mendacious fiction that war was avoidable, while their German comrades pay an Imperial visit to Rome to try and drag Italy into the fight against their " brother " Russians and Aus- trians and French and Belgians, and Keir Hardie's " downtrodden " India rallies to the British flag, 1 It is, to use Marx's historical phrase, the "negation of the negation." Once more we see the inevitable process of self-combustion when theory is confronted 1 There are two splendid things brought out already by the war the right of Nationality and Imperial freedom. Here, Liberalism can claim full justification. Had we not handed over South Africa to the Boers, we would now be faced with another Boer War. The idea of com- pulsory Imperial attachment is proved wrong. This we owe to Liberalism, and it will have to be the principle of all future Imperial policy. THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 205 with reality. German Socialism failed because it possessed no real power in the country, and because the larger numerically it grew, the more eclectic and conscious it became of its nationality both in practice and in theory, and so lost its inherent purpose and per- spective. Ceasing to live for its single cause the end laid down by Marx as the purely economic war to be waged on behalf of Labour it came to regard the movement as the all in all (the Parliamentary vote, the agitation, the number of Socialist newspapers, etc.), leaving the cause to take care of itself. In other words, Socialism forfeited its soul for the materialist success of the hour. In so doing, it over-developed itself: philosophically, into a Party at war with its own beliefs and motive forces ; strategi- cally, into a false position no longer in consonance with the conditions of its time, as German Liberalism had done before it. German Liberalism went down as the result of the success of 1870. There was no longer room in exultant Germany for a non-Imperial Party; and though for years Eugen Richter kept up the opposition 206 THE KAISER'S WAR to armaments and aggression it was merely the lip-service of tradition, and was so regarded by the general public. The arma- ment question split the Liberal Freissinige in two ; what remained of Liberalism in Germany automatically melted into Social Democracy. For the last ten years in Germany Liberalism, as a power, was non- existent. After 1907, the Social Democratic movement had to change its face too. It had to change because Germany had changed ; because the German working-classes were doing very well ; because in times of great national prosperity it becomes impossible to propagate the gospel of economic international altruism. I ought to say that shortly before the war, Bernstein recanted in a lecture delivered at Budapest, wherein he re-accepted orthodox Marxianism and said that Socialism could never make headway until German militarism had been overthrown. This is an interesting fact we ought to bear in mind, though like many a recantation it came too late. It makes me believe more than ever that the solution of the war will come (when the THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 207 German Armies have been beaten) from the German people, who in a movement such as 1848 will free the country from military Monarchism and establish a German Republic. The growing danger in the problem of England and Germany in recent years lay precisely in this distinction of German and English theory applied to practice ; for while German Socialists were growing more practical, more national as a party, that is, we were becoming more theoretical and less national in consequence. That the danger was real we can see now easily enough if only from the curious fact that at the outbreak of hostilities not a member of the four million electorate in the Reichstag found a word to say against war ; whereas here, where we have no practical Socialism but a very influential body of Liberal and more or less Socialist theorists, nearly half the Cabinet resigned, including the nominal leader of the Labour Party, and the working- man Minister, Mr. John Burns. As the trend of opinion was running in the two countries, German theorists becoming more and more Imperialists, and our nationalists 208 THE KAISER'S WAR becoming more and more theorists, one hesitates to think what disaster might not have happened had another five years of peace and mutual delusion been granted to Europe by the sovereign on whose sole pleasure war or peace depended. So long as that was the situation in Europe, neither Social Democracy nor any social theory had a dog's chance. If our politicians thought otherwise, it was because they failed to understand the values of power obtaining in Germany. When Mr. Will Crookes called for "God Save the King" at Westminster, our theorists, at any rate, received their answer. They may be left to it. All the same, it will be for us to decide which threatens the greater danger to the State : a huge party of theory which, in practice, has no power as in the case of German Socialism suborned in the national purpose of the whole ; or a small body of theorists possessing actual power in conditions of popular Government, as in England, where insular theory gravitates unconsciously into a sloppy and emasculate sentimentalism calculated (as we can see from Sir E. Grey's THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIALISM 209 quixotic efforts to bring into line public opinion with the requirements of military necessity and of the national honour) to lame Governmental action in the hour of the gravest crisis. It is a problem which must concern at no distant time not only Social Democracy in whatever form it may re-arise, but very seriously the constitution of Statesmanship. VIII ENGLAND AND GERMANY THE capture of Antwerp after a few days' siege has naturally struck the imagination of the world, though militarily it is only an incident, so far as results are concerned, in the German operations on the western theatre of war. None the less, the fall of the city marks a stage in the " fiscalization " (as the Germans say) of Belgium, which enables us to form certain conclusions, both military and political, clearing, so to speak, the air. At the end of the first quarter of the war, we can take stock as it were. And Antwerp provides us with a salutary lesson which our footballers and other unthinking people will do well to take to heart. It is this not to underrate the foe. Without question, the capture of the great fort, commonly supposed to be impregnable, ENGLAND AND GERMANY 211 and regarded even by military opinion till the eve of its fall to be the strongest fortified position in Europe, was a remarkable achieve- ment the work of