BEWARE 1 ntitf GERMAN PJIACE! ^^-'^"'■'^■TiIlllllllMllllllI B 3 13fi b^O /^LIBRARV > MouktStri LONDON ^ ' MAJOR HALUANE MACFALL Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2008 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation iittpV/www.archive.org/detaiis/bewaregermanspeaOOmacfrich BEWARE THE GERMAN'S PEACE ! Beware the German* s Peace ! BY MAJOR HALDANE MACFALL Author of " Germany at Bay" GASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1918 < C C 1 « < c < ' „ Ho ROBERT BLATGHFORD AUTHORS NOTE This little book is written in answer to in- sistent appeals from all over the country — from peers to workers in the steel-yards. Though urged to bring out a cheap edition of "Germany at Bay," I find it impossible to shorten that book without leaving dangerous gaps to understanding. The present work covers that part of the ground which puts the dangers of a patched-up peace before the public. The German Kultur and its creation of Treitschke's State-strategy are simplified, but follow the larger book. The campaigns had to be passed by in order to go into fuller details, not surveyed in the earlier work, concerning what is absolutely needed for the making of any peace on which the safety of the democracies depends. The desire of a large number of correspondents has been Author's Note fulfilled by giving, for instance, the reasons for the strategic need of taking Alsace-Lor- raine from the Germans; the strategic need for, and value of, the League of Nations; and such other points as seem to puzzle the Man - in - the - Street — or, worse still, leave him indifferent. CONTENTS A WORD TO ALL WHO WORK CHAPTER , PAGE 1. The ^Meaning of the War . . 9 2. The Only Way to Discover the War 14< 3. The Rise of the German ... 21 4. The German's Soul ... 29 5. What is the German Driving at ? . 37 6. The Two German Plans of Campaign 64 7. Has the German Succeeded ? . .76 8. Why Alsace-Lorraine ? . . .90 9. The Peace Map .... 99 10. The German Colonies . . .109 11. Peaceful Penetration . . . 113 12. The League of Nations . . . 187 Postscnyt LIST OF MAPS PAGE MiTTEL EUROPA IN RELATION TO THE Old WorLD 71 The Serbian Gate ...... 74 The Pan- German Map 100 Map SHOWING the Just Place for Germany IN Europe ...... 101 A WORD TO ALL WHO WORK War is a crime ; it is a crime that must be put a stop to — not condoned. The world has a supreme opportunity to put an end to it. There has arisen amongst us of late a strange unrest as though, weary of the horrors of war, there are those who, accounting them- selves wise, seem to think that the armies cannot achieve victory, but that some miracle will happen — it is as though war were a gamble and the gambler turned round thrice to find luck. It is perhaps the most disturbing part of this unrest that those who are so fearful and weary of the horrors of war know least of the horrors of war, live a protected and comfort- able life, and make considerable profit from our present unhappy state ! A'VVord iQi^ll Who Work J. ; "Wjtite these words above all for the Workers, for the Labour Man, for him who stays at home as well as for him who mans the trenches — I write for the legions of demo- cracy who, after the war, will enter into more of their heritage than they have ever dreamed that it would be theirs to walk ; for as there's a heaven above them, the toilers will come into this increase of their heritage, provided that they awake to the real meaning of the great upheaval and do not throw away what they have gained, not knowing what they do. I write for the Pacifist in the hope of urg- ing him to know, and to see with clear vision, whither he is moving, for the pacifist is a sincere man, seeking to fulfil his own nobility of ideals ; but he moves star-gazing, hopelessly blind as a sleep-walker to the abyss that yawns before his feet. If he fall into the abyss — and he must so fall if he walk unseeing as to what looms — ^the stars will go out as do candles that gutter in the wind of the night. I write for the Workers in the trenches, the wielders of the supreme Valour of Labour, A Word to All Who Work and the real essence of democracy, who will come back in their heroic millions from the war, cheerfully modest of their heroism ; I write so that these, the authentic masters of their peoples, once they are made aware of what the peace must be which alone can put an end to wars, if they find that the stay-at- homes have betrayed them for their own un- heroic ease, shall bring their betrayers to justice. For, no man's hand to-day must be stayed until democracy stands forth as master of its destiny. There is no middle way. Demo- cracy will come out of this war victorious, or defeated for generations. And the chief weapon of democracy is that democracy shall know the issues of this war, and be rid of all doubts and hesitations. If the peoples but knew what it is here hoped to make clear to them, they will close up their ranks and cease from hindering their Governments in the forthright pursuit of the unchallenged victory of democracy over the lords of brutality and of tyranny. It is unthinkable that any man, once he 3 A Word to All Who Work knows what is in these pages, will for one moment oppose the prosecution of the aims of democracy to a victorious end. It is unthinkable that the pacifist will be- tray his people in order to sustain the most brutal mihtarism and lust for war that have ever assailed the world ; it is insane that he should shrink from tearing down that which his very advocacy of gentle reasonableness proves that he loathes. It is incredible that the articulate and vociferous leaders of small groups of stay-at- home Labour should in their hearts believe that they represent Labour as a whole, far less Democracy ; but it is still more incredible that, once they know the meaning of victory or defeat, they would betray their fellow- workers who serenely walk with death at every hand in the trenches day and night, in order that they, the stay-at-homes, may snatch for themselves little party victories and usurp the authority of democracy by reason of their more valorous comrades being absent in the fight with death. It may be true enough that their Govern- A Word to All Who Work ments have left them in darkness about the war ; it may be true enough that the peoples have not been clearly informed before they are called upon to give their decision ; but it is as true that the Governments must now bitterly regret the neglect that has allowed large numbers, out of sheer lack of knowing, to be- come an embarrassing menace to their guidance, at the very time when all their leadership of the barque of State should be bent upon guiding the peoples to victory ; for, be you sure, our governors begin to realize that blindness in the people is a danger to their fellows of the democracy, by leaving them a prey to such as are bent on pursuing petty little aims that may in an evil moment with- out evil intention bring disaster untold to the democracies. If this little book help to lead the people to set aside all petty aims, however pure in themselves, and to keep only the vast issues before them so that they see the war whole and see it clear, it will not have been sent out in vain. Many an EngUshman to-day thinks, with 5 A Word to All Who Work a very able American writer, that " surely, in the event of Alsace-Lorraine remaining the only question undetermined, nobody could reasonably expect the United States to con- tinue frightful warfare over a bit of disputed territory." If any man be so insensate as to look upon France's dogged and heroic sacri- fice and will to rid Alsace-Lorraine of the Ger- man simply as pride in ' * a bit of disputed territory," then the Prussian Blonde Beast will flourish like the green bay-tree. These pages at least will rid such eyes of the scales. It is to blot out all this madness that I ask for a short hour the ear of the man in the cottage and the log-hut, whether in England or Australia, or in America or France, and, not least of all, the man in the trenches or in the countries which are called neutral. And I would point out the pathetic fact that whilst those in the trenches, who are in daily peril, have become purified in a demo- cratic reality of comradeship and sacrifice, it is those at home who allow themselves to brood on the appalling prospect of shrinking from victory, these very ones who have known less 6 A Word to All Who Work discomfort than that which falls on the work- ing-man in times of '' peace " when the sole enemy is a lack of employment, largely due to the greed for profit of those that ought to share the hardships of peace with them as they share the hardships, or at least the inconveni- ences, of war. So far from there being a '' stalemate," the Germans are nearly ''down and out." They cannot last much longer; they are on the eve of utter ruin. Hold and strike them down ! Only by striking Germany down can the better soul of the German arise purified and the gross and e\'il part of him be buried in a dishonoured grave. Germany can only be saved by fire. The order has gone forth to Germany from her vile overlords to run amuck and wreck the world. The lying claims to being a victorious people are but the last refuge of the overlords of Germany to trick their people ; do not let them trick you. It is for civilization to strike down this Fright- fulness, this Ruthlessness, and rid the world of it for ever. Sprinkling with rose-water will not do it. It must be cut out of the world 7 A Word to All Who Work as the surgeon cuts a cancer; if not, it will continue to disease mankind. It is not for groups of our workers to dictate to the Government and to threaten to "down tools" if thc}^ be not obeyed. We are a democracy ; and if any section of workers disapprove the Government they have the lawful redress of overthrowing the Gov- ernment. A democracy has no justification in revolution. And let the stay-at-home workers remember this, that if the workers in the trenches come home armed and dis- ciplined in war in their millions, and discover that they have been betrayed, God help you all, you men of the sections who lay down tools against the will of the democracy and you who seek profit out of an agony ! BEWARE THE GERMAN'S PEACE ! BEWARE THE GERMAN'S PEACE! CHAPTER I THE iMEANING OF THE WAR What is the "World- War about ? The answer is to-day to you, the plain man, to every man and to every woman, the most important thing in your lives. There is nothing on earth so vital to you, here and now, as the knowing the answer to that question. Your incomes, your business prospects, your homes, your possessions, your families — all these vanish and pass into utter destruction if you do not know the answer to that question and act upon it. If you fail to act upon that answer — and you cannot act upon it if you do not know it — your land will become a German parish, your language will have to be German, your soul German. You will not be allowed a say in the matter. If you want to know exactly what you will be, you and the daughters in your house, and your youth, you 9 The Meaning of the War can go to Belgium or northern France and completely discover it. And you do not know. What is the World- War about? The Man-in-the-Street, if he be betrayed, will blame the Government; but he is the government. It is you, Everyman, who govern in a democracy. It is you who have to decide your destiny — not the Prime Minister nor Lord This nor Sir Umpetty Ump — but you. So that if you do not know, your Government does not know, since you are your government. To blame your Govern- ment is only to blame yourself. No man of you all has the right to cast a vote about the war until you know what the war is. No man of you has the right to go as a member to Parliament or a delegate to a Labour Confer- ence and to vote on the war unless you know. If you do so, you are the foulest traitors to Labour and to Democracy — there is nothing more vile and foul, not even in Germany. What is the World- War about? Well, probably your ordinary man would say at once and off-hand, that it is a fight be- The Meaning of the War tween democracy and autocracy. It is. But does he not say it a good deal like a parrot? If your plain man be pushed to explain exactly what this means to him, would not you find vagueness setting in very early, and would you not discover that he is not very thrilled by the phrase? He would not rouse as if utter disaster were staring him in the face ; he would not leap up and seize a rifle and risk his life over it at the end of his village or street. And why not? The man in the trenches is doing so ! Indeed, you find the plain man forgather- ing with his fellows, and every man soon discovers that he does not mean exactly what the other fellow means. Then follows drivel. In large dissatisfied industrial bodies of men you will find that there is such fatuous talk about the war, quite seriously indulged in, as that it has been set going by the " capitalists " for their own ends ! The man who mouths this sort of insanity is making straight for a slavery compared with which the industrial injustices of Labour are a paradise. Such a man is utterly unfitted to have any voice in demo- IX The Meaning of the War cracy. He is worse, he is a common danger. Or men will talk solemnly of the war being a *' stalemate" — even military men from generals to subalterns who are superb fighting stuff but wholly lacking in all grasp of war, talk this disastrous drivel. There is in fact scarcely a single common- sense thing to be heard about the real meaning of the war, or a commonsense grasp of what mea)is victory or defeat, to be heard or read throughout the land. Well-meaning senti- ment in the Press takes the place of strategic vision. Neither the men in the trenches nor the men in the workshops, neither the trader nor the merchant, nor the journalist nor the member of parliament, nor the official nor the Labour leader, nor the pacifist nor the jingo, knows quite clearly what the war is about, nor what a secure peace means, far less what will bring it about. Yet this World- War means the salvation and the triumph of democracy or it means its utter ruin — it means the coming of a mighty age of peace or generations of brutal and savage warfare between gasps of fearful peace 12 The Meaning of the War snatched from the exhaustion of wars in order to arm day and night and get ready for the next brutal savagery. It means nothing else. And the decision rests with the Man-in-the- Street. Yet the Press pours forth futile opinions, learned as they are futile, from any well-known man or .woman, famous in any walk of life or notorious in any way, utterly regardless as to whether those that give forth their opinions have any knowledge or skill or vision in war ! It is marvellous. It is unfor- tunately as like to be disastrous as it is fan- tastic. A man is no more competent to guide in war because he is a brilliant novelist or a professor at the university, or because he has figured in a notorious divorce case, or the like, than the plain man ; and it all comes back to this, that the Man-in-the-Street must be the judge of his destiny. He cannot shift the blame. It is his first business to distrust everybody until he knows that they know. What is the World- War about? The democracies demand lasting peace. How are we to get it? CHAPTER II THE ONLY WAY TO DISCOVER THE WAR The German knows what the war is about. He at least has that source of strength behind all he does. It is no use listening to scandal, or the abuse of the Boche by jingoes, any more than to the sweet reasonableness of tlie gentle pacifist, or the passing gossip of the street, about Germany. We have to go to Germany and find out from the German what he made his war about, and why, and how he intends to carry it through. It is not of the slightest value to consider ,what anybody else thinks the German ought to do. The point is : What does the German himself intend to do? It is no use abusing the German because he does not carry on his war as we think he ought to do. The German intends to carry on his war in his own way. We have to find out why he made his war, for what he makes it, how 14 To Discover the War he makes it, and what he .wishes to achieve. This is what we soldier-folk call piercing the enemy's '* strategy." Now, before we can arrive with dead cer- tainty at what the German's war is about, before .we can find out his ''strategy," we have to find out certain things about his past. We cannot discover his war in any other way — except it be by eavesdropping at his secret councils; and he certainly does not intend to let us do that. The plain man would do best to begin by getting rid of a lifelong mistake that '• strategy " is some sort of elaborate and diffi- cult science that requires training in war and employs a jargon that only certain very highly trained experts in war can understand. As a matter of fact, nine hundred out of a thousand soldiers, from generals down to drummer- boys, know as little of strategy as the man-in- the-street ; and yet it is precisely strategy that every man ought to know, for it is simple enough, and it is as important as his daily bread. In the old days, the different peoples, as 15 To Discover the War they settled down to industrial pursuits and became nations, rapidly got into the habit of raising an army from their bolder and more adventurous spirits; and these armies, living quite apart from the people, came to settling the disputes between peoples in war. Accord- ing as they won or were beaten in battle, the nations accepted it as a decision, made peace, contracted to carry on the new arrangements, and settled down to ordinary affairs again. That sort of warfare has vanished for ever. Modern war was bound to be the warfare of the whole peoples. Germany led us all to that, whether for good or ill. On the whole, as much for good as evil, for it is certain that we should never have an end put to warfare until the whole people had to bear the burden of it. And, of a truth, they bear it to-day. Armies are nations. That being so, strategy has become the most vital and most important word in