,UC-NRLF &'J«Sr*iSTi«W,-MKrti:.iiSS* *B 2bS 7S=J ^^ IP'KT iriND AND GERMANY AUSTIN HARRISO: Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/englandgermanyOOharrrich ENGLAND AND GERMANY ^^(^ MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON . BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO ENGLAND & GEEMANY EEPUBLISHED FROM 'THE OBSERVER' BY AUSTIN HARRISON MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1907 -2--^ c« • < PEEFACE These letters, which appeared originally in The Observer, are reproduced, with the kind permission of Lord NorthclijfFe, at the request of a number of people known and unknown to me, who thought them worthy of preserva- tion. A few corrections and expurgations have been made, and they have been slightly added to. Otherwise they stand as I wrote them, partly while travelling abroad. If they suffer from tautology, I would submit the opinion of De Quincey, that in a newspaper tautology is a virtue ; as for the iterative method, that, in dealing with a problem of this nature, was part of my deliberate intention. Since they were written a calm has fallen upon Europe ; the relations between England, Germany, and France have sensibly improved. Not one whit the less the problem of power V 293276 vi ENGLAND AND GERMANY and Empire remains — I claim — as it is here stated. For the rest, as the German Queen, '' Great Catherine " of Russia, said : " All politics are based on the three words — circum- stance, conjecture and conjuncture." The wise State provides accordingly. Atigust 1907. WF CONTENTS CHAPTEE I PAQS The April War Scare 1 CHAPTEE II King and Kaiser 23 CHAPTER III Germany and The Hague ..... 39 CHAPTER TV Social Democracy . . . . . .61 CHAPTER V German Growth and Prosperity . . .71 CHAPTER VI The Materialism of New Germany . . .92 CHAPTER VII The German Press: Its Uses and Misuses . 110 vii viii ENGLAND AND GERMANY CHAPTEE VIII PAOK War Training of German State Economy . . 128 CHAPTER IX The Germanic Problem of Power and Empire . 143 CHAPTEE X The Line of Least Resistance . . . .162 CHAPTER I THE APRIL WAR SCARE To an island people like ourselves — safe in the investiture of the sea, with no boundaries to protect, and no army (as Continental peoples understand the term) to defend them — a " war panic," whether actual or latent, is a state of national unrest happily unknown, and to most Englishmen, even as an idea, almost unin- telligible. The very word *' panic '' is un- English and foreign to the native spirit. We are on the eve of The Hague Conference. English editors are shortly to be entertained in Germany. To us the world seems full of good things. Our Liberal organs see no panic anywhere, no unrest, no crisis, no sign of dis- turbance, nothing but good -will, fraternity, peace, and political concord among all Sove- reigns and all peoples in Europe and elsewhere. ^ fiENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. Have we not Mr. Stead on the cosmopolitical peace " stump " ; Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- man wielding a journalistic pen on behalf of disarmament in The Nation^ and the Daily News throwing out mysterious doubts as to the political wisdom of the King's travelling politics ; while only the other day Mr. Beer- bohm Tree, standing in a box with the Crown Prince and Princess of Germany, was com- pelled for very safety to thank his generous audience for their enthusiastic reception ? To write, then, of a German war panic will, I am prepared to hear, be treated as a good or bad "joke" by some, dismissed as sensational journalese by others, and, no doubt, be anathe- matised by the Liberal Press, by Peace hunters, idealogues, and humanitarian publicists as a flagitious attempt to sow discord and enmity at the very moment when ''Noah" in all his wisdom is bidding the militant "barbarians" of the Continent to enter the Ark of Peace in the shady grove called the Huis ten Bosch, And yet in sober earnest I assert that all through April a very real war panic existed in Germany, and that at this moment a " crisis " exists which, in the opinion THE APRIL WAR SCARE 3 of all competent observers, and admittedly by Germans themselves, is more genuine, wide- spread, and serious than any which the German Empire has known since its creation in the halls at Versailles. A German war panic ! Well, I know what many of our snug politicians and writers will say. Ignorantly, blindly, such a statement will be stigmatised as Germanophobia, party politics, deplorable perversity of cosmopolitical understanding, perhaps even as the reprehen- sible expression of personal animosity. Four weeks ago — when the crisis in Germany was most acute — I should have been inclined to think so myself. Before I came to Germany to see and sound for myself, I, too, was in- clined to credit the opinion our Liberal Press would have us believe — that Anglophobia was no longer a reputable tenet in Germany, and that the basis of a healthier, kindlier, and more rational spirit of fellow-feeling had been laid between the two great nations of such vast economic importance to each other — the two most vital peoples in Europe to-day. I would I could say it was so. The con- 4 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. trary is the case. I have been disappointed. Instead of decreasing since the Boer War, Anglophobia has increased in scope and in- tensity. At the time of the war we were told that the bad feeling would blow over and dis- appear, that Germans were unripe, sentimental politicians, that they would change, and that reason would return with time and reflection. But, as Madame de Stael wrote nearly a hundred years ago : " La reflexion calme les autres peiiples : elle surexeite VAllemand,'' Such certainly is the case to-day. The German Empire is literally in a state of nervous excite- ment, tension, and overwrought sensitiveness of poor augury for the issue of disarmament, which, by the way, Germans, one and all, Liberal, Socialist, and Conservative, openly repudiate as an " impertinent and preposter- ous proposal." I state a fact when I say that at this moment an electric war-current seems to be in the very air. It is not a "fit of nerves," a foolish outburst of hysterical fright, such as occurs " on 'Change," but a deep-seated, con- scious — one might almost say conscientious — war scare. For months and weeks past the THE APRIL WAR SCARE 5 German Press has been full of it. It is the talk of all serious German politicians, the leading topic among earnest young men, the joke in comic operas, music-halls, and the stock piece de resistance of the entire German comic Press. During the Moroccan crisis with France the public, and even the Army, never took the matter very seriously. "What is Morocco to us ? " Germany would say. No one really thought Germany would go to war on that issue ; there was no public enthusiasm about it ; to most Germans Morocco was re- garded as one of those ''incidents" which occur in diplomacy, as they do in the best regulated families from time to time, but about which the general public has little honest concern. It is different now. In the Army, war, the plan of campaign, the probable date of the outbreak of hostilities — these are the staple subjects of private and mess conversa- tion among officers and men. There has been no silly braggart talk, no sharpening of swords on Embassy doorsteps (as before Jena), no visible and untoward sign of military prepara- tion. But all Germans have known about it. 6 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. In the, *' Moroccan days" officers would laugh and jest about the likelihood of war, but few seriously believed that it would come. Quite another tone and opinion obtain to-day. I believe I am well within the boundary of fact when I say that during all last April the Army honestly regarded war as the most probable issue to the tension prevailing, and that dis- sentients from that opinion were in a small minority. And no longer is war jested about. The conviction that war is probable, the opinion that it was on the point of breaking out, have brought about a quiet feeling of determination and resignation to fate. And at this moment, in the opinion of most oflScers, the crisis, if over, is none the less latent, and, in so far as its fundamental causes are concerned, hardly one whit less dangerous and acute. In the Navy this opinion is even more apparent. As the whole cause of Germany's panic is England, and as the German Navy would necessarily be the first objective of the British ofiensive, it stands to reason that the German Navy views the idea of shock between the two navies with no little apprehension. In naval circles the conviction that the British I THE APRIL WAR SCARE 7 Navy may at any moment emerge from a Channel fog off the Elbe or Bremen seems to amount almost to an obsession. Naval oflScers tell one candidly that England desires to de- stroy the German Navy before it grows too powerful, and nothing that one can say in re- pudiation of this hypothetical contention makes the slightest impression whatever. Two years ago, at the time of the first Moroccan crisis, there was a similar naval panic. All leave was stopped. During that month of May every officer in the German Navy thought war was a matter of hours. And, the other day, a similar opinion pre- vailed. I questioned a naval officer, whom I have known for some years, as to the reasons of this, and he said that it was the profound conviction of the entire Navy. " We are getting too strong to be agreeable, you see. England will never permit us to build a really strong Navy, that is, a Navy powerful enough successfully to contest her supremacy at sea. Oh no, I don^t suppose you hate us Germans. But you are a practical and cold -reasoning people. The Liberals are the same. Some day, any day, it may occur to your statesmen 8 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. that the German Navy constitutes a menace to your power, or may in ten or twenty years do so, and the moment that opinion is shared by your statesmen action will soon follow the thought." In vain I suggested that no Power nowa- days could invade another like the Huns of old. In vain I pointed out the imponderabilia of popular government in England, the peace- ful nature of Englishmen, the desire shared by most Englishmen to live on terms of amity with Germany and all other peoples — my naval friend shook his head and smiled good- naturedly. ''Ah," he said, ''you English are a very clever people. But pray do not think we are deceived by your plausible protestations of peace and good-will. You sent your ships to us off Swinemiinde to show us the strength of your fist. You know that the synonym of life is strife ; that a nation which does not strive, will not or cannot strive, is a decadent and dying one, and that only those nations are vital who are prepared to, who can, and who will fight. Well, both you and ourselves can, and will fight, if necessary. We are not I THE APRIL WAR SCARE 9 building a fleet to destroy yours, but we are building a fleet to be in the position to defend our colonies, shipping interests, and rights, should you ever challenge them. " What we feel is that you are growing uneasy about our ' baby ' fleet. You think it may some day be strong enough to give you serious trouble in the event of war, and (though you don't say so) you are all secretly turning over in your minds whether it ought to be permitted to grow or not. Therefore, small as our fleet is as compared with yours, it is our duty to be ready. There are no ethics in statesmanship. England never troubled herself with political morality. We think that your whole policy is directed towards this one end — the isolation of Germany and the annihilation of her fleet. And we think, too, that the situation warrants our fears and justifies our 'readiness' and forward sea, and naval construction, policy.'' That evening I dined with a high ofiicial in the Government service and heard practically the same thing. '^ Nations, as individuals, have a fate," said he ; ** ours was to follow in the wake of our own history. But that has 10 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. changed. We are now abreast of it. To-day we have a conscious national spirit, a conscious national aim, a conscious national destiny. Historically, perhaps, we are still a centrifugal, somewhat antagonistic mass, but actually and potentially we are inherently one, a solid political and economic hegemony. We too have a mission in the world to fulfil, as you had when Raleigh and Drake laid the founda- tions of modern British Imperialism. To-day we are sixty millions of Germans. In twenty years we shall be eighty millions. Are we dullards, fools, a weak or ignorant race ? Are sixty millions to be dictated to by any Power ? Can eighty millions be dictated to as to their own economic future ? The idea is folly. We arose late in the world. Circumstance was against us. To-day all Germany is one ; and the future lies before us. "Yes, there is a crisis between England and Germany, and it would be useless to deny it. It is not a sudden outbreak, it is not an old woman's scare. But the air seems charged with warlike electricity. The feeling in Ger- man military, oiB&cial, and private circles is that England sooner or later intends to make THE APRIL WAR SCARE 11 war on Germany, to crush her fleet, destroy her trade, ruin her future, and reduce her to penury and Anglo-Saxon vassalage. It looks rosy enough, you may say, with your Peace Congress and concatenation of friendships and alliances, but we Germans know what pointed dagger is hid in the lining of your white peace mantle. There never has been so serious a crisis before. We feel now that England is purposely setting about isolating us, destroying our prestige, alienating our friends, segregating us from the rest of the civilised world with the ultimate intention to humiliate us and sweep our naval power from oS the seas. The two most powerful Powers in Europe stand facing one another ; the one young and bursting with hope and endeavour ; the other of mature age, jealous of the young giant, undecided, wary, and uneasy. The crisis is real. The two Sovereigns are playing like wrestlers with one another while seeking for a hold. I can only say that had England a con- tiguous frontier to Germany there would have been war when your King went to Gaeta." Quite briefly, the main causes of alarm are these : — 12 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. Primarily, the activity of King Edward, and the legend existing in Germany that the King is animated by personal feelings of hos- tility to the German Emperor. Secondly, the policy of the Liberal Govern- ment in connection with disarmament at The Hague Conference, and particularly the article written by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in The Nation, Thirdly, the discovery (for it is a discovery to Germans) that the Triple Alliance is for all practical purposes — for purposes, that is, of offensive and defensive war — a torso, the Italian leg being an artificial cork one. Fourthly, the concentration of the British naval arm in home waters. Fifthly, the entente with France and Spain and the likelihood of one with Russia. Sixthly, the wane of German prestige at the Horn, and the difficulties placed in the way of German railway policy in Asia Minor and Persia — that is, the Baghdad railway. And, lastly, the feeling that Germany's forward policy has ended in her almost com- plete isolation and in the frustration of her THE APRIL WAR SCARE 13 overseas Imperialist ambitions — as in Morocco by France and England ; in the Far East by her alienation of Japanese sympathies, so that while France effects an insurance treaty with Japan to safeguard her Asiatic possessions, Kiao-chau stands useless and indefensible, a mere political oasis ; in South America by the Monroe Doctrine ; and in Turkey by the un- expected resurrection of British prestige there, which has redressed the balance temporarily deranged by the Emperor's championship of the Moslem people and religion. I think Englishmen should take careful note of the nature of German alarm. Not so long ago it was the object of Pan-German ambition to sever the tie of kinship between German and Briton — rupture with England being the a 'priori condition to the success of their Imperialist policy and doctrine. And this, it may be said, they have succeeded in doing. Looked at impartially to-day, this profound unrest in the German Empire con- stitutes a perpetual source of danger not only to ourselves, but to Europe generally. And the danger is not the less from the singular conditions, chaotic, almost anarchic, prevailing 14 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. among those responsible for the direction of German foreign policy. There is no one man, no one brain, no coherent aim or direction. In England we think the Emperor is the sole manager of Germany's foreign affairs, that he is responsible for every move, and that the '' Wilhelmstrasse " exists but to carry out his injunctions. This is not strictly the case. The Emperor went to Morocco against his own better judg- ment, and the retirement of that mysterious man at the wheel nobody knew anything about (von Holstein) ^ was one of its results. It is said openly that Prince Buelow does prac- tically no work now except prepare speeches ; and though this is certainly a popular ex- aggeration, there can be no doubt that if he still holds the reins he no longer holds the whip to control the pace. Sometimes the steed of State falls asleep in its amble, then as suddenly it prances forward at the flick of the whip slily administered by no one quite knows who; perhaps by von Tschirschky, perhaps by Herr Hammann, perhaps by some ^ Von Holstein seems now to have regained the ear and con- fidence of the Chancellor. THE APRIL WAR SCARE 15 extraneous influence at Court or elsewhere. That savage pessimist Maximilian Harden, in his organ Die Zukunft, weekly pours out his invectives on the system and the va banque policy and Government, which one day sends a paean message of peace to The Tribune, and then causes the Koelnische Zeitung ferociously to attack it, and then to deny itself — all intrigue, croupier politics, confusion, chaos, and back- stair camarilla artifice. In very fact, almost Russian bureaucratic anarchy seems to prevail in the German Foreign Office. Every one is said to be pulling some one else's leg ; some- times the Chancellor scores, sometimes Herr von Tschirschky (nicknamed *'the pale, silent one") ; then the Emperor puts his foot down, and so on. Nor does there seem to be any coherent singleness of diplomatic purpose in German Chanceries abroad. And to all this there is the war scare — general malaise and unrest. I am simply stating what everybody here knows and, more or less openly, is saying. In Bavaria I find growing and serious dis- sension at the personal government of Pots- dam, and a strong feeling among the Catholic 16 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. sections of the Empire that Berlin is the cause of Germany's misfortunes in the realm of in- ternational politics. The recent Navy League demonstration at Koln showed that for the Navy all Germans — Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and Gentile — are determined at all costs to build the *' great fleet'' so ardently desired. But, none the less, there is a growing feeling in South Germany that the direction of German foreign policy is fitful, aimless, need- lessly big-mouthed and boastful, and in effect irritating to other nations, a failure and a source of danger to the interests of the Empire. I record this feeling because more is certain to be heard of it. The elements of discord are present. Berlin thinks the Catholic centre has been '^ smashed." In Bavaria I find they think the ultimate solution will be the creation of an Imperial Privy Council (not the Bundesrat) to control the Wilhelmstrasse and Prussian autocracy. If the Emperor tries to smash German Catholicism the HohenzoUern dynasty is doomed — such is the prevailing opinion in all German Catholic centres. When one considers that in addition to all I THE APRIL WAR SCARE 17 these German doubts and problems there is a large and influential (and I use the word deliberately) Press systematically inculcating anti- English sentiments into the German political mind, and conducting a continuous polemical campaign against England and every word and action of the King, and that Germany is smarting under the supposed taunt of la nation persecutee, it will be seen that there is good reason to keep a sharp look-out from the poop. Ever since Algeciras the German Army has been spoiling for a fight — officers, men, and the public feeling that Germany was deliberately thwarted in one of her legitimate ambitions there, and, internationally, passed through the Caudine Forks. In the picturesque language of Americans, there is no getting away from this proposition ; it forces itself upon you at every pike and corner in the Fatherland. We must remember, too, that the Emperor is still '' unknown," as he has never yet been put to the great test of war, and that, although of an intensely religious nature, he — perhaps for that very reason — remains psychologically an enigma, a religious mystic, as Lord Rose- 18 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. bery said of Cromwell. Germans feel that they are too strong to be flouted, and that humiliation has gone far enough. '' Quousque tandem ? " the Army is asking. " Where are the first-fruits of German maritime policy, pro- claimed with drum and cymbal for the last fifteen years ? " the old and wise are inquiring. Already serious people are contemplating the abandonment of Kiao-chau. And the colonies? Ah, Germany only has a few bare strips of territory, which England does not need — news- papers and the economic professors bewail. Japan has secured for herself world-dominion and prestige ; Spain is in the ascendant ; France is '^ on top " ; England everywhere, Italy rebellious, and even Egypt a national hegemony under British tutelage; but Germany has no greater Empire, is hemmed in within the confines of the Continent, and at every step and turn finds the Union Jack fluttering in her face. That is the situation, briefly, as Germans see it. To pretend that it does not contain serious elements of danger is to misunderstand the power, the spirit, and the genius of the German people. On the eve of the Peace Conference, THE APRIL WAR SCARE 19 Germany stands in the centre of Europe in mailed coat defiant, exasperated, determined, at bay, as it were, with her right hand on the scabbard. It would be folly to ignore her attitude or fail to grasp its potential signifi- cance. Old Germany is dead : the new generation, saturated in world-political dreams and ambitions, has been educated to the understanding of a forward maritime policy. The women are as enthusiastic for the Navy as are the men. All Germany believes Eng- land is bent on her destruction. It is a significant fact that whereas formerly Germans accused their Emperor of over-zealous ambi- tion, dangerous personal and national ex- pansiveness, and reckless enthusiasm, now the voice of the people — since Algeciras — taunts him with "prudence, political pusillanimity, and over -careful regard for other people's feelings.'' The Elections showed that the Radical wing and all Liberal sections are pronounced militant Imperialists. Since then the Socialists have declared publicly for a national army. The young are fired with the new spirit of Pan-German Imperialism, and mothers educate their sons in that sense. 