the Austro-German siege guns. No object can be served in pretending otherwise. We now know that these Krupp siege guns, provided they can be got into position, go through forts as easily as our cavalry is said to go through the German Uhlans, like brown paper. It is one of the revelations of the war. The fortification "expert" has been proved wrong. The Germans, who have long boasted of their "secret" siege guns, have established a new truth in military science, to be set beside the now admitted value of aircraft, 1 which may be said (in contradistinction to what was told us before their use was put to the proof) to be the second and true "sight" of the artillery. In considering the task before the Allies, we must take this gun factor of the Germans into 1 As long ago as 1907, an enormous national fund was started in Germany to experiment in aircraft. Here, we did little. It was the Press in London which forced our War Office to take the matter up. And this we owe in quite special manner to the initiative and prescience of Lord Northcliffe. 212 THE KAISER'S WAR account. We must assume that the German forts, Metz, Strassburg, etc., are provided with these weapons, and that the passage of the Rhine when the time comes for the French and British Armies to force its passage will be defended by them. People who think the Germans are going to be easily driven back across the Rhine are seriously mistaking the resources and qualities of the enemy, and it is right that they should be disillusioned. Apart from the military value of Antwerp to the Germans as the base for operations in the air, and possibly by sea, against this country, and as a defence work in conjunction with Namur, Huy, and Liege when the Germans are forced back out of France (for which eventuality the capture of the fortress was, of course, undertaken), a political lesson attaches to its fall which concerns England in par- ticular. It was Britain, the German Press said, who forced Antwerp to defend itself and so undergo the horrors of bombardment ; it was England who brought this needless misery upon the inhabitants of the city- England acting selfishly in her own interests. At the outbreak of war, the intervention of ENGLAND AND GERMANY 213 the British Army was regarded with derision. German soldiers would make a point of " wiping out " the British Army, characterized by the Kaiser as " contemptible." But contact with the British forces in the field soon chastened this impression, which has since changed into one of ferocious hatred. The rejoicings in Germany over the fall of Antwerp took the form of an anti-English demonstration. Im- mediately, we were treated to the nonsense of a late October invasion. To the Germans, Antwerp brought London sensibly within their grasp. Antwerp was a victory over the British, a stage nearer to the German conquest of England. So politically, 1 Antwerp points its lesson, even if in its incidence the German hatred is rather impotent than effective. All the same, this explosion of anti-English feeling is instructive, brushing away the last 1 Antwerp renders also the question of Holland's neutrality highly "actual." Germany is doing a big business all the time through Holland ; her agents are coming and going daily. Nothing can go on here that is not thus made known to the Germans. The Dutch papers know much more than we do about the movement of troops, etc. In this respect our Cen- sorship is sheer ostrich folly. 214 THE KAISER'S WAR vestige of doubt the wildest sentimentalist among us may have entertained regarding the justice of British participation in the war which, as the Germans have informed us, is aimed primarily and essentially at the over- throw of British power. This hatred has, of course, been the dominant reason of German policy ever since the Kaiser ascended the throne. It was first apparent as a force in German public opinion at the time of the death of the Emperor Frederick, when antagonism at the presence of Sir Morell Mackenzie, called in as consulting physician, burst all bounds of national decency. German antipathy to the Empress was ascribed by many people here to her want of tact, her somewhat assertive personality which chafed at the formalities and restrictions of a Court to which she was foreign ; but in reality it was due to no such reason. The Germans hated the Empress because she was English, because her sym- pathies, habits, manners, and outlook brought into the Court, which Germans were deter- mined should be fiercely and racially German, a point of view hateful to the new national spirit. Since the war of 1870 it had become ENGLAND AND GERMANY 215 the burning desire of Germans to emancipate their foreign policy from attachment, whether dynastic or otherwise, to England ; to cut adrift from what was called the " Prussian tradition." To this day the Empress is spoken of with execration. At one time it was common for German officers in public places to rattle their swords in their scabbards at the mention of her name. Hatred of her became almost a legend. It is true that the high-spirited Empress made little attempt to correct the impression public opinion had formed of her, but her real fault consisted in her nationality, for which she was not respon- sible. If we wish to understand the depth of the German hatred of this country, we must remember that it dates from the day of the proclamation of German unity in Paris, since when it has been nurtured and upheld as an axiom of Germanic truth. Nor is it an exaggeration to say that the popularity and almost mystical power of the Kaiser, who consistently shunned his mother till the recon- ciliation at her death-bed, has been due to the significance of the Imperial Head of German opinion as the arch-hater of Great Britain, 216 THE KAISER'S WAR whose power he was " destined" to cast down. We have often wondered in this country how it is that the Germans have seemed so unwilling to discuss matters of foreign policy with us, to receive and accept our confidences, to treat us with the friendly spirit we would fain have bestowed upon them. But those who wondered, simply failed to understand. Theorists and political match-makers who thought that German and British policy could be brought into line ; that a common bond of interest could be found on a broad and generous basis of give and take ; that the sympathies of the two peoples could be united by Treaty or understanding (such as our Entente with France), failed to grasp the root-passion governing German thought, policy and design which, ever since the creation of the German Empire as the result of war, may be said to have consisted in hatred and envy of England. Well-wishers in this country who have tried so hard