the activities of all civilization; and has ceased to be a game of chess for diplomats. Democracy has seized and wears the crown of kings; it has therefore been obliged to accept and em- i6 To Discover the War ploy strategy. For what is strategy? It simply means the leading of armies. And as armies are peoples, it means the leading of peoples. To what end? The end of strategy, of the leading of peoples, is not necessarily war at all ; it is as much concerned with leading them to peace. Our strategy is the leading of us, British or American, as a people so that our will to live, our moral, our soul, our whole upward striving to our ideals and our destiny shall be so deep- rooted in vigour and courage to fulfil our will and soul, that we shall he able to defend our- selves against any enemy Will that may assail us. For instance, we dominant races are demo- cratic ; we have voluntary military service, we aim at freedom of the individual, believe in the brotherhood of man, and so on ; when we are assailed by autocratic peoples with com- pulsory military service and tyrannical and lacking liberty, the democracies must be able to overthrow such peoples and prove them to belong to the lesser breeds. Otherwise we are bound to go down. B 17 To Discover the War It is clear that if an enemy people arises like the Germans, that thinks itself more vigorous and more courageous and a stronger people, they may assail us. If they decide to do so, the consequence must be war. To that extent, and that only, has strategy anything to do with war; but it follows that the final test as to whether our peoples have been led to their most vigorous and highest destiny must be that we have the courage and the ,will to defend ourselves against any enemy. It also follows that, no matter how beautiful ou]^ ideals and dreams may be, if we as a people follow ideals that make us timid and effeminate and afraid, we are doomed to pass amongst the lesser breeds. We cannot get away from that. All history proves it. Now, it may seem to a work-a-day English- man in his cottage, and still more to a work-a- day American in his little home, an almost unthinkable thing that there should be any people on earth dehberately plotting to, or even thinking that they can, conquer him and make him subject to them. It requires a pretty strong effort of the imagination to To Discover the War realise its possibility. And j^et that is what the whole World-War is about ! And by no means the smallest danger to that Englishman, American, Frenchman in his little home is that he would think anybody so crazy who accused him of wanting to arm himself, and go out and conquer Germany, or step forth to conquering the whole world, that he cannot believe that the German can be guilty of it. By consequence, he keeps trying to judge the soul and the intention and the moral of Germany by his own soul and moral. To do so is to seek defeat — as we shall see. For the most diflRcult thing about the World- War is that the German is fighting guided by a Moral which has no relation whatsoever to the Moral of the rest of civilization — what we hold to be right he holds to be wrong ; what we hold to be wrong he holds to be right. So that there is no bridge whereby 've can meet. Peace does not mean to us what it means to him. Perhaps we can best see the utter hopeless- ness of trying to understand each other by so little an incident as that which has just hap- 19 To Discover the War pened. A British airman, who has been taken prisoner, has been given ten years' penal servitude for dropping leaflets from his plane. Quite apart from the fact that the Germans have done it all throughout the war, the situa- tion is this : The Kaiser holds that it is a far more terrible act for an airman to ask him to read a pamphlet than it is to blow off the All- Highest 's ridiculous legs with a bomb ! No ; you see there is no bridge between the civil- ization of the democracies and that of the German kultur. Thus it will be seen that it is quite im- possible to understand the war until we first discover exactly why the German made it, and what he intends to do. The only way to dis- cover this is to look at the German's past ; to discover his habits ; to see what is his strategy, that is to say, to discover whither the people are being led by their moral and soul ; and then to calculate whether he can carry out his strategy, or how it can be uprooted and destroyed — if at all. CHAPTER III THE RISE OF THE GERMAN First of all, what precisely is Germany? Germany is a very modern affair ; so let us see how she began and what she has become. About a hundred years ago there was a miserably poverty-stricken people near the bleak Baltic Sea called Prussians. They were a slave-people, under the heel of as brutish and brutal a tyranny of as petty and mean over- lords as it would be well possible to imagine. But they were vigorous and robust — the warriors of the German race. They were a mongrel breed, and hardship w^as the lot of all. When Napoleon crushed the German people, he ordained, in order to make the Prussians useless in war, that the Prussian Army should only consist of so many thou- sand men. But an astute Prussian, one Scharnhorst, discovered a way out — and that 21 The Rise of the German discovery soon made the whole Prussian people into an army — it was to lead to modern w^ar, which is the war of nations in arms instead of the old professional armies. It was worked somewhat thus : If you only allow Prussia to have, say, 50,000 armed men, and Prussia trains 50,000 the first year, sends them into a reserve and trains 50,000 more the next year, it will be seen that in four years Prussia has an army of 200,000 men ! It will also be seen that in a very few years Prussia will become the strongest people in Germany. So it came about. Next, there became Regent of Prussia in 1858 the ambitious man who later crowned himself King of Prussia with his own hands at Konigsberg as William I. William I drew to himself the three ablest men in Prussia — General von Roon as Minister of War, General von Moltke as Chief of the General Staff, and Bismarck he brought from the diplomatic service to become his brain of the State. At once Prussia set to work on her strategy to conquer and become lord of all Germany. The Prussian army was made 22 The Rise of the German into the most powerful and most perfect war machine for the business ; for the Germans detested Prussia, were easygoing peoples, democratic by habit, and dreamy by nature. In Bismarck Prussia soon discovered the greatest genius in affairs that the German race has bred ; he was early the uncrowned king. A man without scruple of any kind, ruthless in pursuit of his objects, he knew his chief difficulty would be in crushing the democratic spirit of the Germans; and he set to work wdth consummate and unflinching skill to tear the reality of democracy from the peoples w^hilst pandering to the forms. But, as w^e shall see, there was about to come to the German peoples a neW' revelation that fitted Bismarck's rough hand like a glove, as though sent by Fate. Without it Bismarck must have failed. Bismarck turned his eyes first to the smaller task. In 1864, luring Austria into alliance, he tore the Elbe duchies from the Danes — Slesvig, Holstein, and Lauenburg — whilst Britain, France, and Russia, to their eternal shame, stood aloof from their plighted 23 The Rise of the German aid to Denmark. That war proved the stuff of which the Prussian armies were made, as Bismarck saw ; but the rest of the world w^as blind. Bismarck rapidly increased the Prussian armies from his added territories, and trick- ing Italy into alliance, as he tricked the France of Napoleon III into neutrality, he struck suddenly, violated Saxony, and crushed the Austrians at Sadowa on the 3rd of July, 1866 ; by the 22nd of July the Prus- sians stood before Vienna. The treaty of Prague made Prussia lord of Hanover, the Elbe Duchies, Hesse-Cassel, and other broad German lands. Bavaria at once signed a secret treaty that made her peoples a part of Prussia in w^ar ; and Wiirtemberg and Hesse- Darmstadt dared not refuse. On the morrow of Sadowa, then, in all but name, Germany was Prussia. And the German peoples were at once taken in hand to be trained by the Prussian drill-sergeant. As soon as he was ready, Bismarck, luring Britain into neutrality, struck at France in 1870. The corrupt Court of Napoleon III 24 The Rise of the German knew no general of genius ; and France, de- serted by Britain, went down. The swift on- rush, and the fall of so famous a military state as France, brought Germany at once a repute for invincibility in war and enormously in- creased her standing and her power. But from the day the Prussian marched in triumph through Paris, the whole German people went under his heel. The war of 1870 defeated and humiliated France — it con- quered Germany, Thenceforth the Germans became a different people. We shall see how and why. Bismarck had achieved his life's ambi- tion. He had bewitched Germany with a shib- boleth of Germany for the Germans. He had played upon unity being the only means of saving Germany from invasion. He had had to compel the peoples into one vast army, and he had had to make them yield up their liberties by filling their imagination with the security of the State as being supreme. With all his powers and skill and ruthlessness, he would have failed but for a strange revelation B* 25 The Rise of the German that fell upon the peoples as though sent out of the blue to cast its glamour about his forthright, dramatic and masterful figure. But before we come to that, let us note Bismarck's methods. He acted swiftly. Once his strategy was decided, he left not a day to any enemy to prepare against him. He filled the enemy country with spies. He settled young men and women in the land along the routes that his legions would march. He fended off all allies from the enemy chosen, and he brought the whole weight of his vast war-machine with concentrated strength upon that enemy. His campaigns were lightning affairs. This fending off of other nations had this added strategic ad- vantage, that the conquered peoples watched his designs on the hoodwinked peoples next attacked with sullen aloofness. Here we discover the German method of carrying out his strategy. In 1870, then, the Germans stood triumphant beyond their wildest hopes. Bismarck had conquered Germany and 26 The Rise of the German brought her to heel. What was to be his next move? For twenty years thereafter Germany was at peace. Whatever intrigues fretted the Court ; whatever plans she may have been plotting, she lulled the world to rest by peace. She seemed bent now on commerce, when — Suddenly in 1890 Bismarck fell ! The young Kaiser, Wilham II, had lately come to the throne. Bismarck fell from power and was dismissed from office — the man who had made Germany what she w^as ! Why? It must be clear to the simplest mind that if the young Kaiser were in such serious con- flict with his great Chancellor, that if the question on which they differed so fiercely found the Kaiser prepared to lose Bismarck and Bismarck prepared to leave the helm of State rather than surrender, the difference must have been of stupendous importance in the leadership of the people. The next point is also plain to the dullest inteUi- gence : the Kaiser must have had his people 27 The Rise of the German solidly behind him and Bismarck must have been out of touch with the people. What was this stupendous affair of State that led to Bismarck's fall from power? What was the adventure to which the young Kaiser intended to lead his peoples, and that his peoples were ready to carry out? We have seen the history of Germany up to 1870 ; it has told us that whatever strategy guided the German people, she had been well able to carry it out when once decided. Was there any great change in the Ger- man people after their triumph over the French in 1870? Were they thinking differ- ently? Yes; the change between 1870 and 1890, when Bismarck fell, was astounding. No one could help but notice it. What exactly was it? If we could dis- cover that, perhaps we could discover the new strategy which Bismarck refused to carry out as being too dangerous for the future of Ger- many, but which the young Kaiser and his people had decided upon. Let us go back a w^hile and see if we can discover it. CHAPTER IV THE German's sojul The Germans are and always have been a very studious people. They are orderly of brain, spend enormous energy on detail, and are prodigiously industrious. They have particularly been interested in philosophy. It seems a strange dunghill on which to grow war ; it so happens that Bismarck could never have trampled down the German without it ; as it also happens that it set the whole Ger- man people aflame to follow Bismarck's ruthless brutal pilgrimage. And it came about in strange fashion. Now we must note that German philo- sophy w^as in the blind alley of pessimism — " what's the good of anything? why nothing " — when there was published in 1859 a book by an Englishman which startled the whole world. It is known as the " Origin of Species," but its full, if clumsy, title, is more 29 The German's Soul significant : On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preserva- tion of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, With us it chiefly scared the parsons; but it went to Germany and was seized upon by the Germans in a very different spirit. The main idea that the fittest survive in the struggle for existence happened to fit in very curiously with a ' ' philosophy ' ' which was come into Germany from France, a " philo- sophy " which flattered the German soul. There had appeared about this time the writ- ings of a French aristocrat called Gobineau, which laid down the law that races were not equal; and that the master peoples of the world were always those governed by an aristocracy of birth derived from a fair-haired blue-eyed race of Aryans. It had been so throughout all history, he said; and to-day the nearest and purest Aryan was the fair German race, which, therefore, had the right and the power to rule the world. This cult of the superiority of the fair-haired blue-eyed German people being the fit lords of creation, spread like magic amongst the Germans and 30 The German's Soul was soon a wide cult. Gobineau societies sprang up all over Germany to spread it. Soon there was to arise a German writer of the first rank who was to steal Darwin's and Gobineau's brains, and distort their teach- ings into a philosophy that rapidly caught the educated German classes — his name Nietzsche. Nietzsche took Darwin's Survival of the Fittest in the Struggle for Existence and his Evolution of the Stronger Breed above the Weaker so that the w^eaker goes to the wall, and he took Gobineau's Ar>^an fair- haired blue-eyed race as the Fittest for mas- tery of the world, and he developed out of it a philosophy of a race of men who were to rise out of the animal called Man who should be as much above Man as Man was above the Brute. This race he called the Overmen or Beyond-men — or, as our journalists translate it, " Supermen." This Overman was a Blonde Beast, whose only law was Ruthless- ness — he was an aristocrat who would rise to power over all inferior breeds by a Moral of Brutality. The Christ had given forth a Moral of the Brotherhood of Man in order to 31 The German's Soul save the lesser breeds from their stronger fellows; but Christ was dead and Nietzsche had arisen. It is true that Nietzsche was not a German, and detested all Germans as a vulgar, boorish people ; by the race of Over- men, the Blonde Beast of Ruthlessness, he meant what he called the " Good European." But the Germans took the Overman to them- selves; and Nietzsche's philosophy rapidly spread and had a tremendous effect upon all German thinking men. The student who had been steeping himself in the grey world of pessimism — the student who had been seeing Life as a sombre business in which the hawk preyed upon the singing birds, and death stood at the end of all man's endeavour, suddenly awoke to the new gospel. The Ger- man student no longer saw himself as a sorry part of a sorry universe, but as an entity in a race of Overmen destined by the order of the universe to be the lords of the world. To fit this w^orld of Overmen Nietzsche saw that he must fling all the philosophy of the brother- hood of man on to the dust-heap, and he gave forth in exquisite German literature a philo- 32 The German's Soul sophy of Brutal Ruthlessness as the Moral of the Overman. He what he called "trans- valued values"; what the brotherhood of man had taught as Good he showed to be Evil, what the brotherhood of man taught as Evil he showed to be Good. Now before any of us attempts to try to reach the soul of a modern German, let us ahvays remember that what w^e look upon as Good and Right he looks upon as Evil and Wrong ; w4iat we look upon as Evil and Wrong he considers Good and Right. At once we can account for all that is hideous in the German Moral. But let us remember that the w^hole of modern Germany has been suckled upon this Brute Moral, trained in it, and believes in it as we detest it. At the same time, when we come to make terms with him, let us remember that what we mean he does not mean. You may say it is all mad. So it is. But we are out to fight this Madness, not to fight a Sanity. Saying and thinking it is Madness will not help us. We have got to slay it for ever, or to live with it until it conquers us. 33 The German's Soul This is no place to go into the absolute wrongness of the German Moral of Ruth- lessness as sung by Nietzsche. Darwin was perplexed at the end of his days with the strange fact that the master races held a high Moral of the Brotherhood of Man which was wholly opposed to the Survival of the Fittest, if Fittest meant ruthlessness ; but he could not solve it. As a matter of fact, if he could only have seen a little deeper, the history of the rise of man from the brute w^ould have re- vealed it to him and rid him of all doubts. It is clear that naked man could not have risen above the brutes by Ruthlessness, for the lion and the leopard were as ruthless as, or more ruthless than he. He rose to mastery over the brutes by union with his fellowmen, and by no other means could he have done so — and as he met in the valley gatherings and in- creased his strength by brotherhood he came to more mastery — ^from the valley he passed to the village — ^from the village to the town — from the town to the nation — from the nation to the vast commonweal ; and the >vider his brotherhood became the vaster his mastery. 