20 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. The King has become a nightmare to the whole German - speaking race. The Hague Conference was regarded as one of the most diabolical plots ever conceived to entrap and ruin a nation. This is no hyperbole, but solid, sober fact. The crisis in Germany caused by the new ''international physiognomy" is, I repeat, real, profound, and universal. At the present moment there is a welcome detente in the situation, but the ingredients of the crisis remain. All the Foreign Offices of Europe are perfectly aware, as is our own, that it was not so much the travelling policy of the King as Sir Henry's disarmament proposal and his article in support of it which last April produced in Germany not merely a crisis, but a serious official war scare. I shall treat that matter subsequently in a special article ; for the present I will only state that the German Foreign Office — until Sir Henry made his recent speech, which fortunately cleared the air — honestly believed that the proposal was a deep-laid plot to isolate Germany at the Conference, and, by roping her in with a network of Powers in I THE APRIL WAR SCARE 21 intelligent collusion with England, thus to place before Germany a disarmament ulti- matum of peace as the only alternative to war. Among other numerous attacks on The Observer, one in the Berlin Post is worth noticing. In a long article it accuses me of distortion of fact. But on April 27 the Post published an article declaring that England and Germany '' stand in the sharpest possible rivalry" to one another — a rivalry which *'may grow to be unbearable to one or the other party." I quote : " Horror of war may possibly defer for a while a decision by force {geivaltsame Auseinanderset^ung), but it cannot prevent it." It is because this opinion, though not frankly expressed, is held by so many thoughtful Germans that I believe open discussion of the matter is the best — maybe even the only — way ultimately to pre- vent it. To burke the question is neither to understand nor to answer it. I am conscious of having given a true picture of the German crisis, and I think we in England should know how deep and serious it was. Nobody in England dreams of attacking Germany — Germany cannot "get at us." The issue lies 22 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. i beyond the Vosges. Even as the bells were chiming for peace at The Hague, Germany was considering whether that tide in her affairs has not arrived which, taken at the flood, would lead to fortune. CHAPTER II KING AND KAISER If the Kaiser taught Germany to talk, the King, it may truly be said, has taught her to think. King Edward has become a German obsession. Ein schwieriger Herr, as a charm- ing German lady described him to me ; "he has de Vavenir dans V esprit,'' said a wit ; the greatest statesman living — such is the opinion of all Germany. The King, Germans tell one, has invented peace to make war ; he has revived the Sovereign right, and in two years changed not only the political physiognomy of the world, but the very meaning of reason of State and the whole scheme of diplomatic attainment. He has shattered the Bismarckian tradition of political accomplishment by blood and iron, establishing in its place a policy of ''peripatetic suavity and purpose," and 23 24 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. redressed the balance of British power and prestige — raising them higher than they have ever stood before — by the science of applied coalitions. And in the polarity of King and Kaiser Germans think they read an unwritten page of destiny. The truth is that all Germany labours under the delusion that the King is actuated by motives of hostility to German policy and by personal feelings of antipathy to the German Emperor. When Herr Bassermann, leader of the National Liberal party, made what we considered so " extraordinary " a speech, when Prince Buelow spoke of the Einkreisung policy, when Deputy Semmler told a French journalist that the situation was very critical, and when German news- papers published article after article on the '' genius " of the King's policy — from journalist to Chancellor those utterances reflected the true opinion of all thinking men in the Fatherland. The legitimate, entirely pacific, and healthily egoistical (in the Bismarckian sense) policy of the King is construed in Germany as a care- fully conceived plan to isolate, thwart, and humiliate her, and by a concatenation of KING AND KAISER 25 alliances thus to "round" her up in the European compound and so finally bend and break her. Harden in the Zukunft argues that the object of the King is not so much to break Germany — Germany is too powerful for that — as to annoy his nephew. I find that the view is held pretty generally that what is going on in Europe is a personal duel between King and Kaiser : a Royal joust of avuncular contrivance — civilian performance versus martial verbosity. Few Englishmen probably realise the intense feeling created in Germany by the King's visit to Gaeta. It was regarded as a personal provocation to the Emperor, as a public demonstration of un- friendliness and a knock-out blow to the Triple Alliance. Since then a more sober view obtains. Not a few well - balanced speeches have been made. But that does not alter German opinion as to the King's "travelling politics." After Gaeta — Peters- burg ; the police cordon then will be complete, the coalition network patented, primed, and ready for action. To understand the cause of German un- 26 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. easiness it is essential to take a sympathetic view of the rise and development of New Germany. The war of 1870 completed what Stein and Sharnhorst, Bllicher and Yorke began. As time wore on and German trade leapt forward with unprecedented success and rapidity, the German genius awoke to new ambitions and ideas. If Bismarck, the great magician, gave her the wonderful lamp, Aladdin, in the form of the young Emperor, taught Germany its use. The old ship of State was scuttled ; the old Pilot was sent his way down the ship's ladder. As proud and ambitious as the founder of his line, William II. set about keelhauling the landlubber Philistine of Old Germany, and on the truck of the nation's tallest mast raised the flag of oceanic trade and dominion. Instinctively Pan-Germanism arose in sympathy. A wave of naval transport passed over the land. Germans became intoxicated with the exuber- ance of their national success. Having smitten France to the ground, they naturally thought of smiting England. Things moved so rapidly that Emperor and philosopher alike lost all balance and proportion. The people KING AND KAISER 27 grew vertiginous. German power seemed to be borne forward irresistibly on some tidal wave of fortune. In a word, from a purely European power Germany became a bold bidder for the world's economic hegemony. Berlin grew to be the centre of Empire and all business, and Berlin was Prussia, and Prussia, after the fall of Bismarck, was the German Emperor. A spirit of aggression arose. And about the year 1895, while Europe was yet in doubt as to what the hydra of Germanic unity denoted, the Potsdam bubble boiled over. It was this spirit that led the Emperor to send his historical telegram to President Kriiger, to speak of himself as "Admiral of the West," to adopt a tone and style of oratory in keeping with the manners of some feudal baron, and to regard himself as the chosen crusader of neo-Germanic Lutherism. He came to look upon himself as appointed by divine right, as a second Charlemagne. He set about cultivating miniature Drakes, Ealeighs, Frobishers, and "Jacky Fishers." He became intensely religious, intensely sensi- tive, intensely earnest. He encouraged the 28 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. martinet spirit of discipline in the army intro- duced by Fritz's father. He saw the sea, seaweed, and the wrack of tempest in every thought and action of State policy, and reflected it in every Imperial utterance. He photographed Europe with himself He in- vented telegraphic statesmanship by throwing Germanic meteorites about with regal reck- lessness and munificence. He sought to outskip his own orbit. The world looked on askance, while Ger- many thus waxed high and mighty with Tappertitian gravity and circumstance. So Germany plunged headlong into South America, into China, into South Africa, and wherever she plausibly could do. Old Barbarossa's ravens seemed destined to Germanise the globe. In the year 1900 the German comet drew its illuminated tail in splendour across the heavens. But, as comets of the skies, so those of this cosmos have a way of changing their shapes in sudden and unexpected fashion. The Chinese adventure proved a snapdragon. Monroe and the rise of America accounted for the South American problem ; and when the Venezuelan imbroglio took place Germany II KING AND KAISER 29 learnt definitely that the Hohenzollern flag was never likely to crest the great waters of the Amazon. In South Africa the sun of Germanic unity turned out to be but a moon, and the Boers bayed manfully at it in vain. Suddenly the mailed fist policy grew vacil- lating and suspicious. The Emperor com- mitted the obvious mistake of alienating English sympathies by too open enunciation of the German programme. Instead of nurs- ing our national insouciance, he put us, as it were, in the corner. Instead of playing up to the role we at that time were only too willing to assign to him — the role of sporting champion of up-to-date medievalism — he turned Potsdam into a " Thrasonic " keep of world portent and pretentiousness. The result of it all has been not a little surprise and disappointment. Germans are ready now to admit the failure — temporarily — of their oversea policy, and the failure, in great part, of their European one. Some- how or other Germany has always put her money on the wrong horse, always managed to find her stirrups too long or her saddle too loose to take the hurdles comfortably and at 30 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. the right moment. Overestimating her own power, she underestimated ours. England was considered by all Germans a few years ago to be decadent, emasculate, and effete, and they failed to credit our traditional capacity for "muddling and seeing things through." She thought the Bear was " on top," the old Lion under. It became the fashion even to cast reflections on the efficiency of our Navy. Well, now Germany has experienced herself some of the difficulties of the Empire " busi- ness." It is easy to call for a hornpipe, it is not so easy to dance it. It is easy to look big and important, it is not so easy to prove it. It is easy to will, it is not so easy to achieve. The German mind has thus grown sensitive and bitter. And then, too, German policy has been so hidebound in Bismarckian principle that it has lost that elasticity which is essential to meet the exigencies of new conditions and times, and the result is a certain stockiness in the German State direc- tion. At the present moment (May 1907) the German ship has run aground. There is a little water in the engine-room, and a good KING AND KAISER 31 deal of nautical language on the bridge and in the fo'csle. That is why German alarm is a really- serious matter to Europe and to us. If we pause to think we may well sympathise with her. The swoon of success has left her in a condition of relative failure, and like a strong man deprived of his fight, the nation is fretful. Holy Roman Empires are not made in a decade. From the State nostril there breathes forth a spirit of restlessness and superb defiance. I will recapitulate briefly Germany's chief failures. Over the Spanish-American war she managed to irritate America. During the Boer War Prince Buelow committed the mis- take of his life when he rejected Mr. Chamber- lain's outstretched hand in deference to home opinion ; and the attempt to form an anti- English coalition failed through Russia's ambition and preoccupation in the Far East. There came the war in Manchuria, and again Germany failed. To the last moment she declined to believe in the outbreak of hostilities, and, trusting in her military expert opinion, she backed — Russia. Thus 32 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. Japan was alienated, and with Russia's defeat the whole fabric of German Far Eastern policy fell headlong to the ground. Years before Pan-Germans had pointed to Morocco — and so to Morocco the Emperor went. She failed — counting on the legendary " perfidy " of Albion, and, with singular political short- sightedness, having neglected to '' cultivate '' the young King of Spain and so obtain the support of the one other Power materially and historically interested in Moroccan affairs, and by reason of traditional national antipathy naturally disposed to dispute the French claim there. And at Algeciras she found Italy not only dancing an " extra turn,'' but stepping a cordial pas de trois with England on the one side and France on the other. Thus in the two great convulsions in the last decade — the Boer War and the struggle for supremacy in Far Eastern waters — convulsions which were bound to alter the balance of power in Europe and the Far East, German diplomacy failed, and with elemental precipitancy her world position has been changed and — for the time being — her very motive action palsied. And yet one more failure. She failed to believe in the II KING AND KAISER 33 possibility of an Anglo-French entente and in the wisdom of England's big ship policy, so that she now has to spend over two hundred million marks to deepen and widen the Kiel Canal. What are the results ? Take the Far East. There before the war China presented a vast field of international economic possibilities. '' Roll up the map of China ! " the Kaiser may well exclaim to-day. The magic chrysanthe- mum has reduced German ambition in the Far East to an historical dream. Even the international fleets have gone. The future of China depends on the penetration and educa- tional policy of Japan — and on the Chinese themselves. Tsintau, the port of Kiao-chau, has become useless, strategically and potenti- ally, and the territory itself a defenceless oasis — an asset of Empire only in name. There still remained French Cochin-China — but now the French have insured themselves there with Tokio, and are thus able to reduce their garrisons and increase, not immaterially, the home defence. Coming to the Near East, we find German influence on the wane, British prestige higher 34 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. than it has ever stood before there. The Baghdad Railway policy is marking time ; the plans for colonising Asia Minor, Germanising the trace of the Anatolian Railways scheme, refertilising Mesopotamia, peopling Chaldea, establishing corn granaries in Syria, Babylonia, and Arabia, and realising Moltke^s dream of German dominion in Turkey —what are they still but plans, anaemic, academic, hypo- thetical ! And the " sick '' man is credibly reported ill. How different it might all have been had German military judgment of Russian efficiency been more accurate and discerning ! In the Balkans Germany's hope of " playing the Waldersee'* has, since Algeciras, almost vanished. The "jumping - off " board of German Turkish expropriation policy — which lay in Austria's Drang nach Osten, or natural gravitation towards the East — has lost its spring by the troubled relations between Austria and Italy ; by the defeat of Pan- Germanism in Austria ; by the rapid growth of Hungarian power, and by Austria's " ethnic troubles " generally ; by the rise of Bulgaria and the rolling back of Russian power and interest to their original confines. The KING AND KAISER 35 struggle between Teuton and Slav, Magyar and Teuton, have increased rather in intensity. The fate of the "House of Austria" and of the Balkans still lies on the knees of the gods. With France, too, both " lollipop " and shrapnel methods have failed either to attach her to Germany or detach her from England. And more. The three great "impossi- bilities " in world-politics have become serene, buoyant actualities. The King has lanced the historical cancer of tradition and preju- dice, and England is now in communion with France and Spain, and in the fair way to an agreement with Eussia. Even the Egyptian sore has healed. It is as had the cobbler captain of Koepenick himself played part in the performance. " All Germany " has failed. Her own colonies do not pay, and she has not yet acquired any that do. Russia is " occu- pied." The King — der schwierige Herr — has not only galvanised afresh the Dual Alliance, but almost turned it into a Tripartite one with a Japanese-Hispano- Italian- American- Turkish tail ; and with mace and mattock, in silence and secrecy, is reducing the already 36 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. amorphous Triple Alliance to a ridiculous in- organic anachronism. For that is what all intelligent Germans say about its actual status and value. On April 16, 1907, E Secolo wiote that ''the new grouping " had established a " new situation. The first efiect was seen at Algeciras, the second will be seen at The Hague." Count Eeventlow (Weltfrieden oder Weltkrieg) declares that the Triple Alliance is now politically '' useless " to Germany ; and though Signor Tittoni has quite recently repeated the old formula it is an open European secret that Italy would not support Germany in a war against France. It is perhaps wise to say as little as possible about this in order not to hurt German susceptibilities ; but I have good reason to believe that if, at The Hague, England sub- mits any disarmament proposal of a practical character, Italy will not follow Germany in her non possumus attitude, but will give the subject due and earnest consideration. It was to this discovery (in Germany) of the practical uselessness — for purposes of war, that is — of Italy as an ally, and to the belief held in the Wilhelmstrasse at the time that Sir KING AND KAISER 37 Henry had deliberately fried his disarma- ment macaroni with the Machiavellian view of causing Germany to be isolated at The Hague, as she was at Algeciras, that so profound a feeling of resentment and alarm prevailed last April in Germany, and there was so much febrile talk of *' electric war currents in the air." In my next article I will deal with this part of the subject in detail. Of the Triple Alliance I will only now say that, as a fact, for purposes of predatory and aggressive war Italy is of no use to Germany, and that even Austria, as was shown by the reception in Vienna of the famous congratulatory telegram after Algeciras, is by no means a twin incor- porate arm for all emergencies and eventu- alities. The cumulative effects of this, Gaeta and Sir Henry's proposals, led Germany to regard. The Hague as part and parcel of a gigantic isolation scheme — one more failure, we may say, not only in political prescience, but in comprehension of the ABC conditions of English party politics. So that, summing up German causes of crisis and alarm, we find foremost — the King ; 38 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. n and secondly, the policy of hostile coalitions he is credited with fostering. One of Bismarck's perpetual fears was the renovation of the " Kaunitz Coalition " — France, Russia, Austria. If the King has become an obsession, coalitions have become a nightmare. It is important that we in England should realise — or try to realise — not only the causes of the last German crisis, but its potential gravity and significance. Fortunately the crisis has spent itself now. At last Germans have begun to understand that Sir Henry was pursuing no other end than that dictated by benign personal and party principle. With regard to opinion concerning the King's " coalition policy " — that remains unchanged. Edward retiarius — the German netter — is a lusty foemen. We must remember that there is always what Germans call the " psychological moment " in national crises and alarms. I have tried to give a few indices as to the cause of German sensitive- ness. The uncertainty of the situation lies in Germany's own uncertainty, both as regards policy and her control of it — in her restless- ness and feeling of failure, and in her sense of unfolded Titanic strength. CHAPTER III GERMANY AND THE HAGUE I WANT now to direct attention to the positive cause of the German war scare, and to point out the reasons for suspicion and alarm, culminating in crisis, which the proposal, at this juncture in world politics, to " make war on war " created in German official and service circles. As a joke the thing is " enormous." No doubt Sir Henry is sincere enough, as are other strap -hangers of the disarmament idea — from the Baroness v. Suttner to Mr. Fox himself ; but the pipeclay wisdom of the Wilhelmstrasse could not be expected to under- stand that, and, as a matter of fact, it did not. In Berlin — credite posteri — Sir Henry was credited with the Machiavellian intention of inventing peace to make war, enticing Ger- many to The Hague to isolate her, as at 39 40 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. Algeciras, and so precipitate a crisis which would necessarily end in shock and cataclysm — or the world deliverance of the German Empire. That was the situation in Germany last April provoked by Sir Henry's *'con- ferential war tactics," and such is still the opinion of all Germany on the silly utopia of world-peace. To ask Germany to disarm, to ask her to take serious part in any disarmament proposal, is a dog-in-the-manger joke, the fruit (as Germans think) either of deliberate " diabolics " or (as in fact it is) of portentous ignorance of German reason of State and of Continental conditions and politics generally. By force of arms Brandenburg became Prussia, Prussia the German Empire ; with might as gospel and a nation in arms as the first and last reason of political existence and attainment, Germany lives and thrives to - day ; and in that instrument she sees the solution of her own destiny. And this is and must be so. Her Army is not only the stay of her affairs, but her only true organic justification, whether geographical, religious, political, or economic. The Army is Germany — her all ; the heart of Ill GERMANY AND THE HAGUE 41 Imperial hegemony, the soul of ethnic unity, and the hope of all future realisation ; weaken it, disband it, and the House of Bismarck and Moltke will have been built on sand. For without the unifying ideal, precept, and presence of the Army there is no tie of one- ness, sympathetic, political, or even personal, between German qua German, no reason why the Catholics of Empire should look to Berlin rather than to Vienna; and on its fortunes hangs the fate of the HohenzoUern dynasty. Its panache is the Kaiser ; it is both crown and ark of national actuality — the hopeful mirror of futurity. And if armed power is Germany's living justification, it is the very breath of hope for her future. Take her position in Europe, hemmed in between France and Russia — allies, two enormously powerful military organisms — having wrested from the former a possession of great value and so engraven on the map of Europe a permanent war zone, and with the latter living in traditional dread of friction and invasion, — can it be said that in her own " healthy, selfish " interests she is not justified in her formula of armed peace as the best 42 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. preventive of war; or questioned that if power is her living justification it is not the postulate of all future life ? The German Empire is im Werden, in a state, that is, not of political or economic completion (as England), but of development and attainment. Germany is acquiring fulness and maturity. Her very geographical confines are national and international doubts and problems, and her whole scheme of statesmanship is based on that conclusion, scientifically energised, co- ordinated and applied towards the realisation of her own natural ethnic and historical whole. What the Army is to Germany to-day, that her Navy will be to her in the future. The one is now the corollary of the other. Together they are the dynamic cradle of world dominion and Empire. I have been accused by many esteemed friends — who, alas ! neither know German nor Germany — of writing incendiary articles and wittingly and maliciously stirring up strife between two great kindred nations. If clarification is incendiarism, then I plead guilty ; but here I wish to say that on the question of disarmament I entirely sympathise Ill GERMANY AND THE HAGUE 43 with our German friends. For England to ask Germany to disarm is not " cricket " ; it isn't even golf ; it is not the game at all, and Germans think it sheer ^' diabolics." Their argument is simple and logical enough. England, the '* world's record buc- caneer" Power, has attained by force, enter- prise, and audacity to her "natural" boundaries, and, herself an island, feels at last content with the greatest Empire the world has ever seen, securely protected by a Navy which, at the present time, may be admitted to be invincible. Having all, England naturally would like nothing better than that the world should come to a permanent standstill, leaving Great Britain as supreme ruler of the waves, and so bang the door on the future and all Germanic progress and possibilities. Now the whole future of Germany depends on her power to keep that door open. Close it — and the curtain falls on her Imperial and economic destiny. As well expect poetry from a Prussian drill sergeant, or ask a Navy League professor to salute the Union Jack — such gall and brimstone the German nation, conscious of a great destiny, cannot be requested to digest, 44 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. even as a doctrinaire peace -offering from so artless a statesman as England's Premier. Artless ! Germans pronounce Sir Henry to be anything but altruistic ; to be frankly and diabolically egoistic. It is a trap — to defeat and cripple Germany without firing a shot, and so waterlog German history. A trap — ingenuous party politicians, think- ing only of English green fields and acreage, will exclaim pontifically : fiddlesticks ! I wish I thought so too. Let us take Count Eeventlow for guide, who in Weltfrieden oder Weltkrieg gives a rational exposition of the German case against The Hague. From the purely naval standpoint, he argues, the King's policy and The Hague Conference together are a unique example of British policy ; denoting, if Ger- many falls into the trap, a defeat of the German Navy before it has even had time to assume the offensive. Even as Sir Henry calls upon Germany to disarm, Brazil is laying down a ship of the Dreadnought class at Vickers', and other South American States are about to do likewise. Why ? Brazil does not need battleships : England