in recent years to bring about pleasant relations between England and Germany were continually being brought up ENGLAND AND GERMANY 217 before the hard reality of this German feeling, which, as they failed to conceive it in them- selves, they therefore were unable to appre- ciate in the Germans. To these people the idea of a permanent German hatred seemed nonsensical. The notion that England stood in the path of German destiny seemed fantastic. It was not possible that the great and learned German people should hate the English, and so on ; and these premises looked good enough. In reality they were merely theories, because they left out of account the other side, the German estimate of values which from the German point of view were precisely the contrary. In German opinion, Great Britain was in the position of the great landowner who refuses to sell his land. She possessed every- thing, they contended all the colonies, all the power, all the markets, all the cables, coaling- stations, naval bases, all the outlets she desired, which she maintained by her monopoly of sea-power at the cost of the non-seafaring peoples. England was thus the Great Tyrant of civilization. All her possessions had been obtained by force, by piratical seizure, and 218 THE KAISER'S WAR by her policy of grab and diplomatic dis- honesty. The pirate kingdom of the modern world, she was able to hold her position because she had been the first to grasp the value of sea-power, whereas the other nations had always been too preoccupied and too unadventurous to challenge it. But this con- dition, a condition which implied fixture of continuity, could not be accepted by the new German people conscious of their own historical purpose, for there was no per- manency in the world ; moreover the very acceptance of such a condition presupposed a weakness entirely alien to Germanic thought and dignity. If sea power was indispensable to the English, so it was indispensable to Germans. As it was, Germany could not develop. Wherever she attempted to impose herself, English interests crossed her path. Even from the abstract view of force, England's claim was unfounded. The ultima ratio of Right was Might. But the British Empire had grown out of all proportion to its defensible possi- bilities. No self-respecting nation could accept the claim of any one people to rule the seas ENGLAND AND GERMANY 219 indefinitely. In the case of Great Britain the claim was particularly arrogant, since the Island people who swept the seas were ludicrously weak both numerically and mili- tarily in comparison with the growing power and significance of the Germans at last coming into their own. Such, in brief, is the German exposition of the case which, whether it be called Pan- Germanism or Kaiserism, constituted the bed- rock of opinion in the Fatherland while we were seeking to pacify the Germans by pretending it was not so. The truth is that the Germans for thirty years now have looked upon England as the real enemy, the last obstacle to their self-realization. And it is this spirit of envy and hatred which has lain behind the German theory of War or Valour, which prompted the Kaiser to build up to our Fleet, which inspired Pan-Germanism, which sucked in its coils the brain and intelligence of the country. That is why every attempt made on our side to placate German opinion, to discuss shipbuilding policies, and to talk disarmament, has seemed to the Germans but one stab more into the national pride, one insult the greater to avenge. 220 THE KAISER'S WAR The hatred the Germans bear towards us is no artificial product capable of adjustment through the soothing influences of time and persuasion, it is a racial philosophy of life. As such it has become not only a policy but a national doctrine. As the theory of the 4 'top dog," it appealed to the German people, who long ago made up their minds to be the first in the world, in plain words to fight their way up to European supremacy by land and by sea. In a people which holds itself by some special dispensation of Providence to be the chosen warriors of the modern world and the pathfinders of the higher civilization, com- mitted, as it were, by predestined law to win to the place thus assigned to them, this hatred of the rival Power is seen to be logical, if to others it may appear unreasonable. There is moreover an intellectual force in the notion of a higher Germanic culture, which naturally appeals to a race characterized throughout history as nationally uncertain of itself. Codi- fied as a State ethic, envy is apt to demoralize any people. When magnified into a religion its effects are bound to be disastrous, as we see in the case of Germany. Every nation ENGLAND AND GERMANY 221 has the right to break out, glibly writes Bernhardi. In a creed like this, of course, there is no romance or chivalry or nobility. Merely the doctrine of greed, the German hatred is in every sense an ignoble attitude, the law of the jungle. That it is aimed principally at us is due simply to our maritime position the prize of German ambition. History can present no other case of national envy being raised into a scientific statement of life, such as the German attitude. Thus the object of the war was to crush France not only in the ordinary military sense but to annihilate the French race. For years this policy has been discussed by Germans of all classes and accepted as the German right and intellectual privilege. Maximilian Harden, for instance, bluntly formulated the German aim and even abused the Government for not being honest enough publicly to admit it. Once France had been reduced to a vassal State, necessarily drawing Holland and Belgium into the Germanic Federation, Ger- many with a wide sea-border would be in the position to cope with England. No bourgeois German ever considered the morality of such 222 THE KAISER'S WAR action. Not a professor ever rose up to denounce the criminality of such a statesman- ship. The notion that learning necessarily implies nobility of thought is unfortunately a peculiarly English assumption though purely arbitrary and erroneous. We never credited the Germans with these fell intentions because of our astonishing ignorance of Continental thought and our childlike assumption that an intellectual German must therefore be a moral German, in the sense of international comity so far as the maintenance of treaty obligations, honour, respect for the rights of other peoples and such-like abstract principles are concerned. But nations have different codes of morality, whether of the State, the Devil, or the flesh. Napoleon, for instance, saw life differently from President Wilson. Frederick the Great, again, looked on Europe with the