34 The German's Soul Indeed, it is obvious that Ruthlessness can never bind a people against Brotherhood — affection will always destroy hate. The moment a people decide to slay a Ruthless overlord his death warrant is signed. Nor will the Ruthless themselves long suffer the Ruthless lest they themselves be slain. Ruth- lessness can but abide for a season and die. However, the German has never been a great creator of thought ; he has been a logic- chopper, an adapter of other men's ideas. And the new gospel tickled his vanity and he took it to his heart. It came to him when he was rising to power and increase of afflu- ence under Bismarck. It accounted to him philosophically for the brutality of Bismarck and the ruthlessness of German statecraft. The German no longer saw himself as a base liar, a murderer, a breaker of covenants, for the new gospel made these vilenesses into virtues for the Blonde Beast. It fitted Bis- marck's strategy like a glove. And when Germans saw the moral of civilization as a thing of contempt, only fit for inferior breeds, the gospel of Ruthlessness seemed the 35 The German's Soul only fit and proper moral for the " master race." Now it may be said that this being so, it was only the philosophy of studious Germany ; how could it effect Germany's strategy? How guide the German masses? We shall see that Germany was soon adopting it as her faith and as her statecraft and policy, and was bending all her activities to making it a world-reality. CHAPTER V WHAT IS THE GERMAN DRIVING AT? Overwhelmed and deeply humiliated in the disastrous war of 1870, the French allowed the Germans to make a formal entry into Paris. The Germans marched in triumph through Paris as several peoples ; they marched out again as one people. The day that Prussia stood triumphant in Paris the whole German people passed under her yoke. As we have seen, the war of 1870 only defeated and humiliated France — it conquered Germany, Thenceforth the Germans became a wholly different people. They were intoxicated with the swiftness with which their legions bore down everything before them. Small wonder that they began to compare themselves with the might of ancient Rome ! War after war had seen them walk to victory as though they went to a 37 What is the German Driving at ? parade. Nothing seemed able to stand before them. They had been a penurious people of poverty-stricken thrifty farmers. They sud- denly found war a paying concern by tearing huge indemnities from the conquered. From the French they tore £200,000,000, and found themselves rich. They had looted the land like bandits. And now they took the industrial region of Alsace-Lorraine ; and we shall see in a little while why they took it. The vast victorious legions marched home, and it was roses, roses all the way. They put off their armour, and as they settled down to peace they found a new gospel had been re- vealed to them that accounted for their mastery as destined by the order of the Universe. Nietzsche's philosophy had been spreading like a plague ; but this Kultur now received a prodigious impetus from the professors of the universities — above all, from one, Treitschke. Treitschke m,ade of this Kultur of Ruthless- ness an elaborate code for the guidance of the ship of State and the leadership of the people. 38 What is the German Driving at? He made it into the whole aim of German strategy for Germany's future wayfaring. The whole of the youth of Germany were soon sitting at the feet of Treitschke. His teach- ings were supported by Bismarck, and spread broadcast throughout the land. Day and night, from the cradle to the grave, every German since 1870 has been nur- tured on this Moral of Ruthlessness and on this dream of World-Dominion for the Ger- man race. It has been taught in the school and the university ; it became the inspiration of the Press and of German literature ; it was adopted as the code of all her commerce, of her consuls, of her embassies, of her state- craft, of all her endeavours. And, as we have seen, a people's Moral and Soul determine its strategy — that is to say, its leadership to its destiny. Let us take from Treitschke's own teach- ings what the world-strategy of Germany has been since the overthrow of France in 1870. I^et Treitschke speak it out of his own mouth. 39 iWhat is the German Driving at? Thus spake Treitschke : Out of the twilight of the Past, Gennany's destiny had been foreshadowed in her very beginnings in the guidance of her God, Odin — the German god of War. Valour had ever marked her for its own ; her culture had stood forth ever to the envy and admiration of the world. But she had departed awhile from her mighty destiny through too great devotion to Culture alone. The Germany even of Goethe had been steeped in the idyllic, concerned only with culture for culture's sake, at best with the good of humanity; and Germany, being the mighty power that she is, conquered the world with that culture, conquered the realm of the intellect. Then Germany had awakened and heark- ened to the supreme revelation that she alone could lead humanity. The grey pessimism in which she seemed doomed to sink fell from her, and with blithe courage she took up the burden of her appointed destiny. To her making came Prussia to whom had been granted the guidance of Frederick the 40 What is the German Driving at? Great. The culture, the twisted .ways, the contempt of moral as the world understood moral, the daring and the unscrupulousness, the love of power, and the ruthless prosecu- tion of war to make his country great, in this mighty man, were the supreme example for Germany to follow. Sworn covenants and written treaties were but " filigree-work, pretty to look at but of no consequence." Chivalry in war :Was but a fantastic and mawkish sentiment unfit for such as should have Ruthlessness for battle-cry. Prussia's manhood, bred in the stern climate of the north, her youth made vigorous by the " free and bracing winds of the Baltic strand," had been granted the task of welding Germany into a people; and to Prussia had been vouchsafed the Hohenzollern, God-sent, to guide the German destiny to its supreme fulfilment — dominion over the w^orld. (By God Treitschke clearly always meant Fred- erick the Great — or a relative). For the Hohenzollern by divine right had discovered the inability of democracy to govern greatly — the Hohenzollern had rid the German 41 What is the German Driving at? peoples of that once-accepted incubus of mob- rule and freedom and love of humanity with which they had so long toyed. It was only when Germany put the petty ideal of personal freedom from her, and realized that the authority of the State over the individual could alone bring the people to power as a whole, that Germany shook off her lethargy of democracy and entered into her destiny as world-conqueror. The State must be master of the individual, and without appeal. It was by Bismarck's triumph over parliament that the Hohenzollern came to power, and thereby led Germany to Unity. The German democracy would never have welded itself into a State. It was only by having a King granted to them who could choose his ministers, who in their turn could create a vast machinery of government, that Germany was enabled to stand before the world armed and equipped at all points, dreaded for her might. Democracy w^as the ideal of vulgar uncul- tured breeds like the EngUsh and their '* American spawn," or the weak product of 42 What is the German Driving at? effeminacy such as overwhelms the intellect and culture of the French. Democracy lacked the gift of creating leadership, whereas King- ship rested on the faculty for drawing leader- ship to it, unf retted by mean jealousies of the popular w411. (It will be noticed that his audiences never seem to have been fretted by the fact that Treitschke had a poor opinion of the German people !) The sole significance of the State is Power; and Power rests upon War. Sentimentalists flout at War ; but through- out all nature, as throughout the whole history of man, the supreme law w^as War — Might is Right. Even they who vowed Right to be Might went to war to prove it ! War gives us the final judgment of Nature. Evolu- tion points to it as the supreme law\ The decision of War was the only ultimate just decision, since it was the decision by which men would abide. Democracies had to be wooed to the mak- ing of war by sentimentalists ; but War was Germany's God. (Here, be it noted that Frederick the Great has to give place a little.) 43 What is the German Driving at? The whole significance of a people lay in War. Valour in war is the supreme moral. All else gives way to that. And such being so, the mastery of the .world having always gone to them that w^ere greatest in war, it w^as every German's duty to make Germany the completest master of war that the world had yet seen. The banker and the clerk, the landowner and the peasant, the seaman and the lands- man, from King to village lad, should so order his life that his inspiring aim and object should be the aid that his particular activity >\^ould bring, each in his degree, to the perfecting of the power of Germany in battle on that day that she went forth to conquer. Not only should every man worthy of the name of Ger- man, the greatest name a man can bear, be compelled to train as a soldier, but his work-a- day hfe should be shaped to the perfecting of the machine of war. He should strive to be hard and capable of endurance. The army was above all other honours. Prussia had taught the nation to be the army — the army a nation. What is the German Driving at? Every nation outside Germany is an enemy ; every agency of craft and cunning and unscrupulousness should be employed day and night to sift out the details of the nations so that they might be destroyed. The element of surprise and that of the swift blow on the surprise were of prodigious value in war ; so Germany should seek by skill and utter un- scrupulousness of diplomacy to separate and keep nations apart, whilst she prepares her mighty hosts for the Day and enfeebles the enemy for the attack, even whilst she herself arrays herself for battle and the destruc- tion of each in turn. Ruthless cunning is a part of Valour. (How Treitschke had the effrontery constantly to charge Britain with perfidiousness after this is a German miracle !) No peoples had the right to live except under the domination of German Lordship, Gennan Valour, and German Kultur. The lesser nations that stood in her way must suffer overthrow and be beaten to their knees ; but the predestined dominion of Germany should not lose its aim in petty conquests — it was for Germany here and now to seek out the 45 What is the German Driving at? mightiest people, and to concentrate all the vast resource of her wealth, her industries, and her valour upon the humiliation and conquest of the strongest peoples — her factories should pour forth the weapons for, and her Kultur concentrate its whole science and skill upon, that overwhelming. Not a day should pass in a German's life without his feeling that he has done something, however small, towards that Day. Every German should live for an heroic purpose. Germany, lulled by the humane fallacy of the lesser peoples, had heretofore taken her concept of life and morals, like the others, from an alien Eastern genius, arisen in Galilee, born out of the Jewish race — a con- temptible people who were the parasites on ail civilized nations. Germany had thereby been deflected from her ancient destiny. The Germany of old, overwhelming the mighty Roman Empire, had found a once virile Rome conquered by an alien religion out of Gahlee ; and the German in his turn had been spiritu- ally conquered. But Germany has now awakened to the 46 What is the German Driving at? fact that her creative power lies in giving the world a new religion, born out of her own soul and her own Kultur, grown on her own soil, the religion of Ruthless Valour. (Treitschke was never troubled by truth or accuracies, and forgot to explain that Darwin was English, Gobineau was French and Nietzsche a Pole. However — ) Yet, mark how, even whilst Ger- many had been conquered by the alien rehgion of Galilee, the purity and nobility with which she had followed it had brought forth an abso- lutely original architecture wherein to house it — the Gothic ! (Treitschke was not much of an authority on art, and probably did not realize that the best Gothic was French. Even if he had he would have lied about it.) How nmch mightier will be her higher religion of Ruthless Valour, and how much nobler the architecture in which she will house it ! (This was rather a long shot for Treitschke.) Seek danger ! Give heroically ! Whether Germany rise or fall, at least she will not fall the thrall of an ahen God, but the disciple of Ruthless Valour, the essayer of heroic deeds ; for her no cloudy pallid heavens beyond the 47 What is the German Driving at? grave, but an heroic adventure along the path- way to Valhalla, the tomb of heroes. Germany has flung aside the alien moral brought from Galilee; and she has created a moral of valour whereby Valour is alone its own judge of action, alone its own standard of conduct. She is about to compel that moral upon the world. The day of salvation came to the German when he ceased from surrendering his genius to an alien moral that had enslaved it, unlike the lesser breeds of the world, who are in power to-day by acci- dent and owing to the long slumbering of Germany ; but these will fall prone to her Will and bow them down to her dominion and her moral if Germany nourish her valour and attempt what her Ruthless Valour can achieve. For none can resist that ordered Valour ; and none has the power or the right to question her acts. What had the ideals and ethics of alien folk to do wdth Germany ? It was for Ger- many to create a moral and compel it on the conquered. The test of a moral was not its approval by man, but its significance to Ger- ^48 What is the German Driving at? many. All history proves that a people prac- tised that moral only which brought it power and dominion. For a people to preach one moral and live another is a lie. Now the alien breeds had come to an in- sane and unvirile dislike of war — preached against war — had set up for themselves an ideal of Peace. But war is not the scourge of mankind, the barrier to human progress ; war is the mightiest thoroughfare whereby man in the struggle of evolution reaches towards per- fection. He who cries out for the abolition of war is guilty of an immorality ; he fears his stronger neighbour. For a great people there is no standing still between World-Dominion and ruin — 'tis one thing or the other — ^there is no other choice. War is, therefore, a most virile need of life. Through war alone may a people rise to mastery. " The happiest death is for him who, in the hour of battle, feels the blood drip upon his brow from the laurel- wreath of victory." And Germany, thrilled by her destined and appointed lordship over the universe, c 49 What is the German Driving at? must search out the greatest obstacles to be overcome — and the most formidable is the vast sea-realm, of England, Germany must over- whelm other peoples, but England must be crushed — and, after England, *' her spawn in America." There lies the only path to that World-Dominion and vast splendour that Ger- man Valour and German Moral are begot- ten and destined to attain ! For, a people are not overwhelmed until their moral is made subject to the moral of the conqueror. Across Germany's mighty destiny lies this one dangerous enemy. All others are as nothing to this England. By the valour and moral of Germany, by hate and craft and ordered pre- paration, the might of England and America could be overthrown and made as naught by the German people. The danger is only in the seeming. Eng- land's realm is vast, but is built on rotten and still rotting foundations, just as ''her spawn in the United States of America " were bom in corruption and have expanded in vulgarity and British self-sufficiency. The German who went to America should live in com- 50 What is the German Driving at? mimities apart, so that the German genius should not suffer weakening from the Ameri- can debasement; he should accumulate wealth so that on the day of reckoning he might help the HohenzoUern to overthrow the English genius of the futile Republic. This England lives on tradition. Her im- morality, her arrogance, and her pride are an outrage to every German ; for, to Germany's long absorption in the higher conquests of the soul is wholly due England's security, within which this gross race has come to mastery and imperial position. Germany had been tricked and befooled for centuries by the British, and had suffered it. But she had the habit of supremacy, this English breed; therefore her crushing and overthrow by Germany must be the more thorough — England will never forgive our strength. (Evidently the foimda- tions of poor old England were not so very rotten after all ! ) iWhen England had not attacked Germany to save the Dane, and then to save Austria, and then to save France, England had been a treacherous but timid enemy (Pacifists would 51 1 What is the German Driving at? do well to note the estimation in which the German holds his ''reasonableness"); but when England baulked Germany's will on France, she did so equally because she was treacherous and afraid — and when she attacks Germany it will be because she is treacherous and afraid ! (Evidently whatever England did was bad Kultur!) Therefore Germany must prepare secretly arid treacherously to over- whelm England so that England shall not be ready. (Treitschke evidently feared this rotting England above all other peoples !) Compare the Valour and Kultur of Germany with those of England, whose world-repute is out of all measure with her real strength or her worth, social, intellectual, or moral. England.