does. Thus overtly disarming, covertly England is arming ; Ill GERMANY AND THE HAGUE 45 for when the South American ships are ready- she will promptly buy them in. And this, he declares, is the true meaning of The Hague Conference. And more. England is inclined now to abandon her attitude, declared in 1874, regarding the immunity of property at sea, the right of privateering, the question of contraband, and to limit the use of mines — all weapons, offensive and defensive, of vital importance to Germany, and all questions which Germany can only answer with a firm non possumus. In plain language, The Hague is a diplomatic contrivance to arrest the growth of the German Navy. Yes, there is an army trap too, and here we will take Major-General Keim, President of the Navy League, as cicerone. Disarma- ment, he writes in Der Tag (May 25), can only be of use to two nations : England as a Sea Power, France as a Land Power. France has arrived already at the limit of her mili- tary productivity, placing 1*25 of her popula- tion under arms, while Germany places but 0*95. Any check on the development of con- scription thus hampers Germany and saves France. As for England, if the Powers at 46 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. The Hague agree to limit naval armaments such a decision would be tantamount to the perpetuation of English naval supremacy for all time. Germany, more than any other Power, needs a great fleet. '* She must build it, and the sooner the better." The panophobia created in Germany by this disarmament business is summed up significantly and symptomatically in the words frequently used in Germany about it : ''We won't go to Olmiitz." As English- men may not grasp what Olmtitz means to Germans, I had better perhaps explain that Olmiitz personifies the nadir of German political degradation and was Germany's modern Canossa ; signifying what Sedan is to France, what Eome was to Carthage after the second Punic War, what, till quite recently, Majuba Hill was to us. Exasperated by England's accumulative policy of coalitions and '^ Royal peripatetics," Germans viewed The Hague as the last straw in the balance of isolation and humiliation, as the warning cloud before the storm. The Hague was to be a second Algeciras — Germany, in opposi- tion to the European concert, marooned by Ill GERMANY AND THE HAGUE 47 Italy, supported only by Austria, earmarked as the sole " aggressive " Power in Europe, as the only opposing buttress to world-peace and the co-fraternisation of all peoples. Eeally I cannot blame Germany for her uneasiness. Sooner than Olmiitz — war. Such was the direct and immediate result of Sir Henry's peace proclivities ; and had not speeches and private interchange of confidences and ex- planations ensued between the Governments concerned, the second Peace Conference might have terminated in war, sudden, furious, fanatical, a conflagration transforming the map of Europe, and either broken up the German Empire, or created, by blood and iron, the long-dreamed-of European Pan-Germanic confederation. Certain clouds and currents have tended to ease the tension, which, on the eve of the Conference, are worth noting. America, originally inclined to support us, since the 'Frisco affair now finds that she needs ships. Russia has decided to build a new Navy. Austria cannot disarm ; Italian hostility to her sleeping partner in the Triple Alliance is growing in intensity. Bulgaria is preparing 48 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. to face her destiny. Taking it all in all, the trap, Germany has begun to think, will "not work." She has already taken her bearings, and is now *^full steam ahead" on a pro- nounced pro-American policy. Great efforts are being made to represent to America that England desires to arrest the growth of American sea power and that Sir Henry's proposals are framed to that end. This standpoint was set forth in The Navy (the American Navy League organ) by Mr. Roberts (head of the Associated Press in Berlin), under official German inspiration. Strenuous efforts will be made at The Hague to bring America into line with Germany, and some pretty diplomatic skirmishing will be witnessed. Germany will represent to America that it is her interest and will be her policy to support the United States against Japan, and to prevent " any blow being struck at the . economic and military development of the New World." The nigger is in the fire. It will be for American and British diplomacy to scent him. Diplomacy is a complex business, and thus we see the idea of peace almost provocative Ill GERMANY AND THE HAGUE 49 of the insanity of war. As it is, Germany is going to The Hague with set teeth and a loaded revolver in her pocket. There is no question of disarmament for her, for every mother in the Fatherland is prepared to sell the gold off her wedding ring — as she did once before — to help build the German Navy. Let us not deceive ourselves on that score. The Hague will be a landmark in German diplomacy, and may prove to be not so much a conference of peace as a diplomatic battle for more battleships. The whole object of German diplomacy will be to frustrate the " coalition isolation programme " and to sail out on an American spinnaker. It is not altruistic or fair to ask Germany to disarm, and to insist would be folly and a serious danger. Pay out the hawser of arms if we want friendship and lasting peace. If we want friction then ask her to disarm. I will not inquire here why she needs this powerful Navy, but we should know that she intends at all costs to build it. Diplomatically, The Hague will be both instructive and constructive. This let us know. Sir Henry's instrument contains all 50 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. m the elements incentive to war. Place it, as a challenge, on the table at The Hague, and we shall have Algeciras again and an era not of peace before us, but of torpedo politics and alarms. I am glad Sir Henry has removed his bauble betimes. Of the issues at The Hague not the least important will be the problem of Anglo-German relations and the policy Germany will pursue to meet it. CHAPTER IV SOCIAL DEMOCRACY As the object of these articles is to give, in wide survey, some comprehensive idea of the vitality, power, and purpose of modern Ger- many, the conditions of life and industry, and the generating forces, economic and political, actuating German reason of State — which may be called the dynamics of Empire — I propose to turn from the political to the economic side of the question, and to examine the present status of Social Democracy, the reasons for its recent check, its prospects and tendencies, and to trace the growth of the new national imperialist feeling. Socialism, we will remember, suffered a severe setback at the last elections, strategi- cally amounting to a complete reversal of the former balance of Parliamentary position. 51 52 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. The new situation is this. From 79 seats — the party's strength when the Reichstag was dissolved — Parliamentary representation has sunk to 43, though the party polled a quarter of a million votes more than in 1903, advancing from 3,011,000 to 3,259,000. In 1903 Socialism obtained nearly 32 per cent of the whole vote ; but as in January 1,767,000 more electors went to the poll than in 1903, the party, to have shown propor- tional progression, ought to have obtained over half a million more votes. And this failure to secure the '^normal" increase — in this case 300,000 votes — is the lesson of the elections, redressing the whole balance of Parliamentary power in favour of the Em- peror's national and overseas Germanic policy. Relatively and actually. Social Democracy received a staggering blow which, for the time being, has almost demoralised the party organisation, creed, government, and prestige. The result of the elections, in a word, showed that Germany was '^ in the saddle " ; gave a national mandate to Kaiser and Caesarism, and was Germany's answer to Europe. It is an answer of much actual, but far greater SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 53 prospective importance ; and unless all present indications prove misleading there can be little question but that it marks an era in the evolution of German Social Democracy, and the realisation of the national destiny. For the first time the Philistines, the smaller bourgeoisie, the disaffected, the learned, and the academic went to the poll and voted nationally — for the naval architectonics of Potsdam imperialism. Oddly enough. Social Democracy was neither the cause direct of the dissolution nor the central objective of Prince Buelow's attack, which was directed primarily against the Clerical Centre party. But as sometimes when fishing for perch one catches a pike, so Socialism got hooked with an anti-Catholic bait. The *' No-Popery" trawl fished up in swarms the little fishes of the sea — Catholicism triumphed at the expense of Social Democracy, to the general amazement, literally, of all concerned. The reasons for this retrogression are to be found in the combined action of all the so-called " parties of order " (including the Catholics) — for the first time in German electioneering warfare — marshalled and im- 54 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. pressed in a national cause, placed before a national issue, and appealed to nationally to think imperially. The new ex -Jewish Colonial Minister (Germany's pocket Chamberlain) went out " on the stump." Astute journalists combined with the Press organisation at the Foreign Office to organise a mighty propaganda on limelight, American lines. Even Prince Buelow appeared at the hustings with plati- tudinous incantations to German Liberalism. Court, camarilla, junker and priest, soldier, journalist, professor and policeman, they all sallied forth with a national carving-knife to cut off the tails of the Clericals and the anti- national -Social Democracy; and as for pamphlets and treatises, leaflets and rhodo- montade, there never was seen the like before. The Navy League, with its million members, appeared in protean shape in every part of the Empire, endowed with semi-official inspira- tion and blessed with unlimited persuasive funds. Millions of patriotic leaflets were issued — Germany in danger — on the dire policy of King Edward — the Fatherland en marche, etc. — all of an extreme alarmist character, all SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 55 adumbrating the doom of Empire unless the nation placed the cordite of country in an Imperial powder magazine. Other influential agencies were *' The Union for Opposing Socialism," the "Societies of Veteran Soldiers/' comprising over two and a half million members, who were all mobilised with their medals on their breasts and their martial reminiscences for the "good cause"; the Pan-German League and its numerous ancillary organisations — in a word, the elec- tions were contested on a war-scare basis, and, to the astonishment of all, not the least of whom were the Emperor and Potsdam itself, the Imperial chemistry availed. So intense, in fact, was the feeling on the night of the elections that Berlin actually went out to " maffick." The public marched to the Palace with songs and enthusiasm, and had the police, unaccustomed to such loyal demonstra- tiveness, not Quixotically charged and dis- persed them, the Emperor would have celebrated his first national Pan-Germanic ovation. On that night it was physically dangerous to he a Socialist One lady I know had her hat knocked off and sufi'ered severe 56 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. treatment from tlie crowd because she laughingly called out *' Long live Bebel ! " It was the dawn of the new national feeling. Now the fact is that with the increased prosperity and spirit of Imperialism the "infallibility" of Karl Marx and his materialistic conception of history have begun to be questioned by the German thinking proletariate. The "theory of the theory/' the dogma of inevitable, fatalistic emancipa- tion, the revolutionary millennium, the creeds of anti-Imperialism, anti-militarism, anti- nationalism — these are theories growing grey and greyer with age. Lassalle's " iron laws '' of labour and wages have not proved prophetic. And there is a growing doubt as to the truth of Marx's central contention that the con- centration of capital must lead to anarchy and the ultimate subversion of the capitalist state of Society. Though there are few signs of any relaxation of the Socialist principle of class warfare, there are various indices of doubt regarding the ways and means of reaching the telos of Socialist ambition, and not a few concerning the certainty and even the desirability of the end itself. IV SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 57 Little by little what is called '' Revisionism " — which is really a rational form of Socialism : Marx without dogma; a creed of evolution- ary opportunism — is supplanting the gospel predicating that '' capitalist production neces- sarily begets in time its own negation/' and the tenets of Marxian doctrinaire revolution. It is, of course, extremely difficult to say how far this new conception of Socialism is accepted or not; nor will I venture upon any rash prophecy. The growth of Socialism all over Europe is a fact which only the ignorant can dispute. In France it is admittedly permeating the Army, and there are many shrewd observers who anticipate the most serious consequences from the disintegrate effects of the Socialistic propaganda in the Army and the country generally. There is no question of it doing so for many years in Germany.^ And the reason probably is that Germans recognise that they are still a nation more or less in a state of economic and national embryo, and that any disruption in the ^ This was demonstrated at the International Congress at Stuttgart, where Bebel, opposing the French international motion, pleaded eloquently for the army, nationality, and the 5? ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. military strength of the nation must be fatal to all realisation of German power and solidarity. Thus even Bebel, leader of the party and foremost living exponent of pure Socialism, has been dubbed the ''Chief Revisionist" — which, though a joke, is not without very significant interest. Speaking in the Reichstag on behalf of the party, he has repeatedly declared his approval of a com- pulsory militia army on the Swiss system ; and on December 3, 1906, went as far as to say that ''just colonisation" would obtain the hearty support of Social Democracy.^ And by "just" he implied such colonisation as is exemplified by our rule in Egypt and in South Africa. Now this statement is highly instructive. It denotes a complete change in the attitude of the party towards Imperialism, and it is due to the popularity of Imperial ambition now prevailing in Germany. It is no longer popular for the Socialist party to get up in the Reichstag and abuse the Emperor's Naval and Colonial efforts. The working man ^ Though the Colonial motion was rejected at Stuttgart, the fact that it was discussed at all shows clearly which way the wind is blowing. IV SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 59 rather likes to hear of German Colonial endeavour in remote parts of the world. He is getting to think that ships are not a bad asset after all. He is a growing convert to the word Weltpolitih He has begun to have a personal pride in the nation's overseas achievement. And then, too, there is a growing sense of dissatisfaction at the negative attitude always adopted by Social Democracy. On all practical questions it has failed to be either practical, rational, or constructive. It has contented itself with blind opposition, wild talk, and impotent threats, when wise co-operation, sensible opportunism, and a little use of compromise might have won golden opinions and opportunities. Its growth in power has exceeded its pace of intellectual develop- ment. It thought it was going to upset Emperor and capitalism within a decade or so. It became repellently overbearing, shrieking, braggart, and dogmatic, and of a sudden people — as people do— awoke to the fact that though a big party it carried through few reforms, while opposing nearly all that were carried ; that it was not only non- 60 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. constructive but theoretically and practically- negative and destructive ; and that nationally and internationally it pursued a policy decidedly out of sympathy with the new German point of view. First, the scallywag votes left it ; then the man on the fence left it ; then the liberal-minded man left it ; while the German youth who hitherto caught the itch of revolutionary fervour at the Universities now hitch their trousers to the Emperor's hornpipe. In fact, it has hitherto been satisfied with a purely negative attitude of dogmatic oppo- sition. Then, too, against the forces of Catholicism it has failed conspicuously to make either breach or progress. Against the priest the most convincing Socialist preacher can avail nothing. And the priest educates the people in the Imperial idea. That is why, during the Boer War, Bavaria was the nursery of the most violent outbursts of German Anglophobia. In all agrarian centres, too, where Michel, if he is not a Catholic, is Tory to the bone, and a landed proprietor in miniature, Socialism has made no headway at all. So that these two buttresses of Germany IV SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 61 — the peasant and the Catholic — are absolutely unaffected by the proletarian propaganda. And even on Protection the party is not "sound." Calwer is one of the leading supporters of Germany's Tariff policy, as Schippel is of her conscriptionist army, as Bernstein is of a practical Socialism for practical ends, as Bebel himself now is of benevolent and wise colonisation. What we would call " little Germanism " is no longer a respectable tenet in the Fatherland. Powerful as Socialism is — all-powerful, it may be said, as it is among the working classes — the idea of nationality and Empire has grown to be a force that Socialism will have to reckon with ; and it was because it failed to reckon with it that it found itself defeated at the last elections. Here are a few of the Social Reform Bills the Socialists have opposed in the Reichstag : — 1880. The first Usury BiU. 1881. Stock Exchange Tax Bill. 1883. Invalid Insurance. 1884. Accident Insurance. 1885. Invalidity and Old Age Insurance. 1890. Trades Arbitration Courts. 1891. Workmen's Protection Bill. 62 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. 1896. Stock Exchange Laws. 1900. Increase of duty on foreign champagne. 1902. Increase of duties on articles of luxury not affecting the poor (caviare, oysters, scents, etc.). 1903. Improvement of the laws relating to invalid saving funds. 1904. Automobile Tax. The feeling is growing that Socialism must now become a more human and practical party and cease from troubling solely to make trouble. In the party itself opinion is more and more insisting upon the necessity of adopting a constructive policy co-operative, on opportunist principles, with the bourgeois parties — as otherwise it will run serious risk of forfeiting that sympathy and moral support which large sections of the German public, by no means Socialist, have hitherto accorded it. I discussed this matter with some of my former Socialist friends, and I think I am justified in stating that strenuous efforts will be made to jettison some of the bald dogma and more superstitious adherence to "prag- matic " party sacrosanctities ; and with that buoyant recuperativeness which is the secret of its vitality the party compass will be set accordingly. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 63 Hitherto the activity of the party has con- sisted almost solely in what we may call "politics," showing scant sympathy with the economic side as evidenced by trades unionism, which, indeed, the red Socialist treated with self-indulgent disdain and patronage. But of recent years this attitude has entirely changed, and now the trades-union movement in Germany actually threatens to absorb the political one. Observe these statistics of its growth : — Year. Total membership. Receipts. (Marks.) Chest. (Marks.) 1891 . 277,659 1,116,588 425,845 1896 . 329,230 3,616,444 2,323,678 1900 . 680,427 9,454,075 7,745,902 1904 . . 1,052,108 20,190,630 16,109,903 1905 . . 1,344,803 27,812,257 19,635,850 Statistics are not available for 1906, but it is estimated that the total membership approaches 1,800,000, comprising over one- fourth of the labouring classes in Germany. The development of trades unionism is the dominating factor in the Social Democratic movement. At the annual conferences trades unionists, instead of playing (as formerly) a spectacular part, are rapidly arrogating to 64 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. themselves power, prestige, and position, and actually threaten to assume the leadership. The fatalistic conception (Marx's theory) of the necessary transition from the capitalist to the socialist or coUectivist state of Society — political expropriation of the capitalist expro- priators — is seen to be a Utopia, a creed hypo- thetical and dogmatic, unsatisfactory materially in that the integument of capitalist organisa- tion tends to grow stronger, and the immediate result of waiting on a " dynamic certainty " less profitable and efficacious. Shelving, then, the " cataclysm theory "^for the roseate days of the millennium, trades unionists are enforcing upon the party the ethical motive purpose ; the practical question of socialisation of the means of production hand in hand with the increasing organisation of labour for immediate practical results. Trades unionism is assuming the importance it possesses in England. Without doubt Germany stands before a similar period of labour crises — strikes, lock-outs — as we passed through some years ago, and the great lock- out of bricklayers in Berlin is the first test struggle. The difference will be that in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 65 Germany the employers of labour are deter- mined to profit by our experiences, and to fight to the bitter end instead of following our examples of compromise and indecision. LinterH qui aveugle les uns fait la lumiere des autres. Where on the political side Social Demo- cracy has failed, economically trades unionism has shown its power in marked degree. A system of labour warfare known as '* peaceful struggles " has grown up with results beneficial to both sides. These struggles culminating frequently in wage agreements tend to pre- vent strikes and bitterness of class feeling, and employers are gradually coming to admit that they are eminently preferable to fierce class strikes and general dislocation of business. The Government has, as usual in Germany, gone carefully into this matter, and three bulky volumes are the result. It is estimated that some 4000 such agreements exist to-day, whereas ten years ago the idea was practically unknown. In the last few years, too, wages have risen enormously as the result of the trades-union agitation. We who are but beginning to have a 66 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. Socialism of our own, and talk about it as were it some hydra serpent of fire and destruction, are prone to invoke the disintegrating forces of German Socialism as a national panacea when- ever opinion gets perturbed at some unexpected move in German world-policy. We rub our hands and say, " Oh, the Socis will do the trick for us ; they will break up the German Army and the HohenzoUern dynasty and German geographical and ethnic unity." Well, that is an entirely erroneous conception, and a very dangerous and foolish one too. Socialism in Germany is in practice the sole articulate form of public and parliamentary opposition to the feudal absolutism which the Emperor, with the support of the Junker classes, the Army, and the bureaucracy, would otherwise impose upon the German people. It " killed " Liberalism, and was supported by many a rich man who felt that in this century it would be unwise to invest the Sovereign with full autocratic rights and sway. And thus in a public sense — purely political, that is — Socialism signifies the expression of the people as against authority. In its true sense — the economic one — the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 67 movement is a purely class one with purely class interests and programme. To its power and growth are due the advanced social legislation of Germany — the Old Age, Invalid, and Invalidity Pensions — the admirable social statistical work performed by the State, the working of the Labour Offices, the collectivist principle of State supervision of life and interest — the nationalisation of railways, education, hospitals, etc. — and the interest which the State displays in the economic development, training, and equipment of the whole nation. Indirectly its eJBFect has been enormous. But on all national matters its influence has been rigidly negative. If it has contributed vastly to improve the condition of the masses, to educate them and give them an ideal which is