predatory cynicism of Napoleon because he, too, was a soldier. A nation of soldiers, such as the Germans, are not likely to cultivate the attitude of, say, a Presbyterian Radical. But we never considered that. It never occurred to us that a man and a people may be very intelligent and yet politically most rapacious. The mistake is ENGLAND AND GERMANY 223 costing us dearly. When the German news- papers accuse us of being responsible for the war because we never declared our intentions there is a cynical truth about the assertion which we cannot refute. The question arises what constitutes morality in the national sense. Was Talleyrand immoral ? Was Crom- well, who gave us the Navy ? Was Frederick, who made Prussia ? Was Pitt, who would go on fighting France ? Can, in fine, political morality be reduced to any static definition ? What about the Papal wars and fighting eccles- iasticism ? I cannot pretend to answer. But I do know that had we announced officially in the House of Commons about the middle of July our firm intention to fight for France if that Power was attacked, in all probability the war would have been avoided, though, I admit, only postponed. As Bernhardi says, " There is a clear reciprocal relation between the military and political preparations for war, for war and policy obey the same laws ; great results can only be obtained where political foresight and military resolution join hands." This has been we can all see it now the great danger in Europe ever since 1900. 224 THE KAISER'S WAR The great military Power preparing for war as the ethical reason of State, while Great Britain, as the leading Power on the seas, sought by peaceful protestations and "good example " to solve a problem which, as it stood for force, could only be solved by force. Instead of being ready to meet the German invasion, we were caught hopelessly unpre- pared like a lot of amateurs. Although this war has threatened Europe for ten years, and actually five times was on the verge of breaking out, we took no precautions, grumbled even about building ships. Warned again and again, to-day we have no right to complain. If a man tells you he is going to fight you in three years, but first he is going to learn boxing and jiu-jitsu, and you still make no preparations to meet him, well, you are " looking for it," as they say : and such was our attitude. Our unpreparedness was precisely what the Germans counted on. Where they went wrong was in their estimate of our national spirit it never occurring to the logical and methodical mind of the German that a nation which, realizing the peril, yet took no steps to safeguard or even assert herself, could ENGLAND AND GERMANY 225 possibly be so inconsequent as to accept the German challenge and then set to work to meet it. If we consider this single fact for a moment we can realize the gulf dividing British from German thought, the impossibility of reconciling such antagonistic points of view. To the German professors, this military- political carelessness of ours amounts to criminality. They cannot understand how a people can be so foolish, just as we cannot understand how the Germans can be so politi- cally immoral. Tell a German professor that, and he would gasp. Immoral! How so? For years, he would respond, Germany has proclaimed the intention of war. " If a man has the chance, is he not to take it ? " Even Charlemagne said that. There can be no immorality about a policy explained in every German newspaper for the last fifteen years, in every professorial chair, in every responsible utterance. Rather is it immoral for a nation, like the English, to pretend that they were the friends of a people whom they now denounce as wicked for doing the very thing they have proclaimed to the world as the national policy and religion, and so leading 15 226 THE KAISER'S WAR the German people astray. The German supposition was that as England did not prepare to oppose Germany, therefore she did not intend to oppose her. From the fullness of our hearts we may thank our stars that the accident of Russian co-opera- tion has saved England from the ruin that otherwise would have overtaken her with France. That is the reason why the German hatred is now directed chiefly at us. If we failed to grasp the military situation before the war, let us at least understand the political one which we shall have to face now for a century. Our intervention has thwarted the whole German military design. Had we I failed Belgium, as the Germans counted on, that country would hardly have struck at Li^ge. Our ships have swept German commerce from off the seas. Our valiant Expeditionary Army held up the German flanking advance at the crucial moment. The entire Western Campaign has miscarried largely owing to our 1 Diplomatically, of course. This was the work of Sir E. Grey. Had he flinched, Belgium might pardonably have been overawed. To her, the Allies owe all. ENGLAND AND GERMANY 227 armed support. These things the Germans will never forgive us. The hatred they bore us before the war will henceforth be doubled. We must prepare now to meet the full venom of German rancour on the field of battle and in political life. No greater mistake could be made than to assume that this war will be terminated by ordinary paper treaties and conventions, by conferences of so-called dis- tinguished ambassadors, with the usual lack of results either to the victor or the vanquished. This war will be the most terrible in all history and the most fiercely disputed. No parchment documents can settle it. The problem is not one of statesmanship or Kings. As a racial movement, it will only be ended with the military destruction of that race crippled of its power for evil. Any other view is misleading. Its final solution from within, through the German people is more than probable, but that time is not yet ; nor is there any use to-day even in discussing such an eventuality. From henceforth the war bears the character of this racial German hatred which aims at our destruction. We must reckon with every con- 228 THE KAISER'S WAR ceivable act of German diplomatic treachery 1 and machination ; we must prepare for every possible surprise. As time goes on and Germany realizes the impossibility of defeat- ing the Allied Armies, she will endeavour by every means known to man to stir up enmity between the Allies, to detach them, to create discord and trouble in the British possessions, to sow distrust and propagate falsity in our midst, with one end in view to crush this Island. If there is any Englishman to-day who expects that on the termination of the war Briton and Germany will shake hands and forget, he must be indeed a pretty simpleton. The Germans will not forget. We, on