^ A splendid sham ! This nation of shopkeepers wields a sham dominion; it lives a sordid pohtical hfe and a hypocritical home existence — it is a dominion of conceit and in- sular insolence. It is a bubble reputation. Her wide dominions vast spread beyond her strength to keep and hold — her armies a little tribe of mercenaries paid for their courage! (Treitschke httle knew what wealth was 52 What is the German Driving at? showered on Tommy and his officers — evi- dently what he could not believe was that British officers paid to serve the State ! ) The British Empire was built up neither by valour nor by genius nor by the ordered scheme of a mighty policy, but by the indifference of other peoples, by the duphcity of her Minis- ters, above all by the high hazard and good fortune of her island home upon the great world-path of the high seas. (Treitschke de- tests the German moral of duplicity when employed against Germany evidently.) Great- ness had been thrust upon her. She stands a Colossus, 'tis true, a giant — with feet of clay. And the uncultured world adores bigness and respects it. But, in this vast universe of ours, the thing that is a sham, the thing wholly rotten, though it may endure for a time, cannot endure for ever. The whole tale of history witnesses to that. This sham dominion of England will fall; and with what a shout of exultation the nations will hail that fall of this Island People ! The world asks cantingly — England her- self asks — What moral right have the 53 What is the German Driving at ? Germans to make war upon this people? Germany answers that England possesses a fifth of the habitable globe. Ought Germany to allow her to possess a fifth of the world? England, with her wonted hypocrisy, vows to Germany that she has no quarrel with the Germans; but England's very existence is a stumbling-block to Germany's dominion over the world. Her avowal of good will to Ger- many is but a cover to her fear of Germany. She has risen by robbery and holds the spoils of the world; what right has she to expect good will from the nations? England has all to lose, nothing to gain, by conflict with Germany; Germany has all to gain, nothing to lose — Germany who can do aught she desires to do! England's title-deeds to dominion are solely violence and treachery, backed by valour — for she has a certain valour. (Treitschke evidently thought it better to give the shopwalkers back a little pluck, or his appeal to Germany to trample on so feeble a folk might seem too easy a job !) What right has England to complain if the German tear her title-deeds from her by violence and 54 What is the German Driving at? valour? A narrow sea alone saves her from conquest — and it is for Germany to master that narrow sea. The rest is sure. The great world-robber, glutted with booty, like a biu-glar retiring from business, asks the pro- tection of the poHce from the ill will of his neighbours ! These Hague International Tribunals are set up by England and ''her American spawn" in order to protect them- selves against the German. As if there could ever be a judgment of a nation by nations! The sole authority of a State is its own Power. And this hypocritical show of horror of wars, and this placing of international disputes be- fore an impartial jury of the nations, are but a subterfuge of the English and their like to baulk the destiny of Germany which has a higher Valour, a higher Kultur, and a higher Moral than theirs. Why should Germany bow to their moral which Germans do not approve ? It is not for a vast heroic people like the Germans to fix their eyes on petty conquests. As Germany overthrew aforetime the might of the immortal Roman Empire, so to-day 55 What is the German Driving at? her task is in keeping with her high estate; and the vastest Empire of our times, the suc- cessor of Rome, Hes before the German for the destroying — ^the might of England. (An amiable soul, this Treitschke! He is clearly hedging so that when England is des^troyed Germany shall be able to boast that the poor shopkeepers were really devils of fellows to overthrow !) If every German does not envisage this her destiny, then Germany is a futile thing and of no account — a dreamer content with the dream — a nothingness — her Kultur invalid, her valour valueless. England is at her height, and must in- evitably soon decline. Who vvdll seize her realm and her magnificence? Has not Ger- many a right to a place in the sun? Is this England so vast that, growing old, she has the right to bequeath her greatness to her kin across the seas? She cowers behind a Fleet, hating war and fearful of taking up arms, a timorous craven people who will surrender to the first onslaught of the German legions. Her Colonies stand aloof from her, governing themselves, not subject to her valour and her 56 What is the German Driving at? ordering. India watches but for the moment to strike her down — India which she had not the culture nor the valour to compel to her own moral and culture ! The English soldier is of poor courage and the army beneath con- tempt. England is for ever begging us to disarm, because her strength is failing. Why does not Belgium ask us to disarm? England is in the autumn of her Empire; and her stolen fruit is for the gathering. Panic tears through her Press at every word of Germany's preparation for the D^y of Reckoning — as it ran aforetime through the streets of decaying Rome when word came that the German was at her gates. Let Germany concentrate her wdll and hate to the whole design of crushing this fantastic and ignoble realm of England ; let her pass no day or night without increase of will to destroy her and to usurp her sway and her dominion with a ruthless, more ordered, and more violent overlordship of the w^orld. Germany is predestined to guide the future of humanity. And precisely as Prussia had had to conquer Germany before r* --T What is the German Driving at? Germany could become a people, and move to her appointed destiny of World-Dominion, so must the world be first conquered that Germany may compel her Kultur upon man- kind and rid the earth of the thousand and one warring and chaotic morals that afflict it. And Germany one, one in Valour, one in aim, prepared for war as one man, who shall be so great as to put bounds to her ambition, or to set landmarks to her vast estate? So, only by war, by conquest, may Germany reach to world-empire, so only compel the German Kultur and the new religion upon the universe ! Thus spoke Treitschke. And Germany adopted what he spoke from end to end of her people. Every living German has been bred on this stuff and talks this jargon. We have seen, then, that when Bismarck fell from power in 1890 the whole German people were a different people from those that marched through Paris in triumph in 1870. We see them trained in a new gospel. The dreamy student has done with poring over 58 What is the German Driving at? the ideal, he ceases to burn the midnight oil, he arises and puts on the Prussian cap and steps forth to the conquering of the world, spectacles and all. Above all, he marks down Britain and ' ' her vulgar spa\Mi in America ' ' as the enemy. He trains for it. He raises his glass to " The Da}^ " — the day of reckon- ing. Many quite worthy old gentlemen and superior young gentlemen amongst us are under the quite honest delusion that the Ger- man is fighting under the heel of a masterful group of Prussians with whom he is not at heart in accordance. There could be no more insane mistake. The new Kultur has been deliberately set up by the State and made into its Strategy — its leadership in peace and war. The school books teach it. That Bismarck opposed the young Kaiser, that the Kaiser w^as backed by the whole country, that Bismarck fell from power rather than be party to the new strategy, can only be accounted for by the fact that he saw the Germany that he had built going straight for disaster — that he knew that war with Britain 59 What is the German Driving at? and America would spell ruin to Germany. Nothing else can account for it. All after- events account strategically for it. At any rate, Bismarck fell ; and the Kaiser stepped forward to lead the great adventure or to be led by it. To the German, from end to end of the German-speaking peoples, so far from its be- ing fantastic and impossible, the new strategy came as the very breath of their bodies. What is more, the whole German people, from the Kaiser to the harlot, from prince to hot el- waiter, has pursued that strategy day and night for a whole generation, without misgiving, without hesitation, without cavil, without questioning. It has been suckled from infancy, been taught from the tenderest years, been the school lesson, the chief education of the university student. It has been distributed by that vast and wonderful system of educa- tion for which Germany is remarkable. To it Germany has bent the whole of her wealth, her consulates, her colonies, her industries, her mind, her intellect, her intention, her 6to What is the German Driving at? waking and her sleeping, her railways, her vigour, her marvellous organization, her embassies — to the creation and perfecting of an absolute war-machine such as has never been attempted by mortal man. Nothing has been left to chance. She has hesitated at no criminality nor baseness nor treachery, as we understand these things in our moral, but which in her moral are virtues and to that degree strategically her soul, in order to organize in every part of the habitable globe a secret service which, for perfection and com-^ pleteness of cunning and efficiency and detail,, it would be impossible to surpass. No scruple has baulked it. From the Kaiser to the harlot the steady treachery has gone on. Kultur excused, nay glorified, every vice so that it but increased the power of the war-machine. Royal marriages prostituted princesses of the blood royal to it; and to it these fine ladies prostituted the dignity and honour and well- being of the people they went to govern, and repudiated their first duties and their oaths to these peoples. Nothing was too small or mean — nothing too vast or daring. 6i What is the German Driving at? And to do Germany justice, this was as it should be from her point of view, since it was her Kultur, which she had set forth to compel on a futile world. The German governess in your home, the German hairdresser who cUpped the heads of the Aldershot subalterns, the waiters in the restaurants, the clever German lad whom you helped along out of his poverty and to whom you gave a job, the dandy who flirted with your daughters in smart London drawing- rooms, all were creating this vast war-machine quite as keenly as Bertha Krupp's workmen were welding the molten steel for your annihilation. Employing the utmost secrecy in its preparations, knowing the supreme advantage of surprise in war, choosing their own moment at which to launch this stupendous war-machine, with every man and gun ready and in place to move, with numbers of men and guns and equipment and with weight of metal in vast superiority to all its enemies, Germany in the July of 1914 decided that The Day had come, raised glasses exultingly 62 What is the German Driving at? to conquest of the wide world, and stepped forth to battle. And as the German legions march, let us not only note their armed strength, but try to tap the brain a-top of the marching men. It will be clear to any man of intelligence that the whole German peoples, having put their money on Germany as the lord of war, the only thing that will shake their faith will be to discover that they are not supreme in war. If the war-machine be defeated and humiliated, the German peoples will awake with a profound shock and will then, and then only, rend their leaders to pieces and come back to the civilization of the brotherhood of man. So long as the German is victorious in war, his belief will be in war, and any peace into which he enters will be but lip-service and treachery in order to get time to become a still more powerful w^ar-machine. When he went to war with mad joy and frenzy of delight in the July of 1914 he had not known defeat. 63 CHAPTER VI THE TWO GERMAN PLANS OF CAMPAIGN How did the German intend to carry out his strategy, this dream of marching to world- dominion ? From 1890 there was not a German who was not dehberately bred and trained to be- lieve in the German as the predestined over- lord of the earth, as by right of selection by Nature to be the conqueror of the universe. And few challenged it. It sounds mad ; but we cannot judge the enemy's soul by our soul, nor his Moral by our Moral, nor his intentions by our intentions. That way the gentle pacifist lies. But how was the German to put the wide world under his vile heel? How make his contorted language the universal tongue? How make his brutish ordering the universal law? How was he to fling down the " out- worn moral that came out of Galilee," and 64 The Two Plans of Campaign replace it with " an original German Kultur — a higher master moral ' ' ? Well, he saw from the first that *' the British and their American kin were the supreme enemy " to his ambition. If democracy must first be slain, Britain and America were clearly the enemy. The first need, therefore, was a fleet — the German built a fleet. And, as commercial conquest could go on in " peace," Germany carried on a commercial brigandage called *' peaceful penetration," which was soon making the whole German people so well-to-do that the idea of the German dominion over the whole world rapidly became an absolute necessity, as wxll as a dream, in every' German home. All solid opposition was soon silenced. We will glance at this system of world-brigandage demurely called *' Peaceful Penetration" be- fore we have done. However, so rapid was this vast commercial treacherj^'s triumph in every industrial field that one would be amazed to think of the arrogant folly of Ger- many in going to war at all before her com niercial conquest of the world was complete, 65 The Two Plans of Campaign .were it not that her commercial enterprise, as we shall see, was so rotten and bloated, and backed by such a swindling finance, that it was far from well with the vaunted German trade. Resentment was beginning to be world-wide. The economic unsoundness of over-produc- tion with political bluff as its chief asset was beginning to shake the credit of Germany. In fact, her commerce was but war in dis- guise ; and now the w^ar was to show Ger- many as warrior to be as inflated a second-rate Power as she believed herself to be supreme. However, this was hidden from her des- tiny in the July of 1914, and from the Kaiser to the scavenger every activity and nerve and energy of the whole people was set on the conquest of the whole world. World-Dominion or Downfall ! How was it to be done? Now, it must be very clear to any man that when two peoples go to war they do not just dash at each other anyhow and fight like cat and dog without any plan or purpose. What happens is that one of the peoples has some definite plan against the other; and the 66 The Two Plans of Campaign other is out to break that plan. When a war breaks out, the strategic student opens his map, and it reveals to him what will con- stitute victory or defeat for the maker of the war. We shall find the German's plan on a map. The German made his >var for world- dominion. How was he to do it? It was certain that if Germany boldly attacked Britain, France would at once leap at the chance to fly at the German's throat, and would bring Russia in with her. Therefore, the German decided that Britain and America must be tricked into neutrality until France and Russia were first smashed and rendered powerless. This luring of Britain into neutrality would have the added advantage for Germany, later, of seeing the German assault on Britain being carried out, not only with a sullen and deserted France looking on aloof — or rather what remained of France — but with Germany at the sea-gate of Britain and com- manding the Channel. America was far away 67 The Two Plans of Campaign and so enwrapped in a tradition of aloofness from world affairs or an}^ affairs outside America that she would easily be tricked into neutrality not only whilst France was being crushed, but whilst Britain was being attacked thereafter — America w^ould simply abide in peace for the day of her destruction. There were therefore set up two plans of campaign. The ultimate plan, which we may call the First or supreme Plan of Campaign of the German Staff — indeed, the German knew full well that it must be the supreme and final act — was to attack France and Russia, holding Russia off defensively (as being the slower enemy to get into action, but the more dan- gerous when once set going) until France was rapidly and utterly crushed, when the " in- vincible " German legions, flushed with victory, would turn upon and rend Russia asunder, Britain and America being beguiled into neutrality the while. As this would give Germany a new frontier across the North of France to the mouth of the river Somme, the whole of the Channel ports of France, ^vith 68 The Two Plans of Campaign Belgium and Holland, would at once become Germany's jumping-off ground for the con- quest of Britain and America. Note that the French fleet would bring up the German battleship strength, and complete the degra- dation of Britain's sea-power. This First Plan of Campaign was clearly going to be a dangerous and colossal adven- ture ; hut there was a Second Plan of Cam- paign which would make it a dead certainty, if that Second Plan of Campaign could only he quietly completed without suspicion of its use before the hugles sounded for the great ad- vance to the conquest of the world. The world would he half