practically a religion, it has unquestionably retarded the growth of the Navy and acted as a drag on the wheel of German diplomacy. The question is — how long will the party be able to continue opposing a policy — and the national scientific equipment of arms and men needful to realise it — which many sincere Socialists themselves now believe in ? And the answer of the last 68 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. Elections was the first sign of public awaken- ing to that issue. The rise of Socialism in this country con- currently with its loss of prestige and position in Germany is matter for reflection to states- men and politicians generally. These two movements will play their retro-active part on the politics of the two peoples in no small degree, only inversely, and in a national sense antagonistically. As the new Liberalism rises in Germany, so will the German national spirit, the development of the national design, the imperialistic sense of power and acquisi- tion. But with us the very contrary spirit will be engendered the stronger Socialism or the Labour class movement grows and attracts Liberalism to it. In Germany new Liberalism will make for the martial spirit ; in England it will make for the economic one. If ever the English working classes in England are organised on a class basis, as they are in Germany, it is difficult to see what other course will be open for English Liberalism than to follow the sail of Liberals in Germany and become a staunch Imperialist party. Taking the wide view, we thus find several IV SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 69 salient features whicli it will be useful for us to take note of. We find Social Democracy defeated at the polls on what we would call a "blatant Jingo" issue, and defeated not by the decrease of the proletarian vote but by the unexpected increase of the bourgeois one. We find trades unionism assuming the direc- tion of the political movement, and its leaders advocating platonic revision. I do not think (but this is merely a personal opinion) that the setback to Socialism is final ; much will depend on the party capacity to develop both principle and practice commensurately with the development of new industrial and Im- perial Germany. What I wish to point out is the fact that Socialism is no 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 "realise'' it, and wherever he may lead them. On the question of disarmament Social Democracy is with the nation, and in any war it will march too. The modern student, the clever youth, the thoughtful bourgeois — he is no longer a disciple of Nietzsche and Karl Marx, but a 70 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. iv follower of Treitschke and HohenzoUern naval architectonics. That was the lesson of the January Elections, and such will be the lesson of all future ones. As the Imperial idea takes firmer root the party will be forced to nurture the soil around it, and may, with time, in conception even support it. The rise of Socialism in Austria is due to the backward conditions and to the new sufirage : it is neither barometer nor index of the evolution of the party in Germany. The HohenzoUern pennant crowns the edifice of German State reason and purpose, and the people salute it. Whatever the ultimate development of Socialism may be — and it would be idle to prophesy — in Germany, its trend is towards evolutionary opportunism on the lines of organisation and education — self-help in lieu of the doctrinaire nostrums of anti-national " scientific fatalism." CHAPTEE V GERMAN GROWTH AND PROSPERITY I PROPOSE now, SO far as is possible within the limitations of a newspaper article, to give a snapshot view of the politico-economic position of modern Germany, with some idea of her growth and stupendous economic power, actual and potential. Statistics are unavoidable, but in all cases they are derived from German and English official sources. I will only say that my object is not to paraphrase our Consular Report, but from personal knowledge and in- quiry on the spot to give an accurate apergu into the position as a whole. The year 1906 was a record one, denoting the high-water mark in the economic develop- ment of the German nation ; and that, despite antagonistic influences such as the new com- mercial treaties hampering the export of 71 72 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. German produce, the higher prices of raw materials and partly manufactured goods, and the higher wages lowering the degree of employment, the extraordinary stringency of the Money Market and the constant rise in the prices of food and necessaries of life generally. It marked a new era — the era of higher protective duties and taxes, of w^hich the dominant balancing factor, owing to the increased world's prosperity, was not that of exports, but the enforced import of gold. Industrial concerns, especially in the iron and steel trades, were prevented from carry- ing out enlargements and technical improve- ments owing to the difficulty of meeting the urgent demands of customers. The railways — the total receipts reached for the year £107,000,000, showing a lOf per cent in- crease on the preceding one — could not deal with the traffic ; a shortage of rolling stock en- sued; not only industry, but agriculture had a record year. The demand for coal — always a reliable index of industrial prosperity — in many cases exceeded the capacities of home production. Never previously was labour in such demand, and the year saw the innovation GERMAN PROSPERITY 73 of British labourers, colliers, and skilled work- men imported into Germany to help work the machine. The characteristic feature — the con- sumptive power of the home market — is due to the annual increase of the population (now 900,000 odd yearly), which easily absorbs the enormous fresh produce. Everywhere prices rose, and there was a notable absence of labour troubles. The taxable increment in- creased prodigiously, and the savings bank books show truly remarkable figures. And with the general improvement in the world's markets — American exports rose 11 per cent, British 14 per cent, German 10 per cent — Germany, despite the intense home demand and higher tariffs and duties, successfully held her own. Observe this table of new joint-stock com- panies floated in 1904 and 1906 : — 1904. Total new companies. 104 Capital in £1000. 7361-1 1906. Total new companies. 212 Capital in £1000. 24,034-4 And again, observe. Prussia's Budget in 1806 balanced with 81 million marks; in 1906 it exceeded three milliards. In these figures we 74 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. get some idea of the extraordinary increase in national wealth. Now let us look at the banks. The nine big Berlin banks between the years 1901-1906 increased their credit and deposit funds by 90 per cent — from 1217 million marks in 1901 to 2417*5 millions in 1906. In the year 1900 there were 99 Berlin banking establishments, with branches, etc., established in Germany; in 1906 their number had risen to 271, while the four leading Berlin banks showed an increase in the year's general turn- over of no less than 20 milliards of marks over the very prosperous preceding year. And here is another interesting table : — Total joint-stock com- panies' capital. (In million marks.) Dividends in percentage. (In million marks.) 1895 . . 1576-02 7-34 1902 . . 2433-88 6-64 1906 . . 2772-43 10-53 An accurate gauge of national prosperity is furnished by the savings banks statistics. Between 1900 and 1905 the Prussian savings banks deposits increased from 5*7 milliard marks to 8*2 milliards, or 45 per cent. In the year 1905 alone the increase was £27,000,000 in deposits. What this means GERMAN PROSPERITY 75 can be seen from the fact that in 1875 there were 538,000 bank-books with a limit of £3, whereas in 1905 there were 2,727,000 such books; while of books up to £150 there were in 1875, 443,000, in 1905, 2,421,000. The figures of the Prussian assessment of taxes provide, too, a splendid index of the economic conditions generally. In 1892 there were 2,437,886 persons liable to income-tax in Prussia ; in 1906 their number had increased to 4,675,199, representing a taxable capital of £536,296,834. Thus in fourteen years the in- crease in assessable income amounts in Prussia to 5 milliard marks, or £250,000,000. Again, in 1896 in Prussia 21 million inhabitants, or 67 per cent of the population, were exempt from income-tax (not earning, that is, £45 a year). In 1906, despite the great increase in the population, there were but 20 millions exempt, or 55 per cent of the whole. In 1896 8 millions were assessed on incomes between £45 and £150, equal to 25 per cent of the population. In 1906 their number was 13 millions, or 35 per cent of the whole — showing in the last decade an increase of 10 per cent in the taxable incomes of the working classes. 76 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. These figures, which are official, speak elo- quently for themselves. As a gauge of the expansion and prosperity of trade the German railways show remarkable results. The goods trafiic yielded £74,700,000, passengers and luggage traffic £32,600,000 — in all upwards of £107,000,000, or a lOf increase in the year. German revenues derived from railways increased by 112 million marks in 1904, 86-3 million in 1905, and 199*3 million in 1906. We will now inquire into the consumption of coal, which obtained record dimensions. Take this table of the four most important coal-consuming countries : — Total Output of Coal IN Million Tons. 1905. 1906. ^!;r^\" ^^ million tons. America . . . 352-8 368-9 + 16-1 England . . . 239-9 255-1 -h 15-2 Germany . . . 173-8 192-7 + 18-9 France . • 35-2 33-6 - 1-6 Total Consumption in Million Tons. 1905. 1906. Increase. America . . 345-9 361-5 4-48 per cent. England . . 191-7 198-6 3-60 Germany. . 173-0 190-8 10-30 „ France . , , 44-1 46-6 6-66 „ GERMAN PROSPERITY 77 These figures show that absolutely and relatively, both in product and consumption, Germany led the way. Berlin alone took 659,820 metric tons of British coal in 1906 against 440,993 tons in 1900 ; and, despite the serious internal discord in the German coal business, the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate established a coal dep6t in France, acquired large plots of land at Mannheim, and founded a depot at the mouth of La Plata. And at this moment Englishmen are being employed in German mines. Take pig-iron, and this instructive table : — Total production in 1000 tons. Increase on preceding year. 1904 . . 10,104-0 0-182 percent. 1905 . . 10,987-6 8-57 „ 1906 . . 12,478-1 15-562 „ These two tables (of coal and pig-iron) prove the healthy state of the two funda- mental industries of Germany. The inland consumption of pig-iron rose from 7,218,183 metric tons in 1905 to 8,208,218 tons in 1906 — in 1891 the total consumption was 3,488,700 tons. It was in 1903 that Germany for the first time exceeded our annual production of 78 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. pig-iron. The Steel Works Syndicate also experienced a most satisfactory year, increasing their deliveries over those in 1905 by no less than 18 '6 6 per cent and 15 '71 per cent respect- ively in the case of railway material and figured bar iron. And in all cases the enor- mous increase in inland consumption was the outstanding feature. Take, at random, other products. Mining showed an enormous development. The sales of potassium in 1906 exceeded those of 1905 by 40,215 metric tons. In the electrical industry business was exceedingly active, as this table shows : — Share capital. 1902 . . £3,000,000 1905 . 4,300,000 1906 . 5,000,000 Dividend on share capital. 8 per cent. 10 „ 11 „ The chemical industry again showed brilliant development. Aniline and other coal tar dyes. Indigo. 1903. 1906. 1903. 1906. Tons. Tons. Exports . 29,336 42,469 Exports Tons. . 7233 Tons. 12,732 The nine leading chemical factories pay an V GERMAN PROSPERITY 79 average dividend of 19 per cent between them, three of them paying over 30 per cent. In motors, while we disposed of barely 17 tons in Germany, from her we took no less than 1252 tons in 1906. But this is not a Consular Report, nor need I dwell on the remarkable emigration statistics (in 1882, 203,585 Germans emigrated; in 1892,116,339 ; in 1905, but 28,075 ; and in 1906, 31,074), nor refer to the growth of Germany's great commercial navy, of which an idea can be formed from the fact that ten years ago the registered tonnage of the Hamburg-America Line was 291,507, with a share capital of 45 million marks ; whereas to-day its registered tonnage is 957,216 tons, with a share capital of 125 million marks, employing 20,000 people to 4000 exactly one decade ago. Nor w^U I inquire into the agrarian side of the question, except to state that the exports of sugar to this country alone rose from 518 tons in 1905 to 739,000 tons in the year, or 42*5 per cent, and that harvests of recent years have been very good, contributing in no small degree to the "boom" of 1906. The following table will give an idea of the 80 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. growth of German cities in population and area Town. 1871. 1900. 1905. Popu- lation, Area. Popu- lation. Area. Popu- lation. Area. Cologne Breslau Frankfort-on- Main Strasburg Bremen Hamburg Hanover Munich Leipzig Number. 129,233 207,997 91,040 85,654 82,807 300,504 87,626 169,693 106,925 Hectares. 770 3,036 7,000 7,819 1,719 6,344 2,467 3,551 1,738 Number. 372,529 422,709 288,989 151,041 163,297 705,738 235,649 499,932 456,126 Hectares. 11,111 3,606 9.390 7,829 2,565 7,690 3,957 8,696 5,707 Number. 428,772 ; 470, 904 334,978 167,342 214.879 803,090 250,024 538,393 502,570 Hectares. 11,119 4,222 9,390 7,829 5,336 7,700 3,951 8,697 5,704 And now observe this table of statistics showing the increase in the population of Berlin and suburbs : — Percentage proportion of total population. 2-16 3-79 4-60 5-05 It is three years since I visited Berlin, yet in that brief space I can testify to a remark- able change. All the hotels which three years ago were considered first - class are being demolished and rebuilt on American lines. IJensus. 1871 . Population. 886,845 1890 . 1,873,761 1900 . 2,591,010 1905 . 3,061,587 V GERMAN PROSPERITY 81 The Hamburg -America Line and the North German Lloyd are each now running gigantic hotels. Since I was there not only streets but whole districts have arisen, with shops, caf^s, and theatres — the boom in the building trade from 1903 to 1906 was quite unprecedented. Cabs are everywhere 2d. dearer, and there are over 1000 motor-cabs, including electric ones, on the streets. The standard of living has risen enormously, as have the prices of theatres, tobacco, articles of luxury and apparel, food and wages universally. Servants are as ex- pensive now in Berlin as they are in England. Women dress expensively ; the modern Berliner spends as much in a week now as his father did in two or his grandfather in four weeks. Aching poverty, slums, loafers, unemployed, drunken women one rarely sees. The children of the poor are much better dressed than our own, and on Sunday the Berlin populace turn out in quite surprisingly clean and neat attire. Everywhere order, cleanliness, and a feeling of general well-being. Berlin alone has 77,000 telephone stations, Hamburg 32,000, and last year over one milliard telephonic conversations were recorded. G 82 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. And I noticed the same development in Bavaria, on the Rhine, in Saxony, in Silesia, and even in German Poland. There are motor- cabs in Munich and Dresden (are there any in Liverpool or Manchester ?). In small, out-of- the-way towns such as Glogau and Kottbus I was astonished at the signs of general develop- ment. There can be no question of the stupendous prosperity of Prussia. In Bremen the North German Lloyd has bought up an enormous block of buildings simply to make an open space — to beautify the city. In the small town of Harburg magnificent docks are being built. Nuremberg, from an old-world city, is growing into a fine, up-to-date centre of business. The Hamburg electric tramways pay a 35 per cent dividend. Essen is a model labouring city, the docks of Hamburg and Bremen are unique, Frankfort is ostentatiously " rich," Diisseldorf obviously so, Hanover plea- santly so ; Berlin is a marvel of rapid growth and expansion, and is now the absolute centre of all German business. Germany is rapidly becoming the richest country in Europe. In dealing with the economic position of Germany we must remember that since the GERMAN PROSPERITY 83 seventies her population has risen from 40,000,000 to 60,000,000 ; her world traffic from 6,000,000,000 to 12,300,000,000 marks, and the cash in circulation from 1,750,000,000 to 4,080,000,000 marks. With the rise of wages of recent years has gone a general rise in the cost of living, and particularly in the price of meat, which German workmen now eat with the gusto of their English confreres. Here is a table of food prices which is instructive as an index of the general prosperity : — k-n4-i/*Aaa Per Price. 1900. 1905. 1906. Milk . Butter Eggs . Dried husk vegetables Potatoes Rye bread . Beef . Pork . Mutton Fresh haddocks . Litre . Kilo. . 60 100 kilos. 2 kilos. . Kilo. . ti a >> M. pf. 2*"*18 3 49 28 48 5 55 54 1 50 1 55 1 15 M. pf. 20 2 36 3 87 38 54 7 27 55 1 64 1 71 1 23 70 M. pf. 21 2 34 3 88 39 63 6 63 58 1 75 1 94 1 43 74 An increase in excise duties has further added to the cost of living, and in some cases employers have contributed " scarcity '' grants to enable their employees to meet the increased cost of living, notably in the case of bank 84 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. clerks. None the less, the statistics of the Labour Offices testify to remarkable all-round conditions of well-being. The coal-mining industry alone last year was short by some 30,000 hands, and that despite the enormous influx of Poles, who now form the majority in German collieries. No better idea of the labour market can be obtained than by a glance at the official table : — Applications at the Labour Offices : Number of Applicants PER 100 Vacant Situations. Number. Month. 1903. 1904. 1905. 1906. January .... 190-5 159-5 157-2 138-5 February 156-8 134-2 139-4 120-4 March . 121-1 100-4 110-8 100-9 April 135-2 112-8 111 100-3 May 146-3 123-4 117-8 101-5 June 147-4 120-9 108-3 105-1 July 151 120-8 110-6 106-2 August . 131-7 115-9 105-8 98-4 September 117-7 108-9 93-1 87-9 October . 131-8 124-6 119-6 108-2 November 168-8 162-6 131-1 135-1 December 169-2 162-9 134 124-4 The usual increase in the applications for work which takes place from the month of April to May was in 1906 smaller than in any year since 1897. In 1900 it had been 4'5 GERMAN PROSPERITY 85 calculated on the basis of 100 open places; in the year 1905, 6*8 ; but in the year 1906 only 1*2 ; the applications then amounting to only 101*5 for every 100 open places. In the month of August there were only 98*4 applica- tions for every 100 places, so that there were not enough applicants to fill the vacancies, and there ceased to be any unemployed; in the year 1905 the applications for that month had amounted to 105*8. There was, particu- larly in 1906, a scarcity of female labour, with only 71*6 applications for every 100 vacancies.^ The introduction of foreign labour during the last decade in Germany is noticeable. Be- tween 1895 and 1905 the number of foreigners rose in Rhenish Prussia from 54,813 to 151,557; in Silesia, from 27,960 to 78,252; in Westphalia, from 14,946 to 57,358. As in England, the tendency in Germany is for the foreigner to do the " dirty work." In the social conditions of the working classes enormous strides have been made. Workmen's dwellings have become properly ventilated ; the water supply is pure and 1 Consular Report, No. 3847. 86 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. regular ; the most stringent factory regula- tions have been introduced ; working hours are growing shorter and shorter. The Im- perial Insurance has come to be recognised as a useful national institution. From 1885 to 1905 the receipts of the three branches of insurance, covering directly some 18,000,000, and indirectly many more, amounted to 7,000,000,000 marks. And at the end of 1904, the payments had exceeded 5,000,000,000 marks, while annually some 500,000,000 marks are expended, or nearly 1,500,000 marks per diem. In future the workmen's insurance will extend to widows and orphans (from 1910 onwards) ; and it is even hoped to establish a new branch of insurance against lack of employment. Another evidence of Germany's prosperity is the mushroom growth of municipal luxury in all parts of the Empire. Everywhere towns are being enlarged, embellished, and enriched. Superb railway stations, of which the new station at Hamburg is the latest example, magnificent post offices, public buildings, schools, libraries (and there is no Carnegie in Germany), theatres, museums, operas, bathing GERMAN PROSPERITY 87 establishments, gymnasia, etc., now meet the eye in all the cities of Germany. Municipal taxes are rising everywhere. Sumptuous gardens, parks, terraces, fountains are being laid out in many of the towns. The old- fashioned unlovely German flat is vanishing, and in its place flats with electric light, hot and cold water, bathrooms, lifts, and all the latest luxuries are rising even in smaller towns, and cannot be built fast enough. The tendency is now to follow English example and create a business centre, a "city," and reside further and further out, and many people now keep a country house as well, for "week ends." Nor is it surprising that town property should vastly have increased in value. This value the municipality have in some instances turned to good account by the Werthzuwachs Steuer, or additional tax on the sale of property proportionate to its increased value since it last changed hands. A word must be said about German canal policy, which shows the scientific nature of the economic State design. Of course the canalisation of the Upper Rhine is uppermost 88 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. in such policy, which is the ideal of a through navigation from Rotterdam to Basle. The whole question is being carefully inquired into, and Prussia's policy is now to claim that the Rhine and other rivers have ceased to be natural highways, and so the State proposes to levy shipping dues. A great scheme exists for the canalisation of the Mosel together with that of the Saar, representing a total expenditure of 101,300,000 marks. Then, too, the canalisation of the Main between Ojffenbach and Aschaffenburg has been decided upon, at a cost of £650,000. This, when completed, will mean that Rhine shipping will be able to proceed without breaking bulk as far as Aschaffenburg, thus connecting Bavaria directly with the Rhine. At Frankfort a new port is to be constructed, costing 57,420,000 marks. A great improve- ment of the Danube-Main waterway scheme is also contemplated, enabling boats up to 1000 tons to ply between Vienna and Regens- burg, and also a scheme to connect Leipzig with a waterway. These canal projects all testify to the national growth and prosperity. As a good deal of misapprehension exists GERMAN PROSPERITY 89 about the German workman's material posi- tion, I append a schedule of wages which I collected with great care ; stating only that whereas skilled labour is still far better paid in England than in Germany, unskilled labour is in many cases relatively better paid there. Trades unionism is rapidly forcing wages up everywhere, concomitantly with the tendency for shorter hours of work. Last year, in fact, despite the enormous immigration of foreigners — Russians, Poles, etc. — mining and other branches of industry suffered from a shortage of labour. Here are some facts about wages : — A skilled bricklayer in Berlin earns 90 pf. an hour, 50 in Dresden, 100 to 110 in Hamburg. A grainer earns on an average 27 marks weekly in Berlin, 28 in Frankfort, 29 in Hanover. In the felt and hat trade the average weekly wage is from 28 to 3 6 '50 marks; painters, white washers, etc., earn by piecework 30 to 50 pf. an hour; glaziers from 27 to 50 pf. an hour; plasterers, etc., from 25 to 90 pf. an hour; carvers from 26 to 59 pf. an hour. Gravers (average) — Berlin, 27 m. weekly; Hanover, 29; Dresden, 26; Ober stein, 30. Bookbinders, etc. — Berlin, 24*27 m. weekly ; Hamburg, 25*50; Munich, 22*45; Leipzig, 27*60. Lithographic trade from 18*60 to 20 marks (average) weekly; printing trade, 73 per cent earn 24 m. and more weekly ; metal workers (average), 23 to 25 marks weekly. Wood industry (average) — in Berlin, 40 to 60 pf. per 90 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. hour; in the potteries from 25 to 50 pf. per hour. Butchers — Berlin (average), 23*40 m. weekly; Hamburg, 24-30 m. ; Kiel, 23*1 m. ; Dresden, 23 m. Bakers (first class), 2 4 '50 to 28-50 marks weekly; (second class), 16*50 to 18*50 marks. In mills, 70 per cent earn on average 24 m. weekly; 29 per cent more. In copper trade (average), 42 pf. per hour; upholsterers, etc. (average), from 2-85 m. to 5*40 m. daily; saddlers from 32 to 48 pf. an hour; porcelain workers from 19-30 to 53 marks weekly; general labourers (average), 19 m. weekly. Carpenters, etc. — Berlin (average), 75 pf. an hour; Dresden, 51 pf . ; Diisseldorf, 60; Frankfort, 52. A dock hand in Hamburg — overseer, 4-25 m. daily; (first class), 3*75 m. ; (second class), 3*50. Gardeners (average), 18 m. to 30 m. weekly; drivers generally 20 m. weekly. Paviors — Berlin, 80 pf. an hour; Dresden, 60. A miner earns about 4 m. to 4*47 daily, showing a rise of 62 per cent from the year 1886; a Berlin municipal street cleaner earns from 15 to 29 marks weekly; weavers (average), 23 m. weekly; and a Berlin policeman, the equivalent to £90 a year, with uniform. In making comparisons it must not be forgotten that the average day's work is ten hours. The year 1907 is a test year — the first year when the full ejffect of the new commercial treaties will be felt — and if the fears felt about them prove correct, a setback in Germany's tremendous economic expansion may be antici- pated. There will probably be grave conflicts between labour and capital, a crisis in the GERMAN PROSPERITY 91 Berlin building speculation trade, and a period of stagnation when the absorbing power of the home market diminishes. The best German opinion I could obtain, however, apprehended no very serious or prolonged crisis, but it is questioned whether the new protective tariffs have not been overstretched. I have tried to give some faint idea of the economic position of Germany — her stupendous growth, her energising power, her vast potentialities. One of the greatest coming problems will be that of labour, as unquestionably the long hours (no half-holidays) and the relative cheapness of labour have in the past largely contributed to make Germany's economic position to-day. Taking the last decade as an index, we find a development of a truly prodigious kind : in shipping, national wealth, industry, commerce, population, production, consumption, pros- perity — value which every Englishman should not only know, but realise the true significance of What will be Germany's position and ours in the year 1925? It is a fascinating subject for national reflection. CHAPTER VI THE MATERIALISM OF NEW GERMANY When, on quitting Harrow, I first went to Germany, my house-master, tlie late E. E. Bowen, called me into his study and adminis- tered what at the time I regarded as a rather ''bricky pie-jaw." ''Beware," he said, "of German idealism. They are artists, senti- mentalists, visionaries, and idolise everything English ; and, above all, take heed of the Schwdrmerei of the eternal feminine." I look back on those words to-day as he was wont to scan my hexameters — with mingled wonder and amusement ; and of the two unquestion- ably my quantities were truer than the qualities of his counsel. If the central fact in modern Europe is the German Empire, and the most incalculable factor in it the potentiality of the German 92 CH.VI GERMAN MATERIALISM 93 people, the main characteristic of both is what may conveniently be described as the spirit of materialism. The fact is, Old Germany is dead and was buried with the fallen of the two armies of Sedan. War, Bismarck, and the Kaiser together began and completed the task. By force Bismarck knocked? the Empire to- gether and at the same time knocked the ethical reason of State policy out of it. He founded the amoral political sense, which ever since has governed the statesmanship of Western civilisation, and bequeathed to Ger- many both condition and policy of applied materialism. Germany *s whole scheme of government is one of scientific politico -economic pro- pulsion, co-ordinated and applied towards a definite economic end — self-realisation and the materialisation of her natural powers and resources. A few decades ago a geographical decomposite formation of petty principalities, petty Courts, petty policies, petty Philistinism, now Germany is one, incorporate, indivisible whole. Sedan, Bismarck, Treitschke, and the Kaiser step by step have transformed the abstract mind of the German into one actuated 94 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. by concrete, purposeful design. Of Luther and his maxim (wine, women, and song) but the maxim in practice remains. The international- ism of Goethe's age; the palsied subserviency to fate — the legacy of the Thirty Years' War ; the age of errant minstrelsy, the Minnesong, of Sartor Eesartus and abstract individualism, when poverty was a virtue and to wear a shabby coat was the hall-mark of respectability — such things and conditions exist no more. Less than a century ago Goethe expressed the hope that England might one day hold the Horn and the Isthmus of Suez "in the interests of civilisation." To-day — well, to- day the ambition of All Germany is to drive England from the Canal and replace it by a German one. Before Koniggratz Prussia was regarded as England's satellite, fluctuating in the orbit of Britain's favours. Hamburg was so English then that the British bank clerk there turned out daily to play cricket in the squares — to-day it is the citadel of Ballin and the Continental emporium of world trade. But a few decades ago Weimar was the Athens of the Continent, the nursery and refuge of VI GERMAN MATERIALISM 95 persecuted culture — to-day it is chiefly cele- brated for its number of finishing schools for English girls of family. At Potsdam the remains of Fritz's Voltairean frolics still exist in the rococo palace of Sans Sougi — anachronistic, to-day it points the lesson of Modern Germany to the inquiring tourist. The German professor is no longer the "woolly" Teufelsdrockh of Weiss-nicht-wo, but a conscious Navy League enthusiast : seeing, advancing, and propelling. Michel is no more the fatalistic homespun — the despair of Stein, the chattel of Napoleon, the unit of Moltke, but a nationally conscious independent citizen. What is known as Schwdrmerei — the type of being Goethe created in Wagner, famulus to Faust — exists now but in the rapidly decreasing type of German Backfisch. And even she is rapidly going the way of the Dodo. Yes, Gretchen, Goethe's immortal type, is becoming extinct. She no longer sits at the window-sill waiting for pallid Peter to pass by, with Heine's lyrics on her lap and her hair tied up over her eyes, as we drape the mane of a prize Shire winner. The modern girl 96 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. goes in for French stays and silks and chiffons, knows all about Schopenhauer and G. B. S., and is concerned with the psychological prob- lems of the flesh and the devil. The whole tenor of German life, from one of sentiment and idealism, has become engrained with materialism, scepticism, and what may be termed selfish and national actualities. Ger- mans are the most matter-of-fact, candid, fact-seeking people now living, perhaps the most coarse living, certainly the most material thinking and acting ; and this itching love of knowing and discovering is discernible not only in life and act and conversation, but is reflected in art, on the stage, in music, in literature, and in religion, and finds expression in perverse curiosity. The fact that Gorki's drama Nachtasyl (I think we call it the Lower Depths) was played in Berlin for two years uninter- ruptedly shows the national interest in sordid materialism which is so marked a characteristic of modern German stage productions. I am not concerned here with German acting, which I consider to rival even the Parisian stage : what I would call attention to is the perverse GERMAN MATERIALISM d7 materialism of the modern stage. Mr. Ber- nard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession was regarded everywhere as a perfectly moral pro- duction, and girls were taken generally to see it. Oscar Wilde's Salome has been played for years with prodigious success all over the Empire, while French plays such as " N'avez- vous rien a declarer f have enjoyed enor- mous runs and are seen by all. The latest phase of play goes a stage further, and is the most singular production I have ever seen. It is called Spring's Awakening, and deals perfectly openly with the dawning sense of elective affinity in children of both sexes. All the characters are boys and girls. Wedekind, the author, is probably quite sincere in his art, and certainly Germans go to see the play in much the same spirit as we might go to see an anatomical ex- periment on an animal performed in a clinical theatre. Of course the boy hero falls in love, with results common enough among adults, and in this case disastrous. The inner thoughts of both the boy and girl are out- spoken with a frankness positively embarrass- ing in a public place, and in the end the girl 98 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. dies in childbirth, while the boy passes on triumphantly into life. There is a scene in this play which for reality can only be com- pared with the histrionic performances of Theodora before she became Empress (Gibbon relates them in Latin). Yet the German lady who took me to see it thought the performance exceedingly interesting, and appeared in no way perturbed either at so naked an exhibition of gross materialism or at the perversity of the author's imagination. It is not the scintillation of the esprit rosse of the Paris boulevard which obtains in Ger- many, but a curious interest in psychological problems, a hankering after the perverse, the sordid, the material in life — sensuous fruition of the tares and torments of afflicted humanity. Thus it is no uncommon sight to see the wives, and even daughters, of the worthy bourgeois in low dancing saloons, complacently sipping Benedictine and, for '' educational purposes," gloating over the ribaldries of the scene before them. It is so " psychologically interesting," they will tell you. And that is the catchword of modern Germany. That young girls are taken to see Mrs. GERMAN MATERIALISM 99 Warren's Profession may seem strange to us — by Germans it is considered a wholesome form of education. Though not yet a Suffragette, the Gi-erman woman is rapidly becoming an extreme emancipationist. A totally new woman is arising in Germany — the woman of self-reliance and self-initiative. The curriculum of the modern German girl shows the material view of the new education and would astonish many a lad at Sandhurst. In the first place, the central idea is that she should receive early and proper instruction in what I will call the revelation of creative life and be fully forewarned of its dangers. All kinds of books — Maupassant, Gautier, Nietzsche, and what not — are open to her ; and she is taken to plays dealing with prob- lems of sex. Frequently she is sent to a hospital to do a six months' course of nursing ; she studies philosophy, science, anatomy, phy- siology ; in the higher grade schools she attends lectures on hygienics, elemental eugenics, biology, and sociology ; she is taught calisthenics, how to bring up children, and the latest development in what Germans call " sport," and the open-air treatment generally. 100 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. The effects of this education are already plainly noticeable in the younger generation, and are visible in the "woman's movement" and the remarkable sanitary movement, now being conducted in Germany with the active co-operation of women, in dealing with certain diseases and the scientific enlightenment of the young with regard to their suppression. Whereas in former times the German woman's sphere was relegated to the hearth and home, now she devotes herself to all kinds of socio- logical problems and to the world's affairs generally. She is no longer the aproned caterpillar of man. Free discussion of sex and racial questions is encouraged between the sexes. Squeamishness is considered a mis- take in such things. In a word, the modern German girl looks back upon Gretchen as we look back on the fainting virgins of the Early Victorian era. In this modern cycle of material- ism she describes her own purpose and epicycle. The new girl in Germany is fast becoming a problem. HaV ich dock meine Freude daran, Mephistopheles well might say to-day, and if the type persists woman in Germany will soon be a match even for the purest GERMAN MATERIALISM specimens of the Teuton lieutenant. With a Bachjisch of the new genre I remember a prim- rose flirtation I had on the seashore about a year or so ago, and a most " Walkuric *' time it was. I think she was seventeen. Of course we discussed Fichte, Hegel, Neoplatonism, G. B. S., Oscar Wilde, shooting stars, the signs of true love and the zodiac, telepathy, theo- sophy, socialism, pantheism : I learnt why woman was a superior creature to man, and ultimately destined to rule over him ; in short, we had a very " edifying " dalliance, and at last the time came to part. On taking farewell I presented her with a book which I thought appropriate, the inevitable book of Heine's songs, but she gave me a novel which I don't think could be published in England. And then this modern Gretchen told me that any- thing specially nice that I wrote in my letters could safely be put "under the stamp." Yes, under the stamp ; for mamma had a way of opening letters, but, being of the older genera- tion, never thought of the cryptic message that might lie there. Yes, the modern German girl can look after herself as well as any lily-white Daisy from New York City. >I(52[-''\SN:GLAND AND GERMANY ch. One eyidence of the new materialism is the singular mania for suicide among quite young children. In both Austria and Ger- many some hundreds of cases occur annually among children of both sexes. This is due, no doubt, to the early development of German children, to their precocious intellectual en- vironment and education, and to the premature awakening of love. It is a common thing to hear of little Olga (aged ten) being desperately in love with Master Kurt (aged twelve). Little boys at school wait for the girls returning from their schools and " an affair " begins. Nearly every German girl and boy have some grande passion. And some of these are very serious matters. While the English boy despises all girls and rushes after football, the German lad is thinking of golden tresses, some rippling dimple, some dainty frock, as we English do some ten years later in life. The majority of infantile suicides are traceable to '' thwarted love." The man who knew Germany of twenty years ago and returns to-day will find a country and people so changed as to be well- nigh unrecognisable. He will find a " night GERMAN MATERIALISM 103 life'' in Berlin gayer than in Paris. At 2.30 A.M. lie may see in any big cafe men quietly reading the newspapers, as were it 10 in the morning. He will observe a bustle and street hurly-burly at night that astonishes even a Russian. He will find the young generation going in madly for " sport/' the youth of quality studying lawn tennis with the help of a trainer, the youth's father dining in a restaurant in evening clothes (sic), the mother, perhaps, playing bridge, while sister is flirting at a dance. The despised business man of former years he will find a respected and probably decorated member of society, and " Society " itself growing butterfly wings of popinjay brilliance and levity. At the dances of the big commercial captain he will hobnob with officers of the Royal Guards, the scions of innumerable quarterings, and see in another quarter of the town workmen gravely discussing the economic problems of Germany and the universe. And he will find the spirit of Germany changed too. No longer is Michel the rude larrikin of old and simple Germany. He learns in the Army not only to shoot and to obey, but a fair 104 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. smattering of socialist political economy, and many things unknown to the last generation. Germany's dream days are over. She has no use for the simple life. The old sentimentality is dead, the old chivalry is gone, the old wor- ship of the foreigner has departed. To-day Jewish brains, the commercial instinct, facts not principles, ideas not ideals are at the helin, and the compass needle points to earth. And on art, architecture, music, religion, thought, and literature the materialism of the age has, not unnaturally, left its mark. As an instance of this the music of Strauss's Salome may fairly be advanced. Treating a perverse subject, its object is to reflect perverse action by perverse emotional ex- pression. And the best musical critics apparently agree that in this Strauss has been eminently successful. It opens a new vista in musical art and conception — aiming at sensuous sound : plangent, harrowing, and discordant. It gives us a '' Sadie " sense in music. The Sapphic dance of Salome both appals and enthrals. It materialises our emotions into symphonic perversity. GERMAN MATERIALISM 105 And if we take German sculpture, art, and architecture, we find a similar tone of perverse materialism. If Bocklin founded the school, his Bacchic creations of colour and design have long been surpassed by the so-called '^ Secessionists " and the clever draughtsmen in SimpUcissimus, Jugend, and other Ger- man illustrated weeklies, and is particularly- noticeable in the sordid materialism of subject in the able and influential caricature Press throughout Germany. The fimetic coarseness of these caricatures is inartistic and brutal. And in sculpture one sees the same florid perversity of design, the same want of restraint and artistic plan, the same love of the gross, the coarse, size and ugliness. The Kaiser's "Avenue of Victory" is typical of this materialistic sense, with its plutocratic showi- ness, its lack of simplicity, its purely decora- tive art, its aggressive sumptuosity, and the materialism which caused gilt crowns to be placed on the heads of the marble statues of Fritz and the " Great Emperor." Even the modern furniture is cast in the new materialistic design — all lines without corners, curves, bends, or gradations, all hard 106 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. material, new vulgarity. It is the new spirit of New Germany, and is largely the work of the German Emperor, whose own designs, architectural, artistic, musical, literary, and pictorial, all reflect the florid crudity of an arbitrary new art as the arbitrary expression of a new country and a new people. Nor has literature escaped contagion. Style, dignity, repose, literary design are hardly considered. Germany is without either great poet, great novelist, or writer of any distinctive and marked genius. Hauptmann and Sudermann would seem to have written themselves out, and the younger and rising men are admittedly but wan epigoni with their rococo florescence and fee-fo-fum Prussian perversities. The style of Maximilian Harden is characteristic of this straining after something that may be called — new. Cacophonic, jerky, arrogant, and elliptic, it imitates Heine's prose, and obtains its effects by shock and anacoluthon. It is an unchristian prose. It jars and struts ; it talks pimples. In fact, the inclination of All Germany is to talk pimples. Materialism, the result of prodigious success and prosperity, has for the GERMAN MATERIALISM 107 time being paralysed the simple and contempla- tive life of Old Germany, and driven the fine arts and the finer shades of thought and life into the cobwebbed corners of antiquity. With the exception of the Catholic population, I imagine Germany to be the most freethinking nation on religious matters in all Europe, and the country certainly containing the smallest number of churches and ecclesiastical dignitaries. The materialism of Social Democracy is largely responsible for this, and though I have often conversed with men and women of the working classes in Germany I have seldom encountered any trace of confirmed religious faith ; but, of course, this remark does not apply to German Catholics or to the German aristocracy, with their heraldic cognisance for '' God and Emperor." Highly interesting in this respect is the recent scandal of '' the round table " at Berlin, the discovery of which may have very import- ant international consequences. The specific charge is that the Emperor has for years been under the "spiritistic" influence of a Court camarilla which, of an extreme reactionary character, has exercised a dominating and highly baneful influence on German policy, 108 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. both domestic and foreign. I cannot inquire into this question here ; but every one who has lived in Berlin is aware of the enormous popularity (may I call it ?) which " spiritism/' table-turning, etc., and occult materialisation have enjoyed among the upper classes there, and that the tables have turned on themselves at last is matter of honest international gratification. It is the materialisation of materialism. That Germans are idealists too is also incontestable, and perhaps the explanation of their gross materialism is that extreme idealism finds natural expression in materialism, as religious fanaticism is so often associated with cruelty. It is the material view which forces the young officer to "marry money" and his friends to congratulate him on his capture of what they materially call a fat " goldfish." It is the material view which is the driving power of German specialisation, German thoroughness, German education as evidenced by the Charlottenburg and now new com- mercial schools, German social legislation, German statistical inquiries, German red tape, socialism, militarism, optimism, German VI GERMAN MATERIALISM 109 historical, philosophical and scientific thought and genius, German policy and the mis- takes arising from it. The thrift, vitality, power, and arrogance of Prussia are due to it. The fortunes of the HohenzoUern dynasty are due to it. Stein, Scharnhorst, Bismarck, Moltke, even Luther and Catherine of Russia, were impregnated with it ; and the professor whose whole ken in life are the antennae of a particular insect, and the student whose world is the vat, and Gretchen whose whole continent is man — they are all what they are because of it. The Germany of Wallenstein, Gnomes, Kant and Schiller, of Bach and the Lorelei, Gretchen and the Wartburg is as dead as quarter-staff England of Robin Hood fame, as the French chivalry of Bayard is dead, or the picaresque romanticism of De Vega s Spain. Let us not forget that Germany invented gunpowder, printing, and scientific war — three very material things, and that to inspire them she added music. To-day she has realised herself in the spirit of the great Elector through the pageantry of HohenzoUern materialism. In a word, she has materialised. CHAPTEE VII THE GERMAN PRESS : ITS USES AND MISUSES Nothing sticks so long as a bad name, a good nickname, or a false reputation, and thus Bis- marck's apothegm that the German Govern- ment had to pay for the window-panes its Press smashed has come down to us with legendary fame and familiarity. As when Uncle Toby swore his first oath, the recording angel may well have blushed when this Pots- damic utterance flew up — the stigma persists ; and to-day we still regard the German Press as the most ignorant, irresponsible, and ill- informed, ill - conducted, and wanton in any country in Europe. Now this reputation was precisely the one which Bismarck, lord of intrigue and state- craft, intended that it should have. To mould the people he systematically set about mould- no CH.VII THE GERMAN PRESS 111 ing the Press. With that amazing political prescience which characterised him he first foresaw its power and possibilities ; himself conceived, cradled, and tended it, put it in pawn of the Wilhelmstrasse, christened it with highly unchristian epithets, used it, stamped on it, and rose with it with such efi'ect and with such unscrupulousness that not only the German, but the entire Continental Press, including our own, was throughout his life continually agitated and inspired by the Press chemistry at Berlin; of which Busch, "his little Archer," was the master alchemist and bottlewasher. He threw over the whole Ger- man Press a skein of diplomatic blufi", blarney, mystery, and intrigue, which it was the busi- ness of European Chanceries and journalists to unravel, and in a few years fashioned not only a Press of parts, but the most sensitive, reflective, well-informed Press to be found in this or any other country. Bismarck's deeds live after him. The German Press is the pulse of German policy — the mirror of the national design. More amenable to official control than any other Press in Europe and more subject to inspira- 112 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. tion, it reflects the whims, aims, and ambitions of the Government in a way that no other foreign Press does, and immeasurably more than our own. The Press is an executive part of the administrative police and bureaucratic machine. On all questions of foreign afiairs it is well drilled, docile, and supine ; while, if frequently divorced from public opinion, it is, with few exceptions, rarely independent of official guid- ance, and never, it may be said, of the re- sponsibility officially attaching to it. Nor does this humility in Germany entail humilia- tion. As a profession it is an estate without a status. Emoluments are small. It carries no dignity, off"ers little position, leads to no social preferment. It is the whipping -post