our side, must remember that to render powerless a nation of sixty-eight millions, not to speak of the Austrians, is a task never before attempted in war, a task which would have staggered even the vanity of Xerxes. That is the situation. To refuse to face it is folly. From now onwards the 1 Since this was written we have the evidence of the German Boer rising and the Turkish entry upon the field, not to speak of the secret overtures to France. Desperate attempts will soon be made to buy off Russia. ENGLAND AND GERMANY 229 Germans and the British face one another as implacable foes fighting for their respective existences. In the struggle, either we go down or the Germans. There will be no golden mean. We are the enemy the Ger- mans seek to destroy. Either they succeed or we as ruthlessly destroy them. Decisions can only be obtained by untir- ing and unconquerable effort. That the Allies will eventually obtain those decisions we may count on, because the three great elements of successful war money, 1 time, and sea-power, not to speak of numbers (a con- sideration which will only make itself felt as the war progresses, each month proportion- ately to the disadvantage of the Germans), are against Germany, whereas the longer the war is protracted the greater economic damage the Allies will be able to inflict upon trade and the internal situation of their adversaries. The equation of attrition (of life and substance) is thus all on the side of the Allies. So much so that we can say with mathematical certainty that a two years' war will damage Germany five 1 Mr. Lloyd George's " silver bullets." 230 THE KAISER'S WAR times as much as a one year's war, and a three years' war ten times as much as a two years' war. But to belittle German arms is merely foolish. The German advance on Paris was an astonishing feat. That the German war machine is terribly efficient, we can admit. All the more confidently we must realize not only how imperative for civilization it is to crush it, but how resolutely we must make up our minds to bring about this consumma- tion. This result can only be effected by prodigious sacrifice and endeavour. The Allied Armies are fighting the most powerful enemy that ever took the field of battle, a nation trained for war, who have thought out the present contest to the minutest detail, a people who will go down fighting. Against the military organization and spirit of Germany the idea of a speedy victory must be put aside. The war that has broken out is in its primitive instincts a racial movement, as in all its moral and philosophic motives it is a nation's struggle for supremacy, for historic life and being. It is thus a civil war, in the sense of a civilization which, as the result of decades of careful ENGLAND AND GERMANY 231 preparation, has deliberately set out to beat down and impose itself upon another civiliza- tion according to the laws which govern the fittest. Such a contest must be fought out with the desperation and ferocity peculiar to all civil war. Nor should we forget that no people know the horrors of civil strife better than the Germans. The wars of Frederick, the Thirty Years' War, the Peasants' War these are the historic memories of the Germans. To imagine they will shrink from the superhuman task they have taken upon them, is to misunderstand the German char- acter and spirit. To Germany this war means literally all or nothing. On both sides the struggle has assumed the terrible intensity of life preservation : for the Allies who are fighting the cause of Liberation ; for the Germans in the grapple of existence. We may make up our minds to that now, in the spirit of the foes who confront us. Are we downhearted ? No, we are not ; nor have we any reason to be. Thanks to the Russians, the Franco-British forces have more than held their own ; one may say that the pitch of the German attack has been foiled. 232 THE KAISER'S WAR All the same, there are signs that we do not yet recognize the full nature of our respon- sibility. Just think. On the Saturday that a grotesquely ill - equipped body of Naval Brigade raw levies were sent into the Antwerp trenches to fight (without head coverings against shrapnel fire), which the men did like veterans, our newspapers were full of reports of football matches. I am not casting any aspersion or suggesting that troops ought not to have been sent there. I refer solely to the bathos of the situation. The presence of Mr. Winston Churchill at Antwerp for the week-end showed how singularly our Naval Minister under-rated at the time the powers of the German attack on the fortresses ; that is the point. This schoolboy spirit may be magnificent ; the question is, will this slap- dash method prevail against the war science of the Germans ? The cheery-o attitude is all right, but is it sufficient? Is it good enough to thrash the Germans ? Mr. Churchill has done his business well. We may be thankful that he is at the Admiralty. The question is the relative value of this system pitted against an Empire which has prepared ENGLAND AND GERMANY 233 for this attack on Europe for ten years unremittingly ? We hear of M. Anatole France, now a pioupiou at the front. We read in our Press of every Belgian liable for service (1914) called up to proceed to Rouen, while our association matches go on as if nothing was happening at all, as if the essential thing was " business as usual." That is an admirable precept, but it is not the essential matter in a war which is nothing less than a racial struggle, so far as we are concerned, for the mastery of sea-power. Those who doubt this will do well to read a book written by an American, Mr. Homer Lea, published a little while ago, which has not attracted its due attention in this country. He sees in Germany one single purpose militarism devoted to develop the fighting powers of the Empire to its fullest extent for the political end of maritime and European supremacy. He sees in England a fatalistic adhesion to theories and ideals which take the form of unreality. "The old ideals which produced the World-Empire have been laid aside. The warlike spirit is only of secondary consideration ; it is hardly anything further 234 THE KAISER'S WAR than that spirit of commerce, slothful and satiated with the accumulation of things which are useless for national and racial progress." These words are partially true. It is the cause of our present predicament. We may say that, after all, as we did neglect to have an Army, therefore we cannot expect to play the same decisive part in the war that France will play, still more, that Russia will play ; we may even go further and plead that if the Russian Armies fail the Allied forces on the Western front