won. This Second Plan of Campaign, as the stepping-stone of the German strategy to the First Plan for the conquest of the w^orld, show^s German strategy at its highest. It is quite simple, and deadly as simple ; and, if w^on and consoHdated, it makes the First Plan absolutely secure. Why the pubHc and the Press were blind to it, and have been kept in darkness so long — why they are blind to it in great part still — it passes the wit of unofficial 69 The Two Plans of Campaign man to say. Every man in the country ought to have had it clearly put before him the day that war broke out ; his not knowing it now is an absolute danger to us all. However, here it is; and as it is that on which victory or defeat for us all now hangs, it would be just as well for every man to try to get a grip of it : Before attacking France and Russia, and striking his great blow in his First Plan of Campaign, the German saw that he could make himself a hundredfold more powerful and secure for his assault on Britain on '' the Day," by carrying on the masterly tradition he had been taught by Bismarck of first in- creasing his war-machine to its uttermost power. To do this best — in other words, to prepare and perfect a more overwhelming machine for the swift conquest of England before England should have time to take alarm from the overthrow of France and Russia — the German had but to create a vast Pan-German Empire from the Atlantic and Baltic to the Persian Gulf. Training this thoroughly on the Prussian model, as he had trained all GeiTnany against France for 1870, 70 The Two Plans of Campaign R S S I A N E M ? I R Z ^,^ )/ A MITTEL EUROPA IN RELATION TO THE OLD WORLD he would create a .war-machine such as the world had never before seen. At once Ger- many would have a solid Central Europe — Mittel Europa — served by a swift railway system free from attack by the sea, as a mag- nificent jumping-off ground from which to leap forward to her mighty world-adventure. It would split the world apart, and Germany would be on the wedge. Mittel Europa is safe from British attack by sea — indeed, would command the Eastern Mediterranean. It commands Egypt and 71 The Two Plans of Campaign India, .whilst it cuts off Britain from India and her AustraUan Commonwealth. German armies could be poured at will by the quickest routes into India or Egypt, their movements screened from observation and secure from all attack. The great advantage of creating this Pan- German Empire as an ideal position from which march forth to World-Dominion, had the additional srt:rategic merit that, unlike the First Plan of campaign which must startle Europe and put the whole world on its guard if baulked at its first onrush, it would not alarm nor put on their guard even the peoples against whom it was designed — Britain and America. The chief excuse for it, the more to conceal its strategic aim, was to be an arrogant and noisy claim to commerce and ex- pansion for commerce; for conunerce always raises the illusion of peace ! This commercial excuse, to conceal her war intention of con- quest, if constantly kept before the world, would hoodwink the '' nation of shopkeepers '' and " her vulgar spawn the Americans," and turn and keep their greedy eyes angrily to the The Two Plans of Campaign mere commercial aspect of it. Even so, Ger- many would be only too delighted to get wealth and commercial advantage thrown in as a pleasant side-issue. Above all, the British and American Governments were so utterly lacking in all strategic vision and guidance, as was their Press, that Britain would go on bungling in the Balkans over outworn diplomacies, little recking of the vast real issues arising ; while America would never realise that her greatest peril lay in such a strange corner of the earth as the distant Balkans about which she knew nothing, and cared less — until it was too late, and America's bulwark — Britain — was gone ! This Pan-German Empire of Mittel Europa was so doggedly and skilfully de- veloped under the noses of all the embassies that it was all but complete the day that Ger- many decided that the hour had srt:ruck to march forth to her great adventure. Austria and Hungary were in it. Itah% though an ally, was suspect and not allowed too much into it. Bulgaria was secretly party to it, as was the Court of Greece. Turkey was abso- /v> The Two Plans of Campaign lutely committed to it, her tyrant Enver being completely bought ; Enver with his Ger- man officers overawed the one pro- Ally Young Turk, Talaat. Roumania and Serbia alone barred the way. Roumania was too close to Russian support. The gate through Serbia must at all costs he smashed in, and the Pan- German map and Empire would be complete. Besides, once Serbia was down and the iron highway of railways on the map was complete, Roumania, like Belgium and Holland, could soon be swallowed. RUSSIA iHR^TLA :^s\ 6 t^CTi^ THE SERBIAN GATE 74 The Two Plans of Campaign Noxv the Man-in-th^^-Street will easily un- derstand why Germany launched the war over '* an affair with Serbia," as the blind Press put it — wall understand why Serbia was not a mere excuse for the war, as the Press thought — ^>vill understand why Germany risked all and compelled Austria to fight the heroic little people of Serbia with such dogged and bitter hatred. For he can now see that once Serbia was overthrown, the Pan-German Empire of Mittel Europa would be a reality; and the German could proceed to his dream of World- Dominion. CHAPTER VII HAS THE GERMAN SUCCEEDED? Whilst Germany had won her whole Pan- German map — ^her Second Plan of Campaign — without war, except for the gateway through Serbia, she still hoped to bully Serbia into surrender without a wide conflagration, and so to be able to set to work and consolidate her Mittel Europa Empire, and thoroughly train it on the Prussian system for the Great War of her First Plan of Campaign; but the heroic little people of Serbia saved the world, Germany planned to pick a quarrel with Serbia by plotting a make-believe attempt on the heir to the Austrian throne at Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, on June 28th, 1914 — ^the Grand Duke was to proceed to the Town Hall and reprimand the authorities of the place — and Serbia was to be dragooned over it. All went as planned, but it so happened that as the Grand Duke and his Duchess drove away, 76 Has the German Succeeded? turning into a side street to avoid the excited crowd, a young fellow, w^ho was not in the trumped-uj) attempt, stepped forward and shot them dead. Germany leaped at the chance. So, by the strange irony of circumstance, it came about that, in trying to complete her Second Plan of Campaign, Germany sud- denly found herself compelled on the mad career of her full First Plan of Campaign before the Second Plan was quite accom- plished. She had to launch her vast legions at France and Russia, or draw back from com- pleting her Second Plan of Mittel Europa. She was overwhelmingly prepared for it ; and she struck. To Germany's consternation, Britain at once struck. And from that moment it w-^s almost inevitable that the First Plan of Campaign w^as lost. It was Ger- many's first gross blunder from arrogance ; and her war was to be carried out in blunder after blunder. Britain's high repute in the world made a shield against her very unpreparedness for war. From the day she struck, the British 77 Has the German Succeeded? Navy made defeat sure for Germany in the West. It was day by day to make that defeat ever more terrible for the German arms. The moment Britain struck for Belgium and France, Italy was lost to Mittel Europa and the German cause, if Italy indeed ever had the slightest intention of striking a single blow for the Pan-German Empire. Finland, which ,was to rise against Russia iwhen the Kaiser declared ,war, and, joined by Sweden, was to marc*h against Russia from the north, halted the moment that Britain struck — for England is Finland's ideal and admira- tion. Sweden, instead, at once formed the Scandinavian bond of neutrality. Germany's colonies were torn from her one after the other, and her shipping was swept from the seas. Concentrating her vast armed might in overwhelming numbers and arms and guns against France and the small British Army that stood on France's sea-flank, Germany made her huge onrush to overwhelm the French and British arms — the very fury and weight of it for a few; days seemed as 78 Has the German Succeeded? though it were victorious — her legions, out- manoeuvred, outgeneralled at every turn, rushed to the vast German disaster of the Battle of the Marne. The vaunted German invincibility in war sank for ever in the waters of the Marne. That for which Germany had given her all for near upon fifty years col- lapsed as a bloated, overrated, and inferior thing before the higher military skill and soldierly qualities of superior breeds in in- ferior numbers, with pathetically poorer armament and munitionment due to unreadi- ness for w^ar ! From the moment that the German was defeated at the Marne his First Plan of Cam- paign >vilted; and all hope of victory in the West perished. The German fell back on a carefully entrenched line of the Aisne that he had hoped to make his new frontier in France — but he could not even hold that, and was outgeneralled and outfought by pitifully in- ferior numbers of superior fighting men until he found himself besieged, after being de- feated in battle after battle which were shameful losses to him. It was clear that the 79 Has the German Succeeded? German host which could suffer nothing but disasters, could never hope to do with beaten troops what it had utterly failed to do in the full might of its vast battle array, vastly superior in readiness, in numbers, and in guns and munitions to its surprised and unready enemies. Yet — and there could be no more awful in- dictment as to the utter lack of vision through- out our land — our peoples and our Press accejyted and spread abroad the lying German propaganda that claimed these shameful Ger- man defeats as German victories and lauded the Germans in being able to go to earth and hold off utter annihilation ! Hopelessly defeated in the West, his First Plan of Campaign flung into the gutter by Lord French's great victory of the Battle of Ypres, the German went to eaith. He could now only look to snatching suf- ficient victory in the East to save him his Second Plan of Campaign— his Pan-German Empire ; and the moment he could get that, then peace must be sprung upon the world at all other cost. A very sound strategy. 80 Has the German Succeeded? It must be said in fairness to Germany that though she hoodwinked by her claims to vic- tories the AlHed peoples, she was, as a matter of fact, in a desperate state as the winter of 1914 closed down upon her defeated legions. Germany had waded deep in disasters. The one great victory of Hindenburg at Tannen- berg was hailed with such frantic and ecstatic joy by Berlin that it proved her anxious state. But shout victories as they might, the German Staff saw the state of Germany in a very different and sorry plight. For what exactly was Germany's state when in the mid-November of 1914, in a tem- pest of wind and a blizzard of snow and hail, ended the First Battle of Ypres, the defeated German legions gazing sullenly across the ground that lay encumbered with their dead, kno^^^ng that all hope was as dead in the West? What was happening to the *' in- vincible " German arms in the East? Except for Hindenburg 's madly-lauded victory of Tannenberg, where could Germany look with pride? The Serbians had smashed the Aus- trians at Shabatz on August 20th, and driven D 8i Has the German Succeeded? the German tongue out of Serbia. The Aus- trian invasion of Russia had collapsed in utter disaster ; the Austrian had been driven out of Russia ; on the 4th of September Ewarts had crushed the Austrians in the slaughter of Lemberg; and on the 12th Broussiloff had smashed the Ausrtrian at Ravaruska ; by the 21st September Yaroslav, Tarnopol, and Grudek had fallen to Roussky with 100,000 prisoners and 400 guns. Dankl's and Auffen- berg's Austrian armies were blotted out. The joybells of Berlin were ringing only in the Wolff Bureau. The German hero, Hinden- burg, after his Tannenberg victory, pushing into Russia, had been flung back, and on the 27th, badly defeated, was in full retreat. One rubs one's eyes and wonders where the Press discovered the victorious state of the German arms ! As a matter of fact, by the mid-November of 1914 Germany was a besieged people, and she knew it. The plain unvarnished truth for the Ger- man was, as we have said, that, hopelessly defeated in the war, he could only look to 82 Has the German Succeeded? snatching sufficient victory in the East to secure him his Second Plan of Campaign — the Pan-German map of Mittel Europa — and the moment he could get that, then peace at all other price. But it was easier to say crush Serbia and call for an early peace than it was to do it. The Austrians failed utterly and were badly smashed instead. It may be asked : Why attack Russia before flying the peace-dove, if only Serbia needed breaking to complete the Pan-German map ? Well, it so happened that Serbia refused to be crushed, and Russia would not allow her to be crushed. Again, while Turkey and Bulgaria and the Greek Court were only waiting for a great German success to declare themselves openly for the German, the German armies were being defeated everywhere ; and, after all, these treacherous partners in the Pan-German Plot did look for some sign of German invin- cibility. The only safeguard for them was that Germany should prove herself able to punish Russia. So, while the German knew that he could not now destroy Russia, be bent 83 Has the German Succeeded? with frantic address his every nerve and brought the weight of his every man and gun to defeating Russia sufficiently to secure the Serbian gate — and then she would fly the peace-dove as magnanimous conqueror. And every day made more urgent the need for that guileful bird's flight. So Germany went to earth in the West, and, lashing out at Russia, invaded Poland. She was disastrously defeated and flung back, leaving Poland a desert as she fell back in her rout. Things looked black for the Second Plan of Campaign, so Turkey had • to be called to the German's aid. Bulgaria dare not declare herself with Russia on her flank. So Gerrnany invaded Russia a second time, and for a second time Hindenburg was to wade deep in defeat and disaster. The third desperate invasion of Poland by Hindenburg at last won success, owing to the treachery and corruption of the Russian Court ; and the Russian generals, baulked by the trickery of the Court and the grave state of their sup- plies, had to fall back in one of the most skil- ful retreats known to human capacity and 84 Has the German Succeeded? endurance, leaving Poland in German hands. Thus, by the autumn of 1915, Bulgaria was safe from the Russian and could commit the great treachery — she stabbed little Serbia in the side as the German assailed the heroic people in front. The Paii-Gennan map of Mittel Europa was complete. Germany^ s Second Plan of Campaign was icon, Germany* s sole strategy thenceforth was Peace — to make a Peace at the earliest pos- sible moment that should establish her Pan- German Empire of Mittel Europa, Germany was feeling the pressure of the British Navy. Her peoples were beginning to know what starvation spelt. At once America was w^orked upon to suggest Peace. In the February of 1916 Germany boldly posted all over the land a large map which she openly called the Pan-German Empire. Into the constant defeats that have dogged the German arms in the West during 1916 and 1917 we need not here go. At Verdun 85 Has the German Succeeded? the French bled the German hosts white. Hammered by the British and French, Hin- denburg's vaunted might ended in defeat after defeat and retreat. In the East the Russians began to hammer back and defeat the German arms throughout 1916, in spite of the treacheries of the Russian Court which was intriguing for Peace. In the March of 1917 the Russians rose in revolution and overthrew the Tsar. The desperate last hope of the Germans in the ruthless submarine warfare to starve Britain brought the Americans into the World-War. And just as on the day that Britain struck, the German First Plan of Campaign was doomed, so on the day that America struck, the German Second Plan of Cam- paign was doomed. To put it in a nutshell, then, the whole embattled might of Germany, ready to the last cartridge, flung itself in a vast rush of surprise on a small British and hurriedly gathered French army ; they were drawn to utter defeat 86 Has the German Succeeded? by the superior battle strategy of Joffre and the superior fighting power of the French and British troops in pathetically inferior num- bers, inferior in armament and shell — they flung ten shells to the British one — the British had not a single high-explosive shell for their cannon. The whole might of Germany, pre- pared for victory for years, was smashed at the battle of the Marne. It ought to be clear, even to the dullard, that broken and defeated German armies could never do what the full might of Germany had failed to do. Yet we hear drivel solemnly spoken even in messes about a ''stalemate," chiefly because Ger- many occupies Northern France and Belgium. But the occupation of Northern France and Belgium by Germany, once they had lost the coast, was the supreme strategic blunder of the German armies — it made defeat absolutely certain provided no miracle, such as quarrel- ling amongst the Allies, happened to deliver them from punishment. It was the vilest blunder that a people at war can commit, as the German god on war, Clausewitz, told them — they sacrificed military advantage to 87 / / / Has the German Succeeded? political advantage — the ruling class of Ger- many dare not be strategic lest they lost the German people. The strategic wisdom would have been to have fallen back on the Meuse on a very short line, which would have enabled them to strike with all their remaining