of the public conscience. And as on all ques- tions of international importance its voice is the echo of official inspiration, it is natural enough that its influence is accepted as educa- tional, and that its motives are never impugned or its veracity questioned. A Press which is controlled by semi-official inspiration, and will, to order, lickspittle or cajole, vilify or doctor, praise or condemn in VII THE GERMAN PRESS 113 whatever direction it is requested to, writes not only for the education and guidance of the public within, but largely for the benefit of the public without. .To those who can read it, plumb the artifice of its artificiality, the realities of its unreality, and the conscience of its direction, it is a trustworthy vane of German diplomacy. Neither party faction (as in England) nor eclectic license afi'ects its attitude on foreign afiairs, which editors re- gard as beyond the province of their juris- diction. They seek blindly for inspiration. Blindly they get it. The central oracle is Berlin. There is the storeroom, and from there the inspiration radiates and is suffused over the entire provincial Press. The " cuiras- sier boot'' missive may go bang through a window of the Quai d'Orsay, of Downing Street, or elsewhere, by means of some article " placed^' in some remote provincial journal — no matter where, the inflammatory material emanated from the traditional jack-boot pre- served in the Press still-room at Berlin. This is, of course, a very pernicious state of things. The German public is kept in pro- found ignorance of events in other countries, 114 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. and as there are no free telegraph agencies it is as easy for the Government to keep the Press '^ in order " as it is for the Press to keep the public in ignorance ; to stir up artificial waves of public hysteria as to blind and mis- lead " the general/' and to commit all the sins of omission and commission known to sub-editors under the ruthless control of un- scrupulous political jugglery. Thus, during the Boer War the public was completely hoaxed by its Press. During the Russo - Japanese War, though German opinion was generally anti- Russian, on all occasions praise was sung to the " Little Father." Not a skylight pane was broken. In the one case it suited official Germany to encourage Anglophobia, in the other Russophobia was discouraged. During both crises it proved itself a thoroughly re- liable and ''good" Press. Readers of Busch's Secret Pages of the History of Bismarck will remember the delectable scene wherein the author makes his bow to his ''master" and describes his initiation in the esoteric mysteries of the Bismarckian oracle. Exactly the same pro- cess exists to-day. It is genuine journeyman, VII THE GERMAN PRESS 115 routine work. The Press Bureau is an in- tegral part of the Foreign Office. It has a head and a staff, often recruited — like Busch — from journalists singled out by virtue of qualities of the pen or for such qualities as rapid comprehension, adaptability, a good official manner, or even a pleasing appearance. Their duties are arduous. The senior mem- bers receive Press representatives and instruct them in their calling. From this bureau there go forth elaborate articles on international politics, the paragraphic paraphernalia of the German journalistic artifice — wink, hoodwink, ballon d'essai, entrefilet, rebuke and sugges- tion — and the heavy metal from the battery of the North German Gazette. The degree of information in the various organs changes frequently; now the Post is all - informed, now the Cologne Gazette, now the National Zeitung, now the Berliner LoJcal-Anzeiger, now some provincial newspaper. This is due to what Germans call the '* personal moment." One man is cleverer than another at deducing, anticipating, devising, imbibing, or another acquires popularity, and so on, as in the cir- cumstances naturally it must be so. 116 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. The Press Bureau is always open. It is a sort of political inquiry ofl&ce, and once a journalist has the ear of the oracle he may, if he is tactful, learn as much about foreign affairs as is good for him, and become a very useful and "well-informed" contributor to his newspaper. Obedience is essential. If he receives the tip to write up British perfidy, and instead writes down German rectitude, he may find the workshop closed next time he calls for repairs; for the Press Bureau is strictly disciplinarian, and offers a stern clog to individual journalistic effort. Its duty is to decree and purvey. It is a very useful in- stitution in many ways. It prevents idealistic editors from indulging in arabesque politics of their own imagining, and when anything is " on " and it is important to put the Press in blinkers it is really useful in a country where there are so many parties and where every one thinks he knows better than everybody else. Very important, too, are the uses of German '' inspiration " abroad. In every well-appointed Embassy some member of the staff is selected to look after "us," whose duty it is to keep in touch with native jour- VII THE GERMAN PRESS 117 nalists and temper the distemper of a *' bad " Press. During the Moroccan crisis in Paris some remarkably adroit subterranean work was accomplished by the head of the Press Department in Berlin, and when he appears in that capital all Paris knows that something is on foot. The Emperor, too, has broken all precedent by his reception of American jour- nalists, by his dining with Mr. Stone, Head of the Associated Press, and by his never losing an opportunity, at Kiel or elsewhere, of showing his intelligent appreciation of con- temporary conditions and the exigencies of modern political life. Of course, the thing is often overdone. It is not an easy matter to ** inspire'' judiciously. Blunders are made. The "likely" man turns out rather too " acute." All sorts of things happen natu- rally. But Germans realise that the sofa age of diplomacy has passed with its silken art of fans and innuendos. More and more the man who writes holds the man who represents in the palm of his publicistic palmistry. By means of this official control the German Press never indulges in political extravaganzas of its own concoction, never has fits of tan- 118 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. trums, migraine, splenetic phobia, or cuirassier choler without due cause and inspiration, which is the "inspired" cause of German diplomacy. Of great and growing importance is the influence of commercial and financial magnates on the German Press, about whom a word must be said. Men like Ballin, the founder of German shipping power, like the late Krupp, the arm and burgonet of the German arsenal, like the late von Siemens, the designing brain of the Baghdad Railway scheme, like the great bankers von Mendelssohn - Bartholdy, Bleichroder, etc., and latterly, like Scherl, proprietor of the Lokal-Anzeiger, exercise far more influence on German politics and are far more associated with it than is commonly supposed here. If the Kaiser and Ballin made Germany a great Sea Power, the bankers initiated the German policy of economic penetration in South America, Asia Minor, China, and Morocco, maintain and virtually direct it. Without the Deutsche Bank and the Disconto Bank Germany would never have entered South America at all, and with- out the banks the Asia Minor policy would VII THE GERMAN PRESS 119 never have existed, nor the present Persian one ; indeed, the bank policy of Germany is one of the most important assets of German diplomacy. Their influence on the Press is naturally most marked. Their great organ is the Frankfurter Zeitung, perhaps the best paper in Germany; traditionally pro -Russian, be- cause the Tsar habitually reads it, having acquired that taste during his Darmstadt days. Thus, while the Jewish pogroms were taking place in Russia, that organ published pronounced pro-Russian leaders. Then they have the Berliner Tageblatt, which is the '^ safe " paper to read ; the Borsen Courier, and many others. To the German Emperor belongs the credit of bringing about this revolution in German social custom. He was a great friend of Krupp, and is on terms of close intimacy with the Jew Ballin. The Mendelssohn s have been raised into the nobility — another member again only the other day ; Scherl is rewarded with high honours — and when the Emperor wanted half a million pounds to found a military society for the study and promotion 120 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. of aerial navigation he went to the bankers and knights of industry and — obtained the money. In fact, Anti-Semitism in Germany is dead. The Jews are " on top." And they have flung their energies and money into the national service of the State, and tend more and more to become the economic commanding generals of German policy and development. The Emperor consults and works with them. He has appointed an ex-Jew to the head of the Colonial Department. The man " work- ing " the American end is a Jew. In short, if British Imperialism was the result of indi- vidual enterprise and providence, German Imperialism is being founded upon the flag, the banks, and the motive mechanism of State- propelled capitalistic enterprise. Bismarck put Germany in the saddle, the Emperor taught her to swim, and Lazarus to walk — politically. These two things — the creation of the Navy, the breakdown of Anti-Semitism and the enlistment of Jewish and trade interests in the service of State policy — are the two main achievements, so far, of the Emperor's rule. Another very important influence is that of VII THE GERMAN PRESS 121 the comic caricature Press, which is of a pro- nounced anarchic and democratic character. Its centre is Munich, where SimpUcissimus, Jugend, and other similar sheets are produced with extremely clever drawings, in the manner of Le Eire, that is to say, as coarse and ribald as they well can be. But the modern German is extremely partial to such influence, and it is no exaggeration to say that the comic Press of Germany is a great political force, which came out in striking fashion during the Boer War, and that the average German derives not a little of his political convictions from its teaching. It vilifies everybody and everything, and attacks the Government and the Emperor without stint or prejudice ; and during the war panic the other day the whole comic Press of Germany was teeming with caricatures of German "isolation," " pusillanimity," our King and their Emperor, Germany's "kowtow to England," the "Eagle pawed by the Lion," and what-not incendiary design, calculated to inflame German passion and represent Germany as the buffeted clown of British machination. Another marked, though personal, influence 122 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. is that of Harden in Die Zukunft, who, in the character of the modern Junius, weekly anathematises the German Government, the Emperor, and most other things, German and un-German. He led the recent attack which broke up the Emperor's ''round table." He has '' good " friends behind him, and has the sweeping grasp of the true statesman. He enjoys a reputation and exercises an influence which no English journalist can claim, some- what similar to that wielded by Grimm, the lover of Madame d'Epinay, and originator of the brilliant Correspondance Litteraire. And he, too, is of Semitic extraction. Now, the cumulative efi^ect of the German ''well-informed" Press has been to create a very real public opinion, with a tendency to kick over the shafts and rum amok. To-day a very strong public opinion exists in Germany. During the Boer War it broke all restraint, and any newspaper which did not join in the general outburst found itself boycotted by its subscribing public. Moreover, the people believe what its Press tells them to believe — implicitly. And so the tendency of popular organs like the Lokal-Anzeiger, with its THE GERMAN PRESS 123 enormous circulation, is to grow more and more political, more and more educationally- semi-official. For years, first under Bismarck and all subsequent Chancellors, the Press of Germany, controlled in Berlin, has spread the Emperor's doctrines over the country, pointed out the rocks and reefs of antagonistic policies, pointed to England as the arch Macchiavelli of European statecraft, pointed out the lode- star of German design. Gradually the Press is sloughing its Bismarckian skin in deference to public opinion, which now tends to inspire it. But only tends to. The fang of the reptile has never been extracted. The diJfference is one of education. Impressed in the service of the State, the German Press has educated the public to think both nationally and Imperially. It has breathed its semi-official inspiration upon the masses, until now Fran- kenstein breathes and moves himself. It has taught the most unpolitical mind in Europe the reason of public opinion and some- thing about the subtle art of the national diplomacy. As evidence of the growth and power of German public opinion one has but to turn 124 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. to the prolific output of pamphlets, leaflets, books and booklets, and the tangle of the so-called "literature" on international rela- tions, politico-economic questions, the necessity of the German Navy, the European Customs and Postal Union, Pan - Germanism, the Emperor and his work, the world-war between England and Germany, the Baghdad Railway, HohenzoUern architectonics, the banks and their uses, tariff* policy, trade and railway policy. Socialism, Imperial and colonial policies, and the national power of the furor teutonicus. This pamphlet, Pan - Germanic literature is notably the work of the German professors, and stands, apart from journalism, as a distinctive feature in the modern national education. The professor who seeks merit nowadays writes a scientific tract in support of the Navy. Let no one imagine that this literature is a negligible quantity — into its creation the best brain power of Germany is attracted, out of it radiates the political scheme of German State economy. Its existence shows that the individual German thinks politically : the demand for it that the nation thinks nationally. These books occupy the VII THE GERMAN PRESS 125 place in Germany that our reviews do with us. Their effect — to take one instance alone — may be gauged by the results achieved con- cerning the propaganda of the Navy — which ten years ago Germans regarded as the *^ Kaiser's toy," but which now every mother and every mother's son of them hold to be the pivot of the national life and of all future attainment. Some idea may be gathered of the power of journalism in Germany from the following figures: — Of 4997 political organs 2924 are Radical and Democratic, and some 80 odd Social Democratic; 415 are unattached; 268 profess no policy or bias. There are 420 official papers under the direction of Govern- ment officials, such as the Landrdte, Bezirhs- prdsidenten, etc., or local and provincial authorities. These official journals formed in Bismarck's time the ^'reptile" Press. There are 250 National Liberal organs, 230 Con- servative, 229 Catholic, 36 Free Conservative, 78 Polish, 7 Danish, 2 Guelph. It is esti- mated that the total daily circulation of journals with Socialist and Radical tendencies considerably exceeds four millions. 126 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. The point to notice is that on foreign affairs the German Press, from the Delphic utterances of the North German Gazette to the entrefilet of the demi-semi-official Lohal- Anzeiger of Berlin — the whole Press, with the exception of Socialist and a few Anarchic organs — speaks pontifically for and through Berlin. To read the German Press in any- other sense is like trying to paint a landscape without knowledge of perspective. To say, '' Oh ! it's only the German Press," is to look on politics with a glass eye. The Chancellor and Ministers have their separate and well- known organ and organs, precisely as Bismarck did before them. The only important news agency being under official supervision, Ger- mans only learn what their Government wishes them to, and the Press only says what it is instructed to. To maintain that the German Press has no power and has nothing to teach is to misunderstand its purpose, influence, and policy. It is the "best'' Press any Government can boast of; lacking in modern journalistic enterprise, but to the student of contemporary affairs invaluable as a guide to German policy, intrigue, whims THE GERMAN PRESS 127 and alarums, blasts and counterblasts, aims and anxieties — it is the handbook of the national endeavour, the mirror of the Chan- cellor's soul, and the most instructive Press in all Europe. CHAPTER VIII WAR TRAINING OF GERMAN STATE ECONOMY I COME now to the reason of modem German State economy and its reflective action upon the life of the body politic. By the former I mean the economic interests of the nation — trade, commerce, etc., and their political adjuncts, the Army and the Navy, which may be classified as Power ; and by the latter the national education and feeling which derive from it, or the expression of the national will to support and assert it. And first I will take the reason, which, indeed, for all com- prehension of modern Germany, it is quint- essential to understand. In all history of the evolution of peoples no contrast is more striking than that pre- sented by a study of Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea — of the age which inspired and read 128 cH.viii GERMAN STATE ECONOMY 129 it, and of which it was a faithful reflex — and that of modern Germany ; with its scientific sociocracy, its scientific purpose and propul- sion, its systematised national education, and the new materialistic idea of State reason and direction. The Song of the sublimated Ego — in philosophy of Kant and Fichte, in poetry of Goethe and Schiller, in politics of Old German Liberalism, in practical life of indi- vidualism and the Schopenhauer doctrine of the will to live — what is it now but the dirge of an old-world ideology — the last stave of Lohengrin incantation ! To-day Germany is governed by what may be called the anthropo- logical conception of life — by the submersion, that is, of the individual in the mass, of the purpose and will of the I in the central service of the whole. This anthropological conception of life is, in fact, the key to all German unity of national and individual design. Whether the idealism invoked by the words Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, or that which found such poetic expression in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England, France, and Germany, or the idealism which culminated in K 130 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. Rousseau and the French Revolution is the cause of modern German materialism or not, it is not for me to discuss. It exists in the rule of Krupp and Ballin, Siemens and Roths- child, Bismarck and Moltke, the Kaiser and his economic Navy Professors, in the material- istic Socialism of Karl Marx, and the coUec- tivist purpose of the German Government. To-day Germany recognises as the two basic conditions of national life labour and machinery, of which labour is the more im- portant. It is the science of mass production and consumption, mass quality, mass organisa- tion and application, the politico -economic power contained in the masses, of which buying and selling are the driving forces of existence and the bed-rock of all national progress and prosperity. In a word, the commercial position and policy of a nation is the primary object of its existence, as it is its surest index of well-being ; while dependent for such existence on the motive force of an ever-increasing mass vitality, and dependent for its safety and progress on the mass quality of the armed power behind it, which is its first and ultimate protection. VIII GERMAN STATE ECONOMY 131 The industrialisation of Germany is thus the root and branch of the whole German economic problem. The new philosophy of life is founded upon it. The whole energy of the State is concentrated upon its solution. It is the dynamic force of modern German economy. The following table shows the development of industrialism in the last hundred years : — Agricultural population. Non- agricultural population. 1816. . 18-6 millions 6*3 millions 1835 . . 18-5 »> 12-4 jj 1855 . . 18-5 j> 17-6 » 1875 . . 18-5 )> 24-0 yy 1895 . . 18-5 » 33-5 5J 1905 . . 18-5 jj 41-8 1) So that when Germany has attained to her eighty million standard of population — and Professor Hickmann estimates that about the year 1924 Germany will have reached that figure — something like 61*5 per cent of the entire population will be employed in indus- trial pursuits. The question for Germany is thus the economic problem of how to employ these growing millions. This is the material view of modern Ger- man reason of State. Understood in its full 132 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. significance, it gives us the clue to German State economy and attainment, and leads us logically to the meaning and ^purpose of German militarism, and to the reason of the Kaiser's oversea forward policy. It shows us a State scientifically providing for, organising, and enforcing a national system of economic achievement, and a national will to promote and realise it. In all essentials it is nation- ally constructive, educationally formative, politically and economically creative. To educate Germans to the economic importance of the Army and to the political importance of commerce is thus the paramount design of the Emperors policy. It is the basis of Pan-Germanism, the origin of the new naval enthusiasm, the reason of all modern national reason, the economic wardrobe of the future. And it is for this reason that the Army and Navy are, and must be, the warden of the nation's destiny. War, then, in the German idea is the ultima ratio of capitalistic action and inter- action, and is thus the first and last economic asset of a nation's will and vitality. In Europe, at any rate, the era of what may be termed VIII GERMAN STATE ECONOMY 133 non-economic wars closed with the Religious Wars of the seventeenth century ; for later the characteristic cause of wars may be de- scribed as monarchical. Napoleon initiated the purely economic war designed for a national economic purpose. He fought Eng- land to ruin her economically, and his fall was the genetic apotheosis of the British Empire. The wars of 1866 and 1870 paved the way for the North German capitalistic development, and their direct result is the new German State economy. Since then all wars or troubles of war, whether in China, the Transvaal, East Asia, Egypt, Morocco, or Venezuela, have been purely economic, waged for purely material purposes. In war the German national spirit was born, by effect of war, after the Napoleonic dominion, modern German capitalistic development became pos- sible, and with the spirit of war the new national German economic unity and policy is shaped and held together. The military education of the people is thus the first duty of the State. It was the capitalistic or economic reason that led the Emperor to found the German Navy, and it 134 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. is for the purpose of assisting the economic policy of oversea exchange that it exists and grows to-day. The greater the German world market grows, the greater is its economic vulnerability, and so the greater grows the need for a stronger Navy. The Navy is now generally regarded in Germany as the first insurance policy for the national credit and performance. It is because Germans conceive war, and the power to wage war, to be the alma mater of economic prosperity and expansion that the modern German sociocracy exists, grows, and will grow: concomitantly with the growth of Germany's population, market and national purpose, potentially to inspire and enforce them. And it is for this that the military spirit of Germany rules as the energising Idol of Mammon righteousness. What else is Pan - Germanism but the national expression of this dominating eco- nomic creed and panacea ? It is the desire for greater economic space, more markets, more dominion and national expropriation of weaker economic civilisations. When the Kaiser ascended the throne Germanic constructive unity was ^still but a dream, invoking little viii GERMAN STATE ECONOMY 135 sympathy among Germans, being but the Golden Garden of the warriors' paradise. Well, to-day the very meaning of Pan- Germanism has lost both point and substance. Piece by piece the blocks of national solidarity. Imperial constructiveness, economic progress and ambition have been set to the State edifice and cemented together, and to-day, a castle rock of granite, it proudly frowns upon the Continent, one massive architectural design of single aim and construction. There is no longer need for Pan-German agitation. The buccaneer Navy Professors no longer preach the gospel of battles and battleships, Hohen- zoUern architectonics, and immediate world conquest — now All Germany is All- Germanic. It first astonished us with the outbreak of Anglophobia during the Boer War. It