will never be able to bring about the desired decisions the argument is merely negative. Militarily, the sole purpose of the British Navy is to remain mistress of the seas : it is thus essentially a defensive arm. If every ship in the Kaiser's Navy was sunk, Germany could still overrun Western Europe ; we would be no nearer to victory ; on the contrary, a victorious Germany would be two hundred miles nearer us. The Army alone possesses the power to decide a war with Germany and to bring about peace in condi- tions which will secure the existence of our World- Empire. If it is essential (as Ger- mans assert) for the future greatness of ENGLAND AND GERMANY 235 Germany to destroy the Anglo-Saxon world- dominion in order to build up her own Teutonic Empire out of the ruins, it is equally vital for us to shatter that military Power which jeopardizes our rights of maintenance. Our refusal to admit this elemental military axiom has placed us in the weak military position we now find ourselves in. For all ultimate decisions, we are dependent on the Russian Armies so containing the Germans that we, with the French and the Belgians may penetrate into German territory, and there bring about the necessary decisive blows. This attitude is what has been called by military writers the " limited activity " idea. It is the direct opposite to the German and to the continental method which has to face " un- limited war," or operations on a theatre of war which strategically must be regarded as unlimited. Reliance on this historical English method has indeed been one of the chief arguments of the German military staff who, reckoning upon the rooted aversion to com- pulsory service in this country, have founded their offensive upon our well-known restriction which places us on the military defensive, 236 THE KAISER'S WAR reducing us for purposes of Continental war- fare to an auxiliary arm. Against 5,000,000, obviously an army of 250,000 men, however efficient, can avail little. And this con- sideration is really the key (so far as we are concerned) to the situation. 1 It is at once military and political. We are doing our best ; we have accom- plished marvels ; we are showing what voluntary effort can achieve at a moment's notice. All this is splendid. In a war of this kind, however, the foe must be met with "full strength." France and Belgium certainly are fighting at full strength Belgium has been shot into a country of smoking ruins and devastation, France is a great battlefield and hospital. We must remember, too, that battles are no longer decisive, but must be regarded rather as incidents. In a war of trenches and siege guns results cannot be expected to be swift and annihilating. The longer the line, the more difficult it is to turn it. 1 The most casual study of history teaches us not to rely too much on military Alliances, which have a peculiar way of resulting in a " sympathetic " war. Thus we fought for France in the Crimea, but we did not help her in 1870, and we nearly fought against her over Fashoda. ENGLAND AND GERMANY 237 Hence the German initial dash, the one way, they claimed, to secure the advantage which, as we know, has now failed. The parallel battle is in itself a campaign. From Mons we fell back to the Marne, from Marne we advanced to the Aisne, from the Aisne we wheeled up to the extreme north-west of France, and though there have been fifty battles, each as big as Waterloo, there has so far been no decision. When the Germans fall back they will prob- ably entrench at Antwerp, Liege, etc., and again on their frontiers ; then there will be the line of their fortresses, finally there will be the great strategic line of the Rhine. On the eastern side, there is the Winter. If we consider these things we can see that this is not the time for the half-measure, for theory, or amateurishness. Yet so far as we are con- cerned, the war is a contest between system and want of system, or, if we like, State effort versus the voluntary spirit ; the former scientific and comprehensive down to the electric hair-cutting machines of the German Armies, whereas we rely even for our men on the voluntary system : it remains to be seen whether we can afford to fight this war 238 THE KAISER'S WAR on our traditional military method of limited liability ! So far, the great German strategic offensive has not been successful, though perhaps mainly because in a war on two frontiers they attempted too much. The three dominant and new factors in a European war- enormous masses, weapons of unprecedented deadliness, and the great variety and efficiency of observation and communication- have played their part in unexpected fashion, as they did in a far lesser degree in Manchuria. More than ever personality is seen to be the important thing already the British soldier is said to feel this advantage over the foe. Artillery has almost reduced conscript rifle-fire to a minor consideration. These things tend to a slower mobility. The larger the masses of troops, the greater the difficulties of feeding and supplying them, and so the lesser their tactical mobility. The increased effectiveness of weapons makes the danger zone infinitely larger and more exacting upon the moral of the troops. The more efficient the means of communication, the more the armies depend upon their use, ENGLAND AND GERMANY 239 and the greater the difficulties when they fail. Though the Germans have maintained that the offensive is more than ever im- perative the offensive of extreme rapidity they realized even before the war that decisions would only be achieved rather by means of a campaign within a campaign than by the old-fashioned battle which was generally decided one way or the other by nightfall. And it is for these reasons that they have laid such stress on trained troops as against numbers or mere masses of levies. The whole German military science may be summed up as tactical efficiency and strategic mobility, on which principles, we can see, they have acted in both France and Russia. This, of course, leads to the offensive as the first law of success, though German writers have freely admitted the great difficulties of the modern attack. In considering these matters, we must therefore prepare for a slow war a war of long-drawn-out movements, especially as we have to face the gun factor of the Germans, On the other hand and events would seem rather to point that way the offensive, unless with overwhelming 240 THE KAISER'S WAR superiority, is so difficult and costly in modern conditions that the great axiom of German strategy may be proved no longer applicable, the strategical advantage rather lying to-day with the defensive. In which case the great loss of life on the part of