might elsewhere. They did not do so ; and could not therefore compel peace — ^their only hope of salvation. Yet a blind public, even many unstrategic miUtary men, mistake Germany's futile occupation of Belgium and Northern France for a sign of Germany's strength! It is Germany's doom. The German Staff know it ; but they are not mad enough to tell us so. What they hope is that their lying propa- ganda will be swallowed by our gulls — as it is. They have relied on the ignorance of strategy in our Press and public to do the work of their propaganda, and they have not relied in vain. The supreme danger of the Germans being saved from defeat lies in the blindness of our public. The Germans must suffer utter defeat unless our arms are be- trayed by the stay-at-homes. Germany is 88 Has the German Succeeded? beaten, bleeds to death, rides to her fall. Are ignorant well-intentioned fools at home going to save her just when the harvest that has been prepared by our heroic troops through more than three long years is ripe for the reaping? The answer is in the hands of the Man-in-the-Street. CHAPTER VIII WHY ALSACE-LORRAINE? Before we search into the meaning of the Peace that Germany craves — for Peace is now her sole hope of salvation — ^let us glance a moment at the world-blunder of 1870 in allowing Germany to take Alsace-Lorraine. It holds a lesson for us all. There is a widespread feeling amongst quite eminent writers and public men, to say nothing of certain groups of so-called Labour leaders and pacifists, that the French insist- ence on the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France is not a sufficiently serious matter for the continuance of the war and the sacrifice of British, American, Italian or other lives, when peace could be secured by accepting the German right to the conquered provinces. It sounds very plausible. But perhaps there is nothing which proves the danger of the med- dling of journalists, literary men, professors, 90 Why Alsace-Lorraine? editors, Labour leaders, and others ,wholly ignorant of war, in this World- War than this gross ineptitude about Alsace-Lorraine, and its consideration in a spirit of " gentle reason- ableness " and timidity of soul. For God's sake let us cease thinking of Germany as if the German soul and moral and will were our soul and moral and will ! Will those who clamour for peace try to think ? From sheer ignorance our then Pro- German Court and visionless Government, a government that decided affairs of war without strategic guidance (or had no strategic guid- ance in its War Office), betrayed France in 1870 by allowing Alsace-Lorraine to be torn from her; and we are to-day fighting a Ger- many that could not have fought us for three months without Alsace-Lorraine, It is worth while brooding upon this our deserved punish- ment. Yes ; if Truth be frank, to the Man-in-the- Street this French insistence on the restora- tion of Alsace-Lorraine as the chief essence of her aims in the World- War has not been very 91 Why Alsace-Lorraine ? thrilling — he has a sort of idea that it is a pretty sentiment which ought not to be allowed to bar the way to Peace. Well, it is a French sentiment — and a very intense sentiment ; but it is far more vital to France than a sentiment — Alsace-Lorraine means life or death to France. We will see in a moment that Alsace-Lorraine means a Germany able to make the World-War, or unable to make it — an even more vital fadt. The French have no illusions about Alsace- Lorraine. The terror stands at their doors, its claws upon the latch, day and night. It is only futile Deputies with crankish ideals and utterly without statesmanship in them who take the grand benevolent strut and advise their people, or lecture their leaders, to let Alsace-Lorraine pass out of the nation's think- ing. The truth and the vision are not in them — but only a pathetic sweet sincerity ; indeed, they live in a hotbed of sincerity oblivious of their doom, as the sad, branded calves low to the moon hard by the slaug*hter-house. That is the trouble. Now why does the Frenchman crave for Why Alsace-Lorraine? Alsace-Lorraine? As a mere sentiment, how- ever noble, the French would be the last people on earth to demand the continuance of this hell that men call the World- War. Why, then ? It so happens that the Germans need twenty-eight hundred million tons of iron, and that French Lorraine yields twenty-one hun- dred million tons of that iron ! Or, if it be easier to grasp it so, Lorraine holds three out of every four tons of Germany^ s steel! Now you begin to grasp the strategic significance of Alsace-Lorraine to France ; so let us put it into terms of statesmanship. Germany can make a paper peace and sign paper treaties galore that will satisfy every- body ; but she can — and will — tear up treaties as '' scraps of paper." No statesmanship can prevent it. But if Germany needs twenty- eight hundred millions of tons of iron before she can carry on a World- War, or any war on a great scale such as modern life compels to be fought, and if Germany can only get seven hundred million tons of iron, she cannot make her war. 93 Why Alsace-Lorraine? Have you got that? A step further, and we at once understand .what Alsace-Lorraine means to France — ^the very pawnbroker will understand, the very bootblack will understand. The iron ore of Lorraine is the best iron for making steel. As long as the German holds Alsace- Lorraine, not only has he an ideal jumping-off ground this side the Rhine for attacking France under every advantage, but he holds the French iron wherewith alone he can destroy the French armies — and without which the French armies cannot destroy him. It is with the iron of Lorraine that the German fires three out of four shells into the Allied trenches and devastates the land and blots out the lives of our men. It is with the iron of France's Lorraine that he can batter down the French democracy. It is with the iron of Lorraine that he has fought this vast war. It is the iron of Lorraine that enabled the beaten German armies to entrench for three years by gunning their defence. It is the iron of Lor- raine that scatters death from the night sky 94 Why Alsace-Lorraine? in London streets when the Gennan Iron Cross heroes slay women and children in our midst. It is the iron of Lorraine that sends the submarine under the deep and enables the German piracy to sink defenceless folk and drown neutrals with impunity. It is with the iron of Lorraine that he can gun his crimes and intends to destroy that sublime and chivalrous democracy of France that stands for all that he hates, that France that he would compel to speak the German tongue. With the (German in Lorraine, France cannot sleep except with the rifle at her side. Peace, with Germany in Alsace-Lorraine, means the con- quest of France by German commerce as surely as war means her assaihng. But with France in Alsace-L'^rraine the German octopus in the steel-yard^ would have its tentacles amputated, just as in w^ar the weight of metal would then be on the French side. France has no designs on the dominion of the world; Germany lives for no other design. France, if she sign a peace with Ger- many with the German flag still flrjing in 95 Why Alsace-Lorraine? Alsace-Lorraine, will have signed her death- warrant. She will pass awaj^ amongst the lesser breeds, and her vast and sublime influence and stirring example to humanity will have ceased to be. That is what Alsace-Lorraine means to France. There is no other way out of obliteration. Have you got that? Now the wide world : What does Alsace-Lorraine mean to Britain and America? When France, deserted by Britain in 1870, and beaten to her knees, bowed down, humiliated, before Prussia, Bismarck pro- tested hotly against the tearing of Alsace- Lorraine from her, pointing out to, and warn- ing, Germany that she must prepare, if so, for another war, and watch night and day. But he was overruled and persuaded by the strategic staff ; and Moltke knew what he was talking about. The new fro7itiers of Germany were drawn so as to cover the iron-fields of Lorraine so far as they were then known — 96 Why Alsace-Lorraine? had they known more they would have taken more. The British Court, then wholly pro- German, and the British governing classes and statesmen, then largely pro-German, were so utterly untrained in all strategic aims in their governance — were so taken up with the antique chess of the old embassies — that no suspicion arose as to the German intention, and they basely allow^ed the crime. Alsace-Lorraine means life or death to France, as its loss to the Germans means the heaviest blow^ to Germany's war ambitions and to her dream of world-dominion. It is weighted with vast issues to America and Britain, as to the rest of the civilized world ; which is to say that it means all our future safety or our future punishment. If Alsace-Lorraine remain German, then all peace talk, all peace treaties, are futile and a sham for our undoing. The peace we all seek and hope for — the democratic peace — cannot be, so long as the German possesses the Frenchman's iron ore in France's Lorraine. And he who for one moment thinks that the German will surrender 97 Why Alsace-Lorraine? this mighty weapon that he tore from France by force, he who is so fatuous as to beheve that the German will surrender Alsace-Lorraine until he is crushed, is living in a fool's paradise of vague ideals that are as unsubstantial as empty nothingness. Yet probably those ''reasonable" souls who to-day dread lest we " humiliate the Ger- mans," if it were the war of 1870 over again, would s^hriek with pious horror if Britain were to threaten war for the sake of saving Alsace- Lorraine from Germany ! They know not what they do. But their answer lies in our heroic dead who sleep by No Man's Land, the victims of the blindness of such as could not see but never hesitate to decry war at all cost. There is a peace that is death. CHAPTER IX THE PEACE MAP The Man-in-the-Street may think that if the German ask for Peace he has lost his war. There could be no more insane blunder. Since Germany secured her Pan-German Map of Mittel Europa, she has employed every artifice, every trickery, every treacher>^ to compel Peace on the world. It has been her dogged and ruthless aim as much as aforetime War had been her dogged and rutliless aim. The Kaiser and his Ministers vaunt of victories that Germany knows not of, and lie and boast, that they may get the best peace they can. But Germany is bleeding to death, starving to ruin, a bankrupt and broken people. The Kaiser and his Ministers know it. But they know still more surely that the Second Plan of Campaign, which thc}^ at present hold as won, is threatened. For they 99 ■' ' ■ .^ ■ ^ 1 ■■ .-\ >: \ ;' lEhe/^Peace Map know that the American came into the War to uproot it and make it void. They know that President Wilson in his great pronouncement of the war aims of Democracy, announced the doom of Mittel Europa. But they rely by craft and guile to blind the rest of the world to it. Therefore, let the Man-in-the-Street get a good firm grip of this thing — ^for Germany's Second Plan of Campaign means victory or defeat for him. It means a lasting peace or continual and brutal warfare. Do not let us listen to any peace-talk or war-talk about side issues. The sole thing that matters in this war is whether Germany comes out of it as Mittel Europa or not. Victory or defeat depends on the Peace Map of Europe. Nothing else can decide victory or defeat. Upon the making or unmaking of this Map to-day depends the whole of Civilization. No matter what sacrifice Germany makes in the West, no matter what humiliations she eats or is made to eat, if the German hood- wink a world weary of war into a Peace which I02 The Peace Map leaves him his Pan-German Map, he has won his war. The hideous sacrifice of the Allies has been in vain. Britain and America, his ultimate and supreme object of conquest, lie open to his mercy — France is under his eternal threat — Italy is his footstool. Peace will have left the Earth. If Germany give back Belgium to the Belgians, and Northern France to the French, and pay heavy indemnity to Britain, Belgium, and France, for the War — if the Hohenzollern be compelled from his throne — but Peace leave the German his Pan-German Map of Mittel Europa, then Germany has won her war. Firmly established on that map, Germany is strategically mistress of the world. A few years to discipline and consolidate her new and vaster strength, and Germany can launch with enormously increased prospects of success upon her dream of World-Dominion. So that in all this wild talk and distracted shouting about peace and the rest of it, the German shouts the loudest to keep all atten- tion from that of which he rarely utters a 103 The Peace Map whisper. And the people and their govern- ments, misled by the German hullabaloo, raise cry and counter-cry — and much water flows to the sea. But talk what talk men may, upon the making or unmaking of this Pan-German Map to-day depends the ivhole of Civilization, Yet there is one thing that the German dreads at the peace-table : it is that firm state* ment of democracy which President Wilson's serene voice uttered across the seas, from the day he decided that the German law was the law of the brutes — that day on which he gave forth the democratic ordering that America, being in, would not lay aside the rifle until the peoples on that Pan-German map were made free. The right of nationalities to de- termine their own lives and government and destinies means the tearing to pieces of the Fan-German map — ^the dissipation of that hideous nightmare of Mittel Europa governed by Ruthlessness and Frightfulness, which was to have been welded into the thunderbolt for the destruction of mankind. There can be no lasting peace in the world until the peoples are made free — to make the 104 The Peace Map peoples free is the only way to win the war against Germany. It is the only way to make the peoples of Germany themselves free ; for again the great American President revealed the long vision in that he appealed for a League of Nations to uphold democracy — and refused to admit the Germans into it until they were civilized enough to become a body fit for self-govern- ance. All other victory, whether the brutal triumph of German Ruthlessness or the weak and timid making of peace for the sake of peace, means only revenge and the arming against revenge — the shifting and reshifting of alliances with no other eventual aim but war. We are arrived at the moment when there can be set up International Law backed by the Will of the Democracies. The German must be defeated here and now, or peace will have left the earth. The Germans themselves can only be made free b}^ defeat here and now. But the old diplomacies yield their futile lO: The Peace Map office with reluctance. The old diplomacies died in the July of 1914, and lie buried in un- hallowed graves. Pedants shake solemn heads over the ''partition of Austria," as though Austria and Hungary were not subject peoples governed by a sham — they are not even Ger- man. Bohemia and Poland, the Serbian peoples, and the Hungarians and Roumanians, have a right to be free. And what more noble motive than the giving of freedom to the peoples could have inspired the world to so vast a sacrifice? It will be seen at once that Poland, being free, bars the German on his Russian road ; Bohemia, being free, shuts his gates on Ger- many where Germany ceases — Bohemia is a dagger at the Prussians' heart if Prussia plan mischief again; Roumania, being free, blocks his way to world-dominion if Greater Serbia be also made free. The Bulgar has been the spoiled child of Fortune, and foully he has be- trayed that Fortune. The Greek has struck against his traitorous king and deserves a democracy. The Turk has betrayed the peoples that have for generations, for lack of 1 06 The Peace Map strategic thinking, bled for him ; he must leave Europe for ever. Give back Denmark to the Danes. Give back Palestine to the Jews — one of the most wonderful races of the earth. Give back Arabia to the Arab, Armenia to the Armenians. And in the doing, not only will this mighty tragedy have helped to achieve a gigantic stride in the wayfaring of the Soul of Man, but it will have sent the hideous nightmare of the Hun tyranny into eternal negation. The right and proper place for the Ger- man is in Germany. God keep our wills firm to do the right without flinching, without weariness, and without slovenly thinking ! Let every man, before he casts a vote for peace or war, know what the war is. He who casts a vote merely for peace out of ignorance and sentiment, casts a vote for the most brutal militarism that has ever defaced the earth — casts it, in all his sincerity of folly, for the thing that he most loathes. He does it to his future undoing just as much as his for- bears welded the weapon that has slain our I07 The Peace Map heroic dead the day they stood aside and let the German seize Alsace-Lorraine. If Labour delegates knew what the war is about, not a man of them all would cast a vote against the prosecution of the war until the peoples were freed ; and the Governments would thereby be the more mightily strength- ened. If the troubled women in the food queues knew what the war means, they would tear to pieces anyone who talked to them of peace until the Pan-German map was torn to shreds. Even the pacifist — if he knew — would find the imagination that would cause him to shrink from letting the Boche walk down his garden path and hang up his rifle in his suburban hall, instead of desiring to kiss him as a much misunderstood brother. But the people do not know. It is not their fault. They ought to have been told from the beginning. CHAPTER X THE GERMAN COLONIES With the meaning of colonies as civilization accounts colonies — countries for the settle- ment of overflowing countries, a new home — the Germans have nothing to do. They do not settle in their colonies, they settle else- where. The German '* colony " is a scandal to the world — a vast brutal tyranny without