is re- vealed in the million membership of the German Navy League ; it was demonstrated nationally at the last General Election. It has become part and parcel of the modern German education. First of all, said a distinguished lady to me, "I teach my sons to be men of German spirit and Empire. Be as good as you can, as wise, as truthful, as useful as you can, as 136 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. generous and as upright as you can ; but, before all, know that you are a German, and because a German a soldier, and because a soldier an economic factor in the national whole. Your duty as a citizen is to know how to fight and die for your country, your first thought should always be of Germany and its destiny." And then she told me how other mothers taught their sons in similar spirit, training them to believe in the future of Germanic Empire and expansion, in the Kaiseridee or idea of Emperor, in the Army and the Navy and in the teaching of the school of Treitschke. Protestant, Jew, Catholic, many a Socialist even — one and all are now ardent supporters of the Emperor s Navy, believers in the future of Germany, upholders of the All-Germanic idea of Teutonic predestinate ascendancy. To put it succinctly, Pan-Germanism has merged into itself, and lives, exultant and expectant, in the scientific purpose of modern Germany. This scientific war training of the German people is especially notable at the present moment, in the face of positive evidence of the decline of the military spirit in France and VIII GERMAN STATE ECONOMY 137 the loose talk of disarmament now popular in England. We see in Germany a nation conscious of a great destiny, consciously and conscientiously pursuing it. We find the whole economy of the German State system- atised and applied towards the cultivation of the national war spirit, towards the promotion of the national economic end, and towards its ultimate and triumphal realisation. The new generation cut their teeth on the All-Germanic idea. Their children may live to fulfil it. It is not a thing which peoples of Utopian tendencies, of idealistic principles, faiths, and infallibilities can afibrd to sneer at, or ignore, or even resent. It enunciates a new philosophy of national life, a new policy of Governmental responsibility, a new conception of the place of the individual within the State and of his civic duty towards it. It has destroyed the idealism of Old Germany, but it has given the country a reason for existence, a cause to promote, a flag, a soul prophetic, and a fate. It is proverbially difficult for a foreigner to gauge the feeling of a people not his own towards another, yet, as this is a matter of extreme importance to us, the opinion of one 138 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. who for the last ten years has enjoyed excep- tional opportunity for studying Germany on the spot may here stand recorded, and, at any rate, it is sincere. In the first place, the political changes that have taken place since the year 1900 have naturally exercised a temperate effect upon the German nation, and one no longer meets the braggart Pan-German characteristic of the Boer War period of Anglo- phobic effusion ; or overhears the silly talk of British decadence minted for naval purposes at that time. The Boers did not win, Russia did not win, England did not abandon France in Morocco, things, in fine, have not developed with that precipitancy and in that direction which Germans five years ago hopefully anticipated. It has had a soberising efiect generally. Fewer pamphlets describing the war between England and Germany and the crushing defeat of the former are published now. Less is said, less is written : a more chastened spirit prevails. But little more can be said. If less is said, far more is thought, far more prepared for. I am not speaking of the feeling in the Army, which, as I wrote in a former article, has for VIII GERMAN STATE ECONOMY 139 some time been spoiling for a fight, partly, no doubt, owing to the military spirit of restless- ness as the natural result of a long period of inactivity, and recently to the martial resent- ment at what is regarded as the undignified policy of the Emperor at Algeciras. I am concerned here with the spirit of the people as a whole. The conclusions I came to from a recent visit to all parts of Germany after an absence of three years are these. First of all, I found the idea that the ways of England and Germany tend to converge to be almost an idee fixe. The distrust of Eng- land is as deep-rooted as ever, while the feel- ing that England is everywhere in the way, always in the offing of German maritime venture and adventure, ever with design frustrating German enterprise and ambition, ever ready to spike the guns of her policy and damp the powder of her purpose — more generally entertained now than at any pre- vious time of which I have knowledge, and the resentment at it far more universal and engrained. It will, of course, be objected that the English visitant journalists had a regal reception, and the Lord Mayor a "bully" 140 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. time, and that the Kaiser is coming over in the autumn to sign to the bond of unity. They did have a '' bully " time, all of them, and so, no doubt, will the German Emperor here. But that, unfortunately, will not alter by one whit the general situation. One of the causes of the reception accorded to the British journalists is the German fear of Eng- land going over to Protection, and the desire to maintain, and keep on good terms with, the Liberal Government in this country. It is not that Germans seek war with Eng- land now, because such a war would neces- sarily be a naval one — had we a contiguous boundary to Germany we would long ago have had it. The gravity in the situation lies in the official education of the people in the -belief that Great Britain is the enemy. It is a serious charge to make, but I question if any one who knows Germany well wiU challenge the assertion, which can be sub- stantiated by evidence conclusive. The entire German Press is consciously permeated with Anglophobic sentiment. Almost the entire official and military world is Anglophobe. The Prussian Yunker aristocracy is Anglo- VIII GERMAN STATE ECONOMY 141 phobe ; the whole teaching of modern German history and political economy is Anglophobe ; the training of the young is Anglophobe ; nor can it be said that the German Foreign Office gives proof positive of much demonstration to the contrary. The Anglophobia of Germany is caused by the conscious feeling that so long as England rules the main the destiny of Germany is in abeyance. It is not that Germans individu- ally or collectively dislike us as that they feel that the future of England and Germany is largely one : one solution, one conclusion. It was the doctrine of Pan-Germanism — it is the State doctrine of modern Germany. It is not a theory that exchange of visits or an en- lightened policy of petits soins can serenely wipe off the slate of unwritten decree, and neither can it be thrown into the conjectural waste-paper basket. It is part of the thesis of German State economy. What it is right for us to realise is that the German State economy is not a bulbous organism of fortuitous circumstance, but a systematised, scientific, educational whole. Its motto is /aire pour ne pas se laisser 142 ENGLAND AND GERMANY cH.vm faire. Its central object is to train the nation to face its destiny. With her mighty Army Germany holds the atlas of Europe in her right hand. The question for her is — Will she, with her rising Navy, ever hold it in her left ? Maybe younger Germany will have a voice in that matter. Her national prob- lems are economic — markets and the masses and what to do with them. To-day she steers — full steam ahead — for Germanic liberty and Imperial achievement. CHAPTER IX THE GERMANIC PROBLEM OF POWER AND EMPIRE Glancing at the map of Europe, we obtain certain definite impressions from the various coloured patches, red, white, blue, yellow, of different nationalities, natural and apparently fixed boundaries, and conceive fixed ideas about them. Italy would seem naturally Italy, Spain a natural peninsula hemmed off from France — herself a whole — by fringe of mountains; Switzerland one, Scandinavia a piece, Russia a unity, Holland and Belgium, Greece, Denmark unities, with the potential essence of federate unity even in the Balkans. The map appears good handiwork. A certain fitness characterises the whole geographical composition. And there in the heart of it all — which is 143 144 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. the heart of European destiny — lies Germany and that singular ethnic anomaly known as the Austrian Empire. There seems to be a want of finiteness about the German boundary. The lines look forced and unnatural, the forma- tion looks uncomfortable. Her father river, the Rhine, has its mouth in an adjacent country. The eye would fain see one patch of colour from Berlin to the Skagerak. By a freak of ethnographic construction Germany has no seaboard on the South, and but a small border, relatively, on the North Sea ; her boundary curvature seems to have arisen under constraint and to be kept under by constraint ; in short, she is belted in from the sea on the commanding summit by Denmark, from southern egress by Italian and Austrian protuberances, and from western freedom and magnificence by Belgium and the Nether- lands. Head, foot, and lungs are clamped, as it were. She seems disproportionate : is so ethnically, historically, economically, politic- ally, and by that very fact disjoints the figuration and the picture permanency of the map of Europe. Germany, then, is in a permanent con- POWER AND EMPIRE 145 ditlon of disruptive progress and procession. It was one of Fichte's axioms that every State not wishing to live in ''natural" conditions of warfare must extend to its ''natural'' boundaries ; the a 'priori condition for a State's economic development lying in its " natural " geographical position — in a State's " necessary retrocession or expansion " (as the case might be) to its natural, economic, and national boundaries. And to these boundaries Germany has not yet attained. It is not her fault, so to speak ; rather it is her misfortune. Unlike the other great Powers of Europe, Germany alone is in the wake of her ethnic and national history, in a state of rudi- mentary abeyance to circumstance and decree. Unlike all the other great Powers, who have attained to their "natural" boundaries, she alone has an historical mission to fulfil, a national page to write, a past to catch up, a present to make good, and a future of national singleness and design to prepare and fight for. As it was Germany's mission in the latter half of the Middle Ages to drive back the Slavs towards the East, so it is Germany's mission to-day to find the diameter of her own 146 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. '* natural " circumference. And to this palpi- tating endeavour to "square the circle" is due the strain and constructiveness of modern Germany, the military training of Germans, the militant cast of her policy and the militant purpose of All-Germanic unity and liberty. Now, these are no lip-axioms or academic debating club theories. As individuals, an they are to achieve aught, must pursue some end and purpose in life, so is it with nations. The struggle for national-economic existence is the characteristic of the modern age. The place assigned to Germany in the world is an unnatural one, the place she aspires to is controlled by the two agencies — geographical position and the historical part she is destined to play there. As it is our mission — the natural mission, we may well say — to unify the British Empire, so it is Germany's mis- sion to weld together and consolidate Germans in Europe ethnologically, economically, and politically, and where possible, imperially, across the seas. From the Silesian Wars to Koniggratz, from Rossbach and Waterloo to the ''crowning mercy'' at Sedan, Germans POWER AND EMPIRE 147 fought for nationality and, without knowing it, for freedom. Throughout a continuity of aim is noticeable. In the inarticulate nadir of German humility the national heart was born. To-day it is vested in the mandate of HohenzoUern pyrotechnics and in the gospel of German Sea Power. And observe that Bismarck stopped at the sea. The Emperor, type and product of New Germany, looked ahead in the light of the past to realise the future. The ethnographic conception of All Germany — the bond of union once embodied in the Holy Roman Empire — may yet be re-established in that final adjustment of ethnic interest which is the goal of German ambition. In discussions of Anglo -German relations one commonly overhears remarks such as the German Emperor "hates England," or Germany wants to destroy our Navy, or " Do the Germans really loathe us?'' etc. — all crooked questions and suppositions irrelevant to the issue and to the true understanding of the dynamics of German policy and economy. I do not think the German Emperor '' hates '' England at all. Rather the contrary. He 148 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. talks English perfectly, is very fond of lawn tennis, and has such a respect for the British Navy that he long ago determined to have one like it. Besides, the age of monarchical wars is past. Nor is it a matter of personal or national antipathy at all, potent and decisive as, in moments of crisis, such agency is and tends in these democratic times more and more to become. It would be well to stop talking of the Kaiser's '^ hatreds " and to tap the problem at its basic source. And there, ploughing through the sedge of Anglo- phobia, we will find the true reason of rational apprehension and the motive reason of the German problem. For problem — of Power and Empire it is. And first of all let us examine without bias the nature of the Imperial problem confronting Germany. The case for All Germany is simple and natural enough, and is epitomised in the appeal issued by the Great Elector, ''Eemember you are a German'' — which is the motto of the Pan-German League. In that phrase the whole German position, policy, and argument are embodied. It is the ethnic call for national unity. It cuts into the heart IX POWER AND EMPIRE 149 of the whole Austro-Hungarian problem, it is the postulate of that Greater Germany in Europe which in all probability is yet to be. There is Germany's way to the East and to the Mediterranean Sea. There are the mouths of the Rhine and the Danube — the former the main artery of Germany, the latter of Austria — both of them lying in alien lands. There is Germany in the Balkans, in Turkey, in Asia Minor, where, with tact, energy, and capital, she may conceivably found the long-sought-for Eldorado. And there is Austria, with her ethnic landslides, her strictly finite possibilities, her elasticities, religious and geographical — over the whole of which the Slav mirage casts its growing shadow. The Germanisation of Austria is the hydra problem of Central Europe. The ethnic problem must be grappled with. Sooner or later Germany will have to consider whether she will take over the eleven million German- speaking Catholics of the Austrian Empire, whether the struggle between Slav and Teuton, which Germans have fostered in the dual monarchy, can find any other solution than by the arbitrament of war ; how long, in 150 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. fine, the German national question can be kept in abeyance, and what its issue will be. And behind her, energising and steeling the national fibre, is the purely economic nature of the Imperial problem, which is at once its reason and propelling force. It is the problem of masses, wealth, industry, capital, trade, power — the question of labour, food, buying and selling, production and consumption — the question of hunger, national volition, and satiety. It is not a matter of speculative politics, nor is its purpose actuated by lustful conquest and spoliation. It means simply this. Will Germany be able to contain herself in or about the year 1925 — to nourish herself, clothe herself, economically support herself within the existing limits, resources, and markets of the German Empire ? And, if not, what alternative to expansion, expansion by force if necessary, by absorption if possible, will there be left open to her? On her economic development — on the ebb and flow of her capitalistic achievements — in the next fifteen years must largely depend the issue. Such in barest outline is the problem of Empire. I come now to its ultima ratio, IX POWER AND EMPIRE 151 which Bismarck taught us lay in power. Now, this problem of power is the key to the whole problem of Anglo-German relations, and of all diplomatic fence and artifice between the two countries. It led the Emperor, fired with youthful enthusiasm, to the sea and its transports, and it has culminated in the naval fever of modern Germany. It is possible that the Emperor made a mistake. Much serious opinion in Germany holds that Bismarck, had he been younger and lived to rule, would have established the House of Germany on solid ethnic foundations in Europe, by the absorp- tion of Holland and perhaps Denmark, by precipitating the solution of the Austrian Problem by the well-known practice of blood and iron before putting oat to sea, as the Kaiser with characteristic precipitancy did. But that is beside the question, which is what Germany has done and stands potentially to do. As the German game of Kriegspiel does not imply hostility, we, too, may play our bout, taking thought to avoid rancour and to keep the perspective of prescient statesman- ship. And without choler or foolish alarm it 152 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. behoves us to take careful note not only of the growth of the German Navy, but of the uses to which, seeing that it exists, it may eventually be put. Of course the Kaiser has every right to build a great fleet, as England, if she deems it necessary, has every right to establish her Army on the democratic basis of national service compulsion. At the same time, the growth of the German Navy constitutes a sail on the horizon w^iich the man in charge of the national telescope is bound to keep in view and report about. Now, ignoring the jugglery of White Books for Parliamentary consumption, let us look at this table of the relative strength of the two Navies in the year 1920, which a very able naval officer drew up, at my request, as a rough estimate of the fighting strength of the two nations : — Germany. Britain, Battleships . 38 56 Armoured cruisers . . 20 30 Cruisers . . 38 70 Destroyers . 144 3001 We see at a glance the enormous increase in power of the German naval position in 1920 and the relative decrease in our own. At the POWER AND EMPIRE 153 present time our superiority may be absolute. Yet is not Japan with the smallest Navy of any big Power mistress of the East by right of quality ? Now the German Fleet is always concen- trated, and practically composes one squadron, whereas some of our ships will be in the East, some in the Mediterranean, and some, no doubt, berthed at home with nucleus crews, and but partly ready for the instant emergency and action of war. It will thus be seen that about the year 1920 the German boatswain will be able to pipe a far more confident tune than he can to-day — which is precisely what the Empire-builders of modern Germany are building up for. I do not say for a moment that we will be in an inferior position. On paper, and without doubt actually, our superi- ority will be marked. The point to notice is the relative strength of naval Germany about that date and its relative efiect upon Inter- national diplomacy as the direct consequence. Moreover, as the Dreadnought constitutes a new era in naval construction, rendering virtually obsolescent all ships of the German High Sea Fleet, thirty of our own ships of the 154 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. Triumph, Majestic, Canopus, Formidable, and Duncan classes, and materially diminishing the value of the eight ships of the King Edward class, the relative strength of the two Navies will be largely shifted in favour of Germany, and especially if, as German naval enthusiasts are clamouring for, great efforts are made to accelerate and increase the German programme. The controversy raging around the com- position of the Channel Fleet must occupy my attention for a few moments, though I would fain not deal with matters of which I have little technical knowledge. Yet I cannot help thinking that the Channel Fleet is need- lessly weak in view of the purpose — the objective purpose — for which, admittedly, it was called into being. That objective is, of course, the German High Sea Fleet, con- sisting of 16 battleships, 4 armoured cruisers and 8 protected ones, with a very efl&cient fleet of destroyers behind it. As against this we have only 14 battleships, 4 armoured and 3 protected cruisers, and no torpedo craft. If our guns are superior, the Channel Fleet is a shade slower than the German one, IX POWER AND EMPIRE 155 and in medium weapons is at a disadvantage amounting to some 50 per cent. Now, if ever there was trouble — and this is merely the hypothetical query of Kriegspiel — the object of the German Fleet will be an immediate surprise attack on the Channel Fleet, whether with a view to subsequent invasion or not. After what happened in the Boer War we all know the difficulty and aversion of Governments to prepare for war until the last moment, and our general belief in a policy of drift. As an example of our policy and Germany's, let us look for a moment at the condition of things last April and May, when (for no reason) a real war scare existed in Germany. Nearly all through May the Channel Fleet was short of three battleships, while the Home Fleet was in process of organisation and composition. And that though we all heard a good deal about the feeling in Germany, the tension between France and Germany and Germany and this country. Yet though the German Navy was mobilised and the German General Staff were seriously discussing the possibilities of war, I know as a fact that the German public had no 156 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. idea of the preparations Germany was making, nor did many officers in the Army, though kept hard at work, have the slightest suspicion that Berlin honestly believed that England intended to force on war and was deliberating on the ways and means to meet the occasion. I think that shows our callousness during a crisis, and the ease with which military Germany can take dispositions, with what secrecy, providence, and despatch she can act, unfettered by publicity, criticism, or outcry of any sort whatever. As for the invasion of England, I confess to considerable scepticism on that score, at any rate at present, and while existing political positions remain. Still, as long as the Channel Fleet is kept so weak as almost to serve as a temptation to the German High Sea Fleet, the idea cannot be scouted altogether. It is a fact that some 500,000 tonnage of German shipping, capable of sailing 13 knots, is per- manently present in German ports, which, once the Channel Fleet incapacitated, might carry over an invasionary force to these shores of some 150,000 men or more. I cannot con- sider such a chance likely, but it is seriously POWER AND EMPIRE 157 discussed in Germany, and it is folly to treat it with contemptuous neglect. Why, now that we no longer require a large force in the Mediterranean, we cannot maintain a Channel Fleet of 20 battleships, with a squadron of powerful armoured cruisers and a fleet of destroyers, I cannot imagine. Better still would it seem to amalgamate the Channel and Home Fleets, seeing that the purposes for which they exist — to repel invasion and surprise attack — are identical. We all admit that attack is most unlikely to come from any other quarter than that of Germany. What object can it serve to keep the fleet which would meet such an attack first of all in admitted state of fighting inferiority ? If our safety depends on the blue water theory, let us have an overwhelming Channel force always ready for all emergencies. The worst of it is that party politics will intrude its unwelcome nose in this most nationally important question. The German Navy is not ready for us yet. War is the last thing it wants. But what about the year 1925, when the German fleet has over 30 battleships, some hundred armoured and un- 158 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. armoured cruisers, and a magnificent mosquito flotilla, and part of our Navy is perhaps occu* pied, it may be, in Far Eastern waters ? Will a surprise attack then be so '' impossible *' ? Who knows what sea borders Germany will not by that time possess? To argue that Germany will not construct such a fleet is sheer foolery. As sure as " guns is guns *' the great fleet will arise. It is being built to defend Germany on the seas. It is being built to be able to dispute, if there is ever need, our sway upon them. As we are fond, too, of assuming that the German yards are unable to cope with a larger programme, the following statements of build- ing capacities of the German private yards are interesting : — The Krupp Germania yard pro- fesses to be able soon to lay down two battle- ships yearly ; the Howaldt yard at Kiel to build a ship in 24 months ; the Vulcan yard at Stettin to build a ship of 18,000 tons in 24 to 30 months ; Blohm and Voss likewise ; the firm Schichau, Elbing, and Danzig in 30 to 36 months, and every year in shorter time ; the '* Weser" yard also in 24 to 30 months; and to these must be added the Imperial yards POWER AND EMPIRE 159 at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. All these state- ments are published in Count Reventlow's book, Weltfrieden oder Weltkrieg, Now, the German Navy is growing as the logical complement of constructive Empire. Its growth is of as vital importance to Ger- manic interest and progress as the world supremacy of our Navy is to the fate and keeping of our commerce and the British Empire. To assume that Germans are not prepared to pay for its construction and will eventually not be able to do so is mere moon- shine ignorance of New Germany and the mor- phology of German State economy. The most superficial knowledge of modern Germany reveals the constructive purpose of the Im- perial ground-plan, the knitting together of the economic forces of the Empire towards a definite economic end and the concentration of means towards it, the scientific State train- ing and application to the mosaics of Empire, the tenacity of the national purpose, and the architectural harmony of its economic reason. Side by side with Empire German power is growing and expanding. Nothing is left to chance. The national scheme is a whole. 