the Germans in the early stages of the war will redound more and more as time goes on to our advantage. In any case, progress is necessarily slow. As surprise has largely been eliminated from the strategical offensive, the frontal attack be- comes more and more inevitable, leading to conditions which contain many of the elements of stagnation. We will be wise not to count on pulverizing victories, on Sedans. Indeed we have need of all our stoical calm and patience. In an individualist State such as ours, where every man claims the right to criticize, complain, and take sides, and objects very fiercely to all idea of State system, control, and discipline, it is far more difficult to rouse the nation to the nature of its task than in Germany where there is one single authority and one single response. It is this national attitude which makes the German Army such an efficient fighting ENGLAND AND GERMANY 241 machine, which will lead the Germans to fight with desperation when they are pushed back into their own territories. It cannot be said that we have yet risen to the nobility of the war. I have heard Englishmen openly expressing sympathy with the Germans, raising " grave doubts " about Sir E. Grey's policy, even denouncing the war as unnecessary. In a little debating society where, only a few weeks ago, I advocated conscription, I was astounded to find pronounced opposition, and not only that, but theoretical hostility even to our participation in the operations. This sort of talk is no doubt not to be taken too seriously. Clever people, we know, will be clever, and in a country where paradox has come to be regarded as the mark of intelligence, it is to be expected. But no paradox will avail against the German Armies or the German organization. There are still many people in this country who say, " Sooner than con- scription, let us be beaten/' People who talk like that ought to be put down. This is not the time for sophistry. The really extraor- dinary part of it is that the very men who 16 242 THE KAISER'S WAR speak in terms of abstract sympathy for the Germans are the tub-thumpers on political platforms who crusade in the name of Liberty and Progress, Jesus Christ and Reform the very things we and the Allies are fighting for. It is the difference between British and German thought. We may cherish our in- dividualistic spirit, of course, but in war nothing but the fighting spirit is of any use. The man who does anything to damp the war enthusiasm of the people might just as well put on a German Pickelhaube and join General von Kluck's army, for all the good he is to England and to the cause oi Liberty. There is too much of this " clever humanitarian " talk going on. There are matters upon which these indi- vidualist gentlemen might well turn their reforming activities, and one of these is the question of allowances to soldiers' wives and dependents. There have been and are serious delinquencies in this matter. As was to be expected, the War Office got into a muddle through overwork, insufficiency of clerical staff, unbusiness-like system, red-tape, and the usual fog of officialdom. Yet surely the proper ENGLAND AND GERMANY 243 course is simple and obvious. It should be a national duty to care generously for the dependents of soldiers. Since the Napoleonic wars, we have had no such crisis as the present one. It might have been expected that the Government would have risen to the nobility of such an act of love and charity. So far, there has been no sign. We hear through letters in the Press of disputes as to compulsory allotments, of the soldiers at the front cut down to threepence a day. Is this decent after all the pother of Old Age Pensions? Surely we ought to do the thing nobly. It is the Government's opportunity. We ought to have a special War Provisions Loan, as the Americans did, if it cost this country ten millions a year, an expenditure which would only last for a generation and decreas- ing sensibly all the time. The richest people in the world can well afford it. Is the Government going to look on, as it shut its eyes to the spy question ? This matter, of course, should have been (from the day of the German ultimatum) a purely military concern. A Home Office which showed itself chicken-livered about a 244 THE KAISER'S WAR few women is not likely to understand the German spy system or take the proper steps to deal with it. The Governmental laxity in this respect has been seriously indict- able. All non-naturalized German males are naturally hostile in spirit to this country. Two months ago they ought all to have been rounded up, segregated, and kept under military watch. The afternoon handling of this question is far more calculated to help the enemy than the fussiness about the light- ing of London is to harm them, a regulation which from the aeronautical point of view cannot seriously be regarded as a deterrent either to the German airman who managed to hover over the City, or to his aim (once he got there) upon so vast a target. It would be much better to have light upon London than darkness in high places. A month or so after the outbreak of war, Mr. McKenna stated in the House that the police had the spy system under control. A more fatuous statement was never made in the House. He made it in the same spirit of theoretical hallucination that induced the ministry before the war to believe in German ENGLAND AND GERMANY 245 pacificism and friendliness, because he never considered the nature of German espionage such little things, for example, as the laying of concrete beds, etc. it never occurring to him that the Germans could be so " wicked " as to prepare gun positions in time of peace and goodwill. It is the old curse of Liberalism the assumption of virtue in others. In the same way, the Government allowed the notorious adventurer, Karl Peters (called the Hangman for his atrocities in Africa) to leave this country, with the result that he is writing daily incendiary articles in Berlin trying to induce his countrymen to maltreat British residents and captives in Germany. Any one acquainted with Germany could have told the Government on no account to allow Karl Peters to leave these shores ; the man is a born intriguer and capable, for he has great ability and energy, of causing real mischief. It is most desirable that we should treat all German captives well. It is equally necessary that we should regard the German problem within our midst as a military one. The result of this sentimentalism is that nearly three 246 THE KAISER'S WAR months after war broke out the Home Office, at the instance of the Press, public opinion, and regrettable incidents gets excited and arrests Germans right and left. In a question of this kind, amateurishness is seriously harmful. Another matter is the quality of the cloth provided for the New Army. l There would seem to be no expert control. The Government's price is too low to get anything but poor material, and that, on the contract system, is not kept to. Why is there no control of the cloth ? Why, anyhow, should the men who offer themselves to fight for England be furnished with the cheapest stuff procurable ? They ought to have the best. After all, it is our money, the public's coin, that the Government is using. Why does our Liberal Government the Government of Old Age Pensions, etc. clothe these soldiers with a suit, price 285. 