mitigation or decency for the natives. They cry to Heaven for vengeance, as an ill-treated dumb beast appeals with pitiful eyes of despair — and none answers. The German colonies will not be given back — thank God ! the British Commonweal across the seas will see to that if no one else does ; they at least are not given to suicide for a phrase or a mawkish fatuity. The " German colonies " are not colonies at all as civilization understands the word. They hold no relation to such colonies. The 109 The German Colonies German colony is a brutal tyranny, carried out with ruthlessness and organized with con- spicuous ability to one end — the creating of vast black armies for the German war towards World-Dominion. It is nothing else. All the talk about commercial extension and the like is sheer throwing of dust into the eye of the world. The subjugation of the natives but brings about the destruction of the very labour necessary to commercial enterprise. The German colonies are a deliberate con- spiracy to extend the German war-machine to positions for the destruction of Germany's enemies ; and they were in process of an astounding development to this end when the war broke out. General Smuts has warned the country about it — and this the ablest general in Africa is not given to panics. The African is one of the most valorous and most astounding of all fighting men. Smuts has told us that the African might be made into " one of the most powerful armies the world has ever seen." Germany discovered that years ago ; and has addressed herself to the business without delay. It is the deliberate no The German Colonies plan of Germany's strategy to create a Central African Empire right across Africa. If General Smuts in a great public oration warns the people of this country of what will happen if the German ever get a footing in Africa again, then the Man-in- the-Street ' deserves defeat and utter ruin if he allow the un- strategic cooings of sentimentalists and paci- fists to lull him into the pretty-sounding *' humanity " of '* not humiliating Germany." Why is it that the pacifists, and the tender of will, are so forgiving to the German brutality and so critical of their own peoples? Why is it that the pacifists, whom one would look to for the protection of the Under-Dog, are just they who are so tender to the brutal cruelty of the Over-Dog? Why this fatuous shrinking from ' ' humiliating Germany ' ' ? Has not Germany sufficiently humiliated the world? In God's name, are we to be tender to Germany's Valour of Ruthlessness lest Germany's feelings be hurt? Do these sensi- tive folk who stay at home when their fellow^s risk appalling sacrifice, who stay at home and dare to bleat their opinions for which they III The German Colonies dare not fight, realize that their brains are in- vahd? Do these dullards realize that, since the war began, hundreds of thousands of us have been training with rifle and bomb and bayonet throughout the length and breadth of this fair land, and for the sake of this fair land that it shall remain ours, day and night, in rain and sunshine, in snow and sleet and bitter frost, not only to humiUate the German but to slay him, whilst they sleep in comfortable beds and pen abstract virtues for our undoing at home? CHAPTER XI PEACEFUL PENETRATION War is a horrible, a hideous state of affairs. So can be commerce and industry and the so-called arts of peace. There are those who speak with horror of the very notion of our ' ' boycotting ' ' German trade after the war, or treating the Germans as the pariahs they have so eagerly proved themselves to be. But here again the wise vision of the American President has seen farther, and has led him to lay down the conditions of the taking back of Germany into the League of Nations, into that mighty confederation of democratic civilization — the clear-voiced order- ing that only with the German as a democracy will the democracies hold communion. He solves the vast riddles with consummate wisdom. E 113 Peaceful Penetration For what does Germany stand after the war? Does the pacifist desire to let bygones be bygones to the full extent of allowing Ger- many to enter our gates again, on the making of Peace, as the treacherous guest who prac- tised the war-in-peace that is called *' Peace- ful Penetration ' ' ? What is Peaceful Penetration? The most crafty fox in Germany's over- lordship, von Kiihlmann his name, knows full well what Peaceful Penetration means; and had the pacifist but the mind and the imagina- tion to project himself into the anxious Kiihl- mann 's thinking, at this hour he would find that Kiihlmann was troubling little about the Pan-German war-lords and their warring, which he knows is lost, but that he is troubling greatly over Pan-German peaceful penetration after the war, his eager ears quick to catch any sound of what the once-befooled world intends to do as to his peaceful penetration after the Peace is signed — which he is so frantically eager to see signed. Crafty Kiihlmann, the most dangerous 114 Peaceful Penetration enemy to us all in all Germany, knows full well that there are peacemongers amongst us who clamour for peace for peace's sake — for any peace so that this dreadful war be brought to an end. How grimly Kiihlmann must smile and wink to himself when he reads our pacifist Press with its eager delight when Kiihlmann seems to outmanoeuvre the Pan-German War Lords ! Yet the fact remains that there are those amongst us who do seek a peace that ' ' meets the Germans half-way ' ' — a peace such as they think Kiihlmann can give them as against the arrogant Prussian " mili- tarists." Some because they hold a religion that it is sinful to take part in war at all ; others, equally sincere men, because they can- not see the knife they would whet for their own and their children's throats by so doing ; others because they judge the German soul and moral by their own soul and moral, and think the German who signs the Peace will bow to the rest of civilization and become a part of that civilization. But even those who sincerel}' desire a lasting peace and the end of wars and think they can get such a peace by "5 Peaceful Penetration meeting the Germans half-way, what precisely do they mean by Peace? Do they mean simply that this open war- fare shall cease? If so — and mark you ! the German will meet them readily and eagerly enough, since it is precisely what he craves for, and what alone can lead to his next mightier effort to trample upon the world — what do these paci- fists intend to do as regards the peace- war of Germany that will follow? Do they intend to allow Germany to enter again on Peaceful Penetration as before the war? Do they in- tend to be silent about Peaceful Penetration at the Peace table rather than disturb the signing of Peace? What is Peaceful Penetration? The pacifist may mistake Peaceful Pene- tration for Peace. It happens to be sheer and ruthless war on one's fellow men. It is but the spying out of the land for conquest and the robbing of foreign markets. Let us see what Peaceful Penetration is. Let us ex- amine this German ' * commerce ' ' and his " arts of peace," which so many worthy souls ii6 Peaceful Penetration amongst us tell us it would be a scandalous thing to boycott after the war. The World- War, with its German Moral of deliberate devastation, its looting, its outrages, its extortion, its brigandage, its robbery of the finances of each conquered district, its putting of the peoples into slaver}^ — all this is only a violence and a brutal consequence, an applica- tion, of what Germany has been doing in what is called *' peace," masked under the mocking guise of what she cynically calls ''friendly relations." The *' commercial competition " of Ger- many bore no relation to ordinary commercial competition, as her finance bore no relation to ordinary finance, or her war to ordinary war. Her finance, her commerce, and her industry' were carried on precisely according to her Moral and strategy in her Warfare as laid down by Treitschke. Germany had been a rather poor country, living chiefly on agriculture ; her industries had been of a languishing kind for lack of capital. War, attended by swift victories, brought her capital; and at once her com- II Peaceful Penetration merce expanded by leaps and bounds, and she took ardently to speculation. Her aristocracy quickly leapt to share in the new prosperity ; and a burgess aristocracy began to tread on the heels of the landed aristocracy. Com- merce consequently and naturally looked kindly on war. What is more, commerce founded itself on war — it was bound to do so since war was the bedrock of all German Moral. Just as Bismarck, before he struck at a people, scattered his spies broadcast amongst them, and planted young women and men amongst them, so in the new German com- merce and industries Germany sent her commercial spies broadcast amongst the foreign peoples whose trade she intended to overwhelm by the ''arts of peace." In 1879 Bismarck estabhshed protection — a protective tariff to jockey the need for the Crown to go to Parliament for suppHes. Like all artificial treatment of human affairs, it compelled an elaborate system of buying one class with another, running the interests of one class at the expense of another. Pro- ii8 Peaceful Penetration tection in any form is bound to be the bed of corruption. Above all, it is the weapon for creating a governing class that can flout all democratic majorities. But it enabled the governing class of Germany to manipulate commerce against the whole world to the advantage of the German masses as well as the classes ; and though a finance foimded on treachery and swindling and artificial finance was bound to head for bankruptcy (and we shall see that the vaunted German commerce and finance were on the eve of a vast disaster when war broke out), it did for the time being make this race of vulgar and swindling gamblers enormously well-to-do. The German working classes and so-called Sociahsts were almost to a man for Germany's domination of the world. When the vote was taken for the war in the famous sitting of the Reichstag, in July, 1914, even the Socialist Deputy Liebknecht did not utter a word against it — no vote was needed to be taken — it was carried with mad and universal clamour. The young Kaiser began his reign with the aim of " World-policy.*' He surrounded 119 Peaceful Penetration himself with bankers and financiers, guided and protected commerce abroad, and himself dived deep into finance. He is now a pro- digiously wealthy man. He ran Germany like a vast commercial store* His policy was "peaceful penetration." Backed by a vast army, he saw that wherever German trade penetrated, German influence and intrigue could follow. The fine old German colonist, who had settled in distant lands and was a valuable asset to the people of whom he became one, ceased to be. The new German "colonist" went into alien lands as a spy, to prepare the way for the commercial and industrial con- quest of that land. He was told to keep him- self to himself, to forgather with Germans, to speak his own tongue and to bring up his children as Germans. German schools were the centre of this " Germanism " or so-called Deutschtum; the German clergy were the keen apostles of it ; the German ambassadors and consuls were the shrewdest instruments of this treachery of peaceful penetration for the overthrow of the countries in which all were I20 Peaceful Penetration living as guests. The German banks readily advanced money to any German for business conquest. The German aimed at mastering what are called " key industries," such as iron and coal, on which other industries are de- pendent, especially such industries as muni- tions of war. From 1890 to 1905 it were as though a miracle had happened to German commerce and industry. The whole land burst into affluence. The Germans deliberately set to work to exceed in large quantities the needs of their home markets, in order to flood the markets of the world. Any method that could lower the prices abroad so as to crush all competition had been eagerly financed by the State, reck- less of all consequences. It follows that suc- cess could only be won by a large ever-increas- ing foreign business ; otherwise bankruptcy. Colonies were of no use, shout as she might for colonies — her whole aim was Peaceful Penetration and overthrow of foreign coun- tries. Germany has no need for colonies for her surplus population, for she has no surplus Peaceful Penetration — she has not enough manhood for her own industries — she imports labour. In 1910 her emigration was only 25,500, and all but about 2,000 went to the United States. ' Germany only goes to colonial regions for raw materials, for corn, for minerals. Her trade is warfare. Whether the Ger- mans go to America, or Australia, or Eng- land, or France, or elsewhere, they remain a solid German colony, bent only on German conquest by '' Peaceful Penetration." He has been ousting women's fashions out of France. In England and Italy by '* dump- ing ^^ at prices that defeat all competition he has seized much of the steel market at huge losses per ton; in France,- Switzerland and South America he has seized it all. The soda market the same — as with radio-photography, the chemical trade, the electrical, and trades of all kinds. They will wreck many of their own firms rather than not wreck all rivals, as they killed the French manufacture of formic acid. To-day, Diisseldorf controls the iron markets of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Belgium — Italy and England have so far 122 Peaceful Penetration not gone under. Iron is a " key industry," for it means machinery, engineering, ship- ping, railways and other industries. Germany gives long credits, to which the consumer falls victim, as in Russia, Brazil, the Argentine, Chile and Mexico, where the markets have been won by Germany. The Government gives assistance by asserting its prestige and by actually joining in trade. Preference rates on the railways are set up for exporting goods, the State giv- ing the farmer a bonus on the produce he sells abroad at prices that cut foreign prices in their ow^n countries though he sells to his own people at high prices ! The Government helps to estabhsh busi- ness men abroad, buys controlling interests in foreign companies, sets up German factories abroad, and provides the vast capital for these daring ventures. And behind all are the German banks, the heart of all German \'entures, used as a weapon of war unknown to all other banking. These banks back all German ventures, and by high dividends attract foreign capital. 123 Peaceful Penetration The competition of German firms against each other is prevented by the system of '' Kartelle," by which the spoil and the losses are shared and the consumer kept in the Ger- man grip — big contracts are shared. This Kartel prevents any suspicion by the public — the apparent rivals all the while sharing the profit. The Germans have almost a monopoly in the electric trade throughout Europe in consequence. In plain words German commerce is war — ^to get control of markets — to dump, crush and fight without mercy every market until it is controlled — and then to put up prices. To show how "peaceful penetration" works in detail would take volumes — for it is most insidious and most complex in its work- ings. But let us take a few broad facts. German commerce is profoundly organized for German conquest in commerce ; as ruth- lessly organized as her war is organized — and her commerce is an essential part of her war. The German's trades and manufactures are closely dependent, and are as closely of a part with his banks. Steel-manufacturers buy up 124 Peaceful Penetration collieries. The German seizes raw materials to control trade. The retailer becomes tied, hand and foot, and so also the consumer. For insrtance, the German electrical manufac- turers have bought the companies in many countries which are engaged in rubber, cables, ¥ iron wire, copper, aluminium, chemicals, and machinery. This *' peaceful penetration " is absolutely ruthless. It strangles all competition. As they win power, buyers are only allowed to buy from members of the Kartel ; sellers of raw material are allowed to sell only to the Kartel except at a very much higher price. The moment a district or trade is sub- jugated, economic slavery is at once organized, and the retailer and consumer are lost. Nor could they resist if they wished, for all the local trades appear as native concerns, pro- found secrecy being maintained. This commercial warfare is universal. No country is exempt. No enterprise is too big or too small. German capital is largely on paper, in the hope oF recovering it by con- quest of future trade. German trade is 12 Peaceful Penetration therefore hectic and feverish and Uable to catch its death if it suffer a severe chill. Its sole basis in case of crisis is fixed on securing large indemnities by war. The German club, the German clerk, the German harlot, the German barber, the Ger- man waiter, all these were a deliberate part of the German war-machine, as much so as the German soldier. Like the German colonist, all were but the outposts of Berlin. German commerce had no more to do with mere com- mercial profits than wdth w^ar. Deutschtum — that is " Germanism " — is a conspiracy against the whole world for German overlord- ship. Every function, from the embassies and consulates to the governess in our midst, has been part of a deliberate and calculated treachery to destroy us — ^a keen and utterly unscrupulous espionage. Germany has been at war with the world for over twenty-five years. ''Peaceful penetration" is the em- ployment of a weapon in times of peace to overthrow all peoples outside Germany and bring them into commercial subjection and political impotence. The best definition I 126 Peaceful Penetration have seen of it is, **The taking advantage by Germans of the hospitahty of a friendly nation in order to undermine its sovereignty." Every German is a spy. Germanism seeks to control the industries on which all other nations are