160 ENGLAND AND GERMANY ch. It sets an example to all politicians of the laissez-faire school and to all who doubt its wisdom. Some day it may stand as an historical example to those who despised its teaching. Power and Empire — these are the watch- words of modern Germany. They give the watchword to modern Europe. It was not antipathy to England that caused Anglophobia during the Boer War so much as the nascent feeling of superior power on the German side opposed to what was conceived as the failing power on our own. It is not antipathy to England that leads German diplomacy in channels hostile to ours so much as the nascent consciousness of power born and predestined for achievement antagonistic to our own. The German war scare of last April was not due to what Germans necessarily thought we would do, but to what they, according to all tradition and teaching, would themselves in inverse circumstance have done. The question of German Empire is power ; its womb is time. Progress she will ; expand, it may be said, necessarily she must. She has kept the peace well for over thirty years. All POWER AND EMPIRE 161 her economic interests urge her to maintain it. But at the same time she is wisely preparing for all emergencies and eventualities. As Nauticus, the semi-official Naval Year Book (which appeared in August) says : " The rule of the sea by any one nation is unbearable. The sea must be free to all nations. The liberty of the sea cannot be assured by the recognition of a British Monroe doctrine, by the acceptance of British naval supremacy, but only by the establishment of a balance of power among the other maritime States." This statement is interesting in view of Germany's pro- American policy. Nor is there any doubt that, in the eventuality of friction between America and Japan, Germany would stake all to back America. The chaff of her diplomacy is ever ready for the winnow of fate. That is the situation, as Germans see it, as all who know, and have lived in, Germany realise it to be, and that it must be ; as we, too, sympathising with her in her Imperial difficulties, should fully under- stand it. M CHAPTER X THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE It is always an ungrateful role to be the vane of tempest. Like the game of bowls, diplomacy, even when entirely free from party colour or prejudice, must needs be played with bias. It is the thing one plays with, the thing one plays for. The difference is that whereas the one is played on an even surface, the other is cast over the rut and stubble of uncertainty and conjecture, using the bias of the present to anticipate the future. And he who throws is at the mercy of both. Therefore, many excellent folk object, why seek to expose the conjectural aims and ambitions of All Germany ? Admitting that they exist, what object other than harmful can it serve to dwell and insist upon them ? Is there not room for Germany in the world, as 162 CH.X ENGLAND AND GERMANY 163 well as England? Does the ascension of Germany's star postulate our declension ? We have no right to call halt to German develop- ment and expansion ; nay, we cannot do so. Let be what is, and what must be. To such contention I would oppose a parable, a story, and a conviction. And first I will take the parable. For many years a people lived very happily and complacently on a little island. They were prosperous and safe because they had a great superiority in boats over all other peoples to protect them. And, lo ! another people, far more powerful numerically and of prodigious creative genius and vitality, likewise fashioned boats, and informed the islanders, in word and letter, that the fate of the one was the other s destiny. And in time many of the good folk of the island came to believe that it was so. But they had grown idle and callous with years. They heeded not the fashioning of boats, until one day they discovered that their superiority in boats was no longer absolute, and so, to avoid trouble, the wise men of the island accepted a contemplative position. And from that day the fortunes of the island fell, while 164 THE LINE OF ch. those of the other people ascended into glory. And here is the story — which is a true one. Some years ago after a bathe I was lying naked on the Dune of Heligoland, rejoicing in the warmth of the sun, according to good German custom. Presently a burly Teuton, emerging from the sea, sat on the sand beside me. Discovering my nationality, this ap- parently good - natured man grew almost delirious. For two hours we shouted politics at each other with expletives as naked and unashamed as was our condition. The bare- ness of the outward man seemed to unbare the inner. He told me that Germany was in- evitably the future Power of Europe, must inevitably crush and ruin England. " It is our hope," he said, " our destiny. These seas,'' he exclaimed, " will some day be strewn with the relics of proud England's fleets ; your doom is our victory, your fate our apotheosis ! It is the decree of history. It cannot be averted." And the burly merchant concluded with this peroration : "I shan't live to see it, but I hope to have many sons, so that all may take active part in bringing about your destruction, which LEAST RESISTANCE 165 is our construction/' And with that we went our ways, he into his cabin, I for a reflective plunge into the cool depths of the sea. Now, my conviction is — a conviction not acquired from superficial knowledge or hasty estimate, but from long residence in Germany and diligent study of Germans and German politics — that my corpulent fellow-bather on the Dune spoke with honest conviction and purpose, and, moreover, that he voiced with articulate holiday grufihess what the majority of his countrymen do think, do hope, do desire, and are in their own interests wisely providing for. I agree with him that Germany will and must expand ; that it is bad luck that she arose so late in the world, when most of its fat, waste, and seizable lands had already been appropriated; that her part in history has only partly been filled; that England's Empire, wealth, and power do somehow clog her destiny, England's Navy the fairway to that haven predestinate of dominion and satiety — and I feel inclined to agree even with his prophetic judgment about a fate common to us both. To all who with fatalistic insouciance argue 166 THE LINE OF ch. that the German problem of " self-realisation and deliverance" is not one that concerns England I oppose an emphatic demurrer. In the opinion of all Germans not only does it concern us, but it is in great measure part of our own economic problem. To understand it we must creep into the inner shell of the German position, delve into the psychological actuality of modern Germany. If it is foolish to stereotype the matter, like some actuary at his desk, it is no less foolish to indulge in platitudinous humanitarianism or academic aeroplaning, as were golden words the safe- guard of Empire, and not good men and good ships and prescient thought for the morrow. And within the German shell we find no oyster fatalism, no altruism, no spongy doctrine of the inevitability of things, but scientific materialism, reason, purpose, and education, and a scientific chart of national action and decree. The emancipation of All Germany is in- teresting to us in a double sense now owing to the entente cordiale with France and the responsibilities and duties attaching to it. Now, the Franco-German question is the root X LEAST RESISTANCE 167 and branch of the whole European problem. And it grows more problematical as every year the numerical superiority of the German Army increases over the French, concomitantly with the increasing wealth, trade, power, and pres- tige of the German Empire. To put it bluntly, Germany no longer fears an encounter with France, and since the debacle of Kussian arms less so than ever. I am aware that much expert opinion in England maintains that in this judgment the Germans are mistaken, but for the present I am concerned with what, without exaggeration, may be called the unanimous verdict of the whole of Germany. And if there are any who doubt it, let them but reason for a space on the recent attitude of Germany towards France and the present position of those two Powers. When the entente cordiale was proclaimed, the Pan-German League petitioned the Chan- cellor to obtain the West Coast and hinterland of Morocco as suitable ''compensation" from France. The Moroccan incident which cul- minated in Algeciras was the result. What has happened since then ? Well, only this, that on every occasion on which any sort of 168 THE LINE OF ch. trouble or idea of trouble — and, in fact, it has been mainly in idea — has arisen between England and Germany, France has been threatened with something in the nature of a war crisis. It was so in 1906, it was again so in April of this year. The fact is simply that Germany now regards France as the public whipping-boy of her destiny and the legitimate purse for all eventual achieve- ment. Morocco is nothing to her — all Germans know that. But with Bismarckian statecraft Germany guards Morocco as a sort of unedited Ems telegram for future use or abuse. An unedited Ems telegram ! That is the true explanation of Germany's Moroccan policy. It gives her a lien on the West European con- cert. It furnishes her with a potential reason for interference in France's colonial policy, and, above all, provides her with a cause and excuse for applying political pressure on the French Government when and as she may like, and with what intensity she may consider useful. And it is held, as a card-player keeps back his trump card, for presentation on emergency. Now, this Moroccan business, which, were Germany sincere in her protestations, could be X LEAST RESISTANCE 169 settled to-morrow by frank acceptance of the French claim there, is the thin end of the wedge between us and France. The situation, as Germans see it, is this. England, they argue, for economic reasons of Empire, is grow- ing more and more alienated from Germany, and so, thinking her interests are best pro- tected by alliance with France, has contracted a bond with that country. But Germany regards France as a diminishing military quantity ; and to counteract the entente has acquired an interest in a French colonial concern. Thus, if England pinches Germany — Germany presses France. If England falls out with Germany — Germany falls out with France. It is a perfectly simple game — like the game of beggar-my-neighbour. It is the line of least resistance. All the loose talk of war amounts, in fact, to this : that if ever we have friction with Germany, France will be made to foot the bill. The French know it, all German diplo- macy is based upon it. In the event of hostilities, Germany would invade France within a few hours after the declaration of war directly through Belgium ; nor can there 170 THE LINE OF CH. be any question that all her military plans of invasion are drawn up with that intention. The British Fleet, Germans say, may destroy our Navy — if they can get at it — but we shall be in Paris in a short time ; and the price of peace will be some £750,000,000 and the entire French Navy, to say nothing of ports and forts and other useful accessories. Talk, conjecture, Krieg spiel — of course, yet none the less the bias all diplomacy is played with, and not reprehensible on that score. And having reviewed the position of France and Germany, let us now see what is our own position toward that Power and what possibilities there may be of fundamentally improving it. I ignore entirely all question of international likes and dislikes, all present shadows, all past recriminations. I look critically into the future. We will all admit that political alliances are a matter of re- ciprocal give and take, and that if we are to purchase German friendship we must have something, besides words and protestations, of use to offer and receive from her. Now, look where we will, the reciprocity of the thing is precisely the basic cause of the X LEAST RESISTANCE 171 difficulty. Germany literally has nothing to give us, neither land that we covet nor power that can be of any value to us ; nor is there any outstanding issue with her, boundary question to settle, colonial trouble, dispute or difficulty to arrange. But we can give Germany all. We are in a position of self- realisation ; Germany is slowly attaining to it. If any British Government were returned with a mandate from the country to-morrow to effect a permanent entente with Germany, what weight could Germany cast into the balance of exchange ? Of practical value — none. Togoland, Kaio-chau, Samoa, Heligo- land ? But if we offer her Asia Minor, or the next ten Dreadnoughts that we build, some return must be asked for. Yet how are we to find it ? We cannot support her whilom Pan- Germanic expropriation policy in South America, notably in Brazil, in face of the Monroe and now Drago doctrines. We can- not abandon France in Morocco and leave her to fight it out with Germany. We cannot give her Australia or India. We cannot ask Japan to present her with a Chinese province. 172 THE LINE OF cir. We cannot say to her, " Go right ahead and take Holland, or Belgium, or Denmark, or all three/' We have no interest in conniving at or precipitating the Germanic land-slide towards the sea in the South of Europe ; nor can we join Germany in a predatory war to expel the Turks from Europe and Germanise the Balkans. And we cannot offer her Switzerland. Egypt? No. Can we hypothecate Ire- land or the Transvaal, Gibraltar, Singapore, or Malta ? Well, but if she has nothing to offer us and we have nothing that we can con- veniently spare, what polite arrangement can be made ? The Baghdad Railway, to which some people add Asia Minor ? But here, again, there are grave difficulties of a very important strategic nature. Can we allow the gate of India to lie in German military authority? Would it be wise to permit a second German Empire to arise on the flank of India, through Persia to the Persian Gulf? I think we must pause here. The last section of the line — from Baghdad to Koeit — must be under British control, so that if Koeit is to be the terminal, then, as the head of the line is in X LEAST RESISTANCE 173 German, its end must be in English hands. The German Emperor did not originally go to Palestine to do penance. He went to establish German interests in Asia Minor, as he recently went to Morocco. If we have no right to thwart the Baghdad line through Asia Minor, we must meet and control it at Baghdad. With all good -will and intentions, the question of '* pairing" with Germany will be found to be matter of enormous difficulty. Not only is all reason of do ut des com- pletely lacking, but there is an absence of all secondary motive, either racial, historical, or economic. However cogent the ethical reason may be for arriving at an understanding, the economic reason militating against it is far more potent, actually and potentially. It is not that Germany is a pleader, England in the position of a generous donor. Germany is far too strong numerically, far too powerful from a military and economic point of view, far too enterprising, energetic, industrious, vital, and conscious to ask, like Oliver, on bended knee, " for more," or to have need of pious solicitation. England, again, is not in 174 THE LINE OF such a position of world ascendancy that she can afford to part with what she hath, or relax her endeavour in the economic struggle for national existence in which Germany is her foremost European rival. Neither the one nor the other are courtiers. They are both suitors for a common prize; frank, un- flinching, economic rivals. In these articles I have tried to convey some approximate idea of the power and pur- pose of modern Germany. Economically the problem is one directly concerning us ; politic- ally its solution lies largely beyond the Vosges. To us the lesson would seem plain. First, I hold, we must have a Navy ready and able at any moment and at any future time successfully to meet and annihilate the com- bination of any two fleets which conceivably can be opposed to us. The growth of the German Navy can never be a danger to us so long as we adhere to the principle of laying down two ships to every one laid down by Germany. And on the carrying out of that principle must largely depend our Imperial future. And, secondly, that if the entente with France is to be preserved as a permanent X LEAST RESISTANCE 175 political institution we must have an army sufficient to enable us to place at the assist- ance of France, should she ever require such help, a force of at least 300,000 trained men. And that, again, is the German expert opinion of the matter. Otherwise, German opinion would seem right when it asserts that, as Germany grows more and more powerful, France weaker, more pacific and disintegrate, the entente will lose pari passu all effective use and substance. In twenty years, without a British Army to help her, France will no more be in a position to repel a German invasion than we could to-day were our Navy to be destroyed. In politics combinations arise and vanish with lightning rapidity. It is idle to vaticinate. The question facing Germany is — how she is to satisfy her imperious economic wants. The question facing us is how to maintain our position against her. When one speaks of shock for world posi- tion between England and Germany in some future epoch, we are wont to put on our most self-complacent smile and answer — "Well, it won't be in our time." Possibly it won't. 176 THE LINE OF But that is burking the question. To-day, of course, England stands in a unique position which she owes in great part to the prescient diplomacy of a King who is the first statesman of the age. As it is, we are reinsured in all quarters of the globe. The entente policy has proved a magnificent success, and made the little island, which only a few years ago was the butt of European spleen, a temple of European comity and the friend of all men. It is due partly to luck — Japan's triumph — and partly, as before said, to our own diplo- macy and the personality of the Sovereign behind it. But there is nothing fixed in this world, diplomacy least of all. Ten years may witness a totally unexpected shifting of political positions, politics, personalities, im- ponderabilia generally. The thing is not to shut ourselves up in a glass house, but to keep a telescope look-out from the open window. Now when we consider the power of Germany thirty years ago and her power to-day, when we pause to reflect on what she has accomplished during those three decades and what she stands to accomplish during the next three, the most artless mind must see X LEAST RESISTANCE 177 sometliing of a problem before him. "When one goes to Germany and observes the German troops at manoeuvres, the splendid physique of the German man and woman, their vitality, their brain power, their stern industry, it is impossible to believe that this is a nation destined by fate never to mature and grow up, as we have matured, or the Latin peoples, just as the era of Eussias adolescence has surely yet to come. If the present rate of progress continues in Germany for another two decades, without question whatever she will constitute a force in Continental Europe, military and economic, absolutely without rival. Personal ententes and alliances will never alter that condition. Moreover, Germany^s isolation will, as likely as not, be a useful friend, as, in fact, such isolation was to us. All which, it may be, many contend, yet notwithstanding affording scant enough reason to seek to juggle with the uncertainties of the future. I think if we have any confidence in our own future we should wisely provide for it. Though fortune smiles upon us at present, that neither solves nor disproves the problem I have sought to state in these N 178 THE LINE OF ch. letters. Despite sugar phrases, conferential voeux, Eoyal meetings and interchange of municipal courtesies, Press effusions of party- spirit and the humanitarian efforts of peace enthusiasts, the problem of England and Germany remains : increasing in force and intensity year by year, decade by decade, because amenable to no prophylactic. We made friends with France, because only foolish traditional rancour kept us apart ; we had no growing issues with her, all difficulties between us were of a self- dis- posing nature. And it was the same with Spain. We made friends with Eussia — let us admit it — by the luck of war, by the sword of Japan. Had Japan lost in the great war the problem of Russia would have been our immediate interest for years to come, and with it, in the Far East and in Europe, that of Germany would have gone hand in hand. The whole change in the situation is due to Russia's defeat and to Germany's misplaced reliance on Russia since the initial European Chinese grab and German pro-Russian policy started on its career against us. We are friends with Germany to-day, as we X LEAST RESISTANCE 179 were before 1897. Yet tlie problem of power, of race, of economic rivalry remains undimmed, and it requires no political spectroscope to discover either its magnitude, its tendency, or its potentiality. The kiss of kings may soften its actuality and restrain its elemental tendencies. But it is not a matter of friend- ship at all — no political alliance or entente ever was. It is not a question that paper treaties can solve, or philanthropic editors settle by journalistically hanging others less philan- thropically minded : it is no enigma, it is a simple political proposition of power versus power, position against position, race contra race. It is not so much politics — the art or game or devilry of politics — as it is economics. Suppose Eobinson Crusoe had found another occupant on the island who had fashioned for himself a house, gardens, canoes, and arrogated to his own uses certain portions of the land. And Robinson in time did likewise. Well, if Robinson one day found his own possessions too small to harbour his family and requirements, he might begin to cast covetous eyes on the fat portions belonging to his neighbour. They might settle their dilBferences by agreement — 180 THE LINE OF ch. or they might not. Now that is very much the position of Germany. This earth is to the fittest. All the trombone preaching of Socialist or Eadical doctrines will not make this earth one whit less desirable than it is to the children of that supreme mother, insatiate, it would seem, eternally of human blood. Now the German nation is scientifically fitting itself to be the fittest. She has every right to do so. The question for us is : Are we scientifically equipping ourselves to. remain the fittest ? I want England to consider these two things. I return to my parable and to the con- viction of my fat fellow-bather on the Dune of Heligoland. No doubt by this time he has many sons — who are all learning to achieve their destiny. He spoke for New Germany. Let us do all justice to the splendid qualities of the German nation, let us sympathise with them in their national mission; but let us know that a great Power and Empire are rising in Europe, with a great Navy to create and complete it. It came into the world through the throes of battle. All that it is, all that it has achieved, it owes to force, and on X LEAST RESISTANCE 181 force it relies for all that it hopes to achieve. In the centre of Europe the great German sociocracy stands for Kaiser, might, and dominion, for what is known as MachtpoUtik, The Germanic problem still awaits solution. Its issue is largely our own. 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