6d. ? The stuff does not compare with the cloth of the German soldier ; much of the stuff provided is shoddy, unfit for rough service, simply owing to the lack of 1 Perhaps I shall be called a pro-German for referring to this matter. But the prevalent idea that Britons can only bear the cheery-o, I hold, is un-English. As for the Germans, they know all about our cloth, etc., thanks to our laxity about spies. ENGLAND AND GERMANY 247 expert control ? Here again we have the muddle and incompetence of the laissez-faire school. I hesitate to speak of conscription, for of course you cannot make an army like an omelette and, if we had it, one shudders to think how we could house the men, or train them, or equip them, far less provide them with artillery, horses, etc., seeing the serious difficulties that have arisen in connection with Kitchener's Army. None the less I say in all seriousness, conscription we shall have to have, unless we are to rely on the limited area theory of war, which means that we leave the decisions to the Russian and French Armies. If there were certainties in this world, one might count on others doing the work, but we cannot count on certainties. And the issue of this war is every bit as important to us as it is to France or Belgium, and far more so than it is to Russia, who is in the position of fighting merely a war of interest. Now we are fighting for race, for sea-power, for life, precisely as France is. Our cup-ties go on, our boxers box, our horses run, yet we are infinitely more threatened by the German ambition 248 THE KAISER'S WAR than Russia is, on whom we militarily depend. Is it wise for us to fight this war on the limited activity scale ? There are such things as disputes among the Allies, as history shows, as we saw the other day between Servia and Bulgaria. I say unhesitatingly that the only safe way to fight this war is with full strength, not looking at the present to a victory here, an advance there, but to events in perhaps a year's time, when all Germany is fighting behind her own railways for existence. There can be no compromise now. To make terms with the Kaiser, leaving his military system and resources " intact," would be a treachery to humanity, and would result, within a few years, in a second outbreak in conditions which might be more favourable to the forces of Germany. The idea that the Germans are to be allowed to " cease firing " when they please on conditions permitting them to declare the result as a " drawn war," as an honourable conclusion to an honourable fight this is unthinkable. A peace which left Germany with " honour impaired" would be not only a crime, but ENGLAND AND GERMANY 249 the blunder of sheer madness. There is no State honour in Germany left to talk about. The Germans must be fought to their knees. No other course is open. The duty of the Allies is to crush the Kaiser and his bandit armies with the entire system, creed, and culture of Hohenzollern aggression. Bismarck once narrated to the Reichstag how he had decided about the French forts in 1870, M. Thiers having told him that if Belfort and Metz were both demanded the French could not make peace. " I asked Moltke," Bismarck said, "and the soldier replied : ' Metz is worth a hundred thousand men/' So Bismarck took Metz. Unless the Allies fail to bring about an absolute decision, they will have to lay down (in the spirit of Moltke) the military conditions necessary to safeguard Europe from another German onslaught, in the cause of national and personal Liberty. But first of all they will have to beat the Germans and stamp upon their Hohenzollern civilization. The question is not what we would like, but what measures the military requirements demand if we are to carry on this war to the 250 THE KAISER'S WAR desirable conclusion. It is no good saying, " O, the Russians will soon be in Berlin," or, " O, the French will soon kick the Germans out of France," though we all hope that they will ; the point is our responsibility as a decisive factor. Although this has been explained time after time by Lord Roberts, many people still befog themselves with illusionary idealism, instead of realizing that in times of action and critical necessity only military considerations avail, and that the only thing that matters is the obtainment of the end in view. When the soldiers have done their work we can get to work again with our theories and political construction. But that time is not yet. From the point of view of decisions, the war is only beginning. It is still a long, long way to Berlin. All our energies and resources will be required in one long and concentrated effort, the greatest we have ever been called upon to make in history. We can be optimistic, for with the aid of Russia ultimately we shall win, and the longer the war goes on the surer the fruits and certainties of victory. We ought however, to prepare for all contingencies, for all ENGLAND AND GERMANY 251 complications and conjunctures. A war which ended with a half-decision would leave this country as pledged to militarism in its acutest forms as Germany has been for the last decade under the Hohenzollerns. We are fighting for every ideal and principle of what is called Liberalism. Let us remember that this struggle of two irreconcilable civiliza- tions must now in all its ultimate bearings be fought out between England and Germany. Ubc Gresbam press CNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED WOKDfG AND LONDON A FEW RECENT PUBLICATIONS The Diplomatic History of the War This volume is the first complete record of the events preceding the war. It includes a Diary of Negotiations and Events in the different Capitals, the Texts of the Official Documents of the various Governments, full report of the public speeches in all the European Parliaments by the leaders of the different parties concerning the War, an account of the military preparations of the countries concerned, and much original matter. Edited by M. P. PRICE, M.A. Medium Svo. 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