founded. There are editorial dullards who still speak of Germany being ' ' our best customer ' ' ! If war broke out, Germanism in even' countn' was at once to combine forces for Germany. Every German is a spy, not only reporting militarv^ secrets but commercial secrets. The German clerk works for a small salar}', gradually gets brother-clerks into the office, works hard and long, either shows how to run the business cheaper and better and gets power in the firm, or returns to Germany with a list of the firm's customers and methods. Ger- mans fill the Stock Exchanges. Naturaliza- tion has been one of the chief weapons for conquest of foreign industries. German secret agents back ever\" unrest and supply arms to any rebel. The German propaganda is a stupendous 127 Peaceful Penetration business, corrupting the foreign Press and hoodwinking what cannot be corrupted. The large German vote in America .was manipu- lated by the German Embassy. Germans get influence in foreign papers and prevent all appearance of criticism of Germany. The Germans fraudulently imitate foreign goods and undersell them. As the German troops entered Belgium and France they were guided by soldiers whom the inhabitants at once recognized as business men who had lived or travelled amongsrt them. When war broke out the whole vast metal industry of Australia was in German hands. Learned German professors constantly visited Australia; when the British Associa- tion met in Australia in 1914, and the war broke out, the party of famous German scien- tists were found to be spies whose reports were the most perfectly scientific mihtary contour maps of the country — work that must have taken months of hard toil, and had no other use than military. One of those precious re- presentatives of German science. Dr. Penck, had been remarkable for his keen interest in 128 Peaceful Penetration the ''peculiar geology" of the Isle of Wight ! Result : a superb military map ! In the British colony of Lower Burma the Germans wholly controlled the supply of wolfram ore from which tungsten is extracted, which is used for hardening steel. Clerks working on low wages, made up for by a German levy, supplied secret details of their firms to Germany ; w^hen they resigned, their spying done, they either went home or were established by the Germans under foreign names as rival firms in the same place. France is honeycombed with German firms under French names. The loud announcement of German vic- tories by the German Press has even in- fluenced our own Press, and does so at this \'er>^ hour — its effect on neutral countries is prodigious. Well, the swindler and the shady com- pany-promoter may have a long run and know great prosperity, but the day of reckoning eomes. Germany had gone so far in trade-con- quest that she could not draw back if she 129 Peaceful Penetration wished — she could not even slow down. For, mark this ! whilst England or the United States goes through crises due to rapid growth in commerce, the commerce is healthy and based on sound finance. With Germany it is quite another affair. Germany has built her organization to conquer the world's trade, to master raw material, and to regulate output and prices. That is all very well so long as she can keep up the pace. But if the pace flag, her ruthless system comes back upon her. For instance, to keep down prices on the foreign markets, the German had to "make good " somew^here — he did so by raising prices at home. It has increased the cost of living. If wages rise, but the cost of living rises more, the last state is worse than the first. This higher cost of living hit the German workmen, small manufacturers, and the small traders and farmers ; and discontent began to be ominous. Unions were forming. The years 1910 and 1911 were particularly disastrous to these classes, and discontent widely increased. Now every class to the lowest in Germany has I 'JO Peaceful Penetration grown through affluence to a life of greater comfort, and comfort once known is missed ; but the vast army could keep the masses in order. Still, in 1912 the Socialists won 110 seats in the Reichstag! And in 1917 the treaties of commerce were due to end ! And what was Germany's outlook abroad? Germany had conquered the European market to an extraordinary degree. Yet the German lords of commerce became nervous and restless and alarmed ! Why ? The very vastness of her success in peaceful penetration in Germany's dazzling years of 1892 to 1903 roused alarm. National fecHng awoke against her. Germany's artificial finance — her protective policy — induced reac- tion ; and first Russia, then Austria and France, then in 1890 the United States set up tariffs — then the British colonies — then in 1895 Canada set up preferential rates with England, to which Germany answered with reprisals, to find herself countered by Canada putting a tax on German goods! By 1902 tariff wars were upon the world ; it boded ill for German finance. 131 Peaceful Penetration The swindling of the Germans by the German wine-merchants as a consequence is droll blackguardism; but when *' dumping " leads to a Rotterdam merchant buying the dumped German steel, building ships with it, and selling them to Germany because the same steel was more costly in Germany, the boomerang comes home. The Chamberlain outcry against dumping suddenly ceased in our politics and we took to commonsense awakening. However, by 1900 the nations were alarmed ; and Germany took alarm at their alarm — a burglar likes the dark and stilly night and folk asleep. The United States and England took alarm; Germany had got the better of Eng- land in the European markets; suddenly Germany found England was rapidly making her the Under-Dog again. It is true that by 1900 Germany could boast that her exports to the rest of Europe exceeded those of England ; that her iron supply to the world topped England's. But Peaceful Penetration The Pan-German dream, gazing easrt- wards since 1899, of mastery in the Balkans to secm*e Asia to the Persian Gulf, looked like success in 1903. The concession for the Bagdad Railway was granted to Germany on March 5th ; but Germany could not find the money! France and England were ap- proached, but England had awakened, she instead seized the terminus at the Persian Gulf. The Balkan war suddenly baulked Ger- many. It is true she jockeyed Serbia out of her rights at the Treaty of Bucharest ; but, even so, Serbia came out of it a larger and a stronger people. Germany's dream looked like being blown into thin air. What if Serbia became firm-footed? Affairs alarmed Germany still more. Russia openly proclaimed her intention of cancelling the German commercial treaties when they fell due in 1917 — treaties of vast advantage to Germany, wrung from Russia after the Japanese war. It meant that Ger- many could no longer send com into Russia free of duty and undersell Russian corn in the 135 Peaceful Penetration Russian markets — a state of affairs that had led to prodigious prosperity in Eastern Ger- many. Worse still, the Russians decided to forbid the annual supply of 250,000 Poles across the border to cultivate the German soil between winter and winter, by means of which alone Germany had been able to produce the flooding of the Russian markets ! This meant death to German agriculture. It w^as, by the way, the infamous seizing of these Poles on the outbreak of war that enabled Germany to cultivate her soil with unpaid labour during the war ! However, in 1917 the German lands would have to go to weed, farm produce or home-grown supplies there would be none — and how could Germany rely on imports with- out command of the seas? Gloom increased. Great magnates were told that the iron ore of Germany and Luxem- burg at the present rate of exhaustion would be gone by 1940 or 1950 at latest. Whilst across the French border at Briey, a splendid future had opened in 1880 for the French. The German nightmare saw millions of idle hands in their streets. A commercial disaster 134 Peaceful Penetration such as would appal the whole people loomed ahead. This is where ''peaceful penetration " had landed the ruthless German moral. It was of a truth World-Dominion or Downfall! The vaunted German commerce of peace- ful penetration, led by her statesmen, her financiers, and her overlords of every kind, eagerly backed by the whole people, had set up a commercial war from which she could not withdraw; and the machine was turning against her I The crash was inevitable as doom. Trade was bound to collapse. Credit was toppling to its fall. Misery would fall upon the wrecked people and the fury of the mob would be terrible amidst the vast wreck- age. The sole hope of the overlords of Ger- many lay in war before the crash came, whilst the people were still prosperous — and then indemnities ! Nothing could be lost by war ; much might be gained. But one thing was sure, German commerce was face to face with early disaster. Besides, Serbia must be smashed in if the Pan-German Map were to be made good, 135 Peaceful Penetration and the Bagdad Railway duly completed for Germany. War was decided upon in 1913. The Kiel Canal was not finished. So 1914 be it. Ger- many stepped forth for World-Dominion or Downfall, her economic state a bubble — ^her vaunted organization a vile rottenness. But her invincible armies at any rate nothing could withstand. So Germany sang herself hoarse with "Deutschland iiber Alles ! " and large indemnities from the conquered peoples would make Germany overflow with wealth. Again; do the pacifists who would meet Germany half-way intend to allow ^'peaceful penetration "? Yes or No? Do the sections of the Labour Men .who are toying with peace intend to admit ''peaceful penetration" as a part of the peace ^ CHAPTER XII THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS — REPARATION AND PUNISHMENT There is only one means of ending wars ; it is a League of Nations. The American President's keen vision has dictated terms that alone can end War. We have seen that as regards the World-War of to-day, he has laid down laws of democracy that must be fulfilled — those orderings are whoUy due to his high aim of freeing the de- mocracies from the power of any enemy of democracy to assail them. We have seen the American President laying his sure finger on the fact which alone will crush Prussianisni by tearing up the Pan-German Map — the in- sistence on the freedom of peoples to govern themselves. We have seen him insisting on Alsace-Lorraine being no more the mine for the steel that is necessary to arm the Ger- man hosts in their war against civilization. 137 The League of Nations We have seen the American President insist- ing that the democracies shall refuse to allow Germany into fellowship with them, refusing even to treat with Germany so long as he cannot treat with the German people — ^until the German democracy is responsible for the government of the people. In other words, the American President asks for a League of Nations founded on democracy — as the government of the peoples by the peoples for the peoples. And in that demand he puts his finger on the sole means of ending wars. Why? Because by a League of Nations alone can there be any International Law. By a League of Nations alone can there be any punishment for the breach of the Inter- national Law. And until the breach of In- ternational Law can be punished, so long must there be wars as the final appeal — and so long will it advantage any nation to override its fellows by appeal to the sword. Let us take Germany as the best instance ; since Germany openly flouts all International > 138 The League of Nations Law, breaks it without scruple, and glories in breaking it. A League of Nations of the democracies at once orders that there shall be no peace with such a Germany ; that, before Peace, the German peoples must bow to the keeping of the International Law\ If Germany refuse, then the League of Nations simply orders that Germany shall be an outcast wdth whom the League of Nations refuses all communion. The German Kaiser and his fellows at once realize that such a Germany must die and pass amongst the lesser breeds, bankrupt, penurious, of no avail. Supposing, with guile and cunning, Ger- many at last surrenders to the ordering of the League of Nations, but forthwith proceeds to enter upon her world-treachery of Peaceful Penetration. The League of Nations has only to object to it and order it to cease for Germany to find her commerce dead in twenty -four hours. But, above all, those who have come to power and place by War and the exploiting of the treacherous War-in-Peace called Peace- 139 Reparation and Punishment ful Penetration, will find themselves brought before the bar of justice just as the felon in our midst is brought before the bar of justice. For by a League of Nations alone can Reparation and Punishment be compelled on the breakers of International Law. There is some fantastic idea in the hazy mind of the Reactionary that what he calls Reprisals will bring the German to his knees. Reprisals are futile whilst the Ruthless Valour Moral holds hostages in the form of vast num- bers of prisoners. And, in any case, much depends on what is meant exactly by reprisals. If the German brutalities can be brought to naught by '* reprisals," then let us have reprisals galore. But can they? Is it going to increase our fine Moral to give way to a frantic launching of blind vengeance against an enemy before — to put it crudely — we have that enemy even within our reach on whom to apply blind vengeance.^ On the other hand, we have as futile a dis- position amongst men of sincere idealism, men of high nobility of aim, to think that 140 Reparation and Punishment Reparation is a rather petty and low form of Vengeance which w^e ought to be above in- flicting — first because it would be kicking a beaten enemy if we beat him, and secondly because it in some way makes the enemy fight a stiflter fight if he know that Reparation will be demanded. This is all sheer lack of sense. Reparation has nothing to do with mere vengeance. Reparation is cold, pure justice. What is more, if Reparation be not in- sisted upon, then the Moral of Ruthless Valour has triumphed, for Ruthlessness is thereby established hy the Idealist as a prece- dent in war that cannot be justly punished. That is the sole result of the Idealist demur to Reparation ! Let us put it simply. It is most vital to the Peace of the world that after the War there shall not begin a bitter vendetta of blind vengeance. But it is equally vital to Peace that there shall be judicial Punishment and Reparation 141 Reparation and Punishment — it is absolutely imperative for the Peace of the World. It will at once be clear to the Man-in-the- Street that an essential of Victory is Repara- tion and Punishment. It is an arrogant part of the German Moral to show utter contempt for the Law of Nations. The only wa}^ to break that ruling is by that punishment of all breaches of the Law of Nations which they insist cannot be meted out. If the breaking of the Law of Nations be allowed to go by unpunished, then the w^orld at once formally establishes the precedent that German Kultur is the Law, and the Law of Nations is futile. There is no other result. The peace-cranks quite honestly consider themselves humane by opposing reparation. If they succeed, then the Germans have won their war as regards the right to break the Law of Nations. There is no other way out. From princes to peasants, the only cure for the breaking of the Law of Nations is punishment. The dogma that nations are not to be subject to- 142 Reparation and Punishment law is the foulest doctrine that ever be- smirched the honour of man. It is precisely that dogma that raises the crimes of statesmen into the glamour of romance and makes their evil-doing an object for emulation. The time is ripe to destroy that immunity from vast criminality once and for all. There is only one thing more sad than punishment for crime — it is the baseness of the mind of man that stoops to crime. This war is different from all war afore- time in this mighty fact that we have now the great opportunity to put a rope about the necks of the makers of it. The very brutality of the German in his arrogant claim to set up, and be subject only to, a Law of Ruthless Valour of his own, thrusts the need for the Law of Nations the more definitely into prominence. The world has to-day the opportunity to decide whether nations shall be compelled to act in accordance with the laws of civilization or not. If the world let the opportunity go by, it not only confesses to impotence, it not only confesses that the Law of Nations is be- 143 Reparation and Punishment neath contempt, but it establishes for all time the vicious precedent that any strong peoples may be a law to themselves. That is a fearful defeat for the Law of Nations. Now there is one means, and one alone, whereby this defeat of civilization can be averted. It can only be stopped by cold judicial punishment of such as have been responsible for all breaches of the Laws of Nations. This is absolutely essential to a Lasting Peace, if the German Moral of Ruthless Valour is not to establish precedents. What is more, if the Allies do not punish the breakers of the Law of Nations, they are as responsible as the Germans for the setting up of those precedents and the triumph of the German Moral. The world has reached a mighty moment in its development. If it treat the present vast struggle merely by precedents, then there can be and will be no Lasting Peace. The world has arrived at a point of stupendous decision. Never was a clear mind as to the result of its 144 Reparation and Punishment acts, or a firm will in insisting upon those ends at all costs, more vital than to-day. If the Law that civilization has formulated and called The Hague Convention — thereby at least making some beginning of universal law — be allowed to be set aside in one single detail, then there will be and can be no Last- ing Peace. In short, if the world flinch from carrying out its ordering, its law is a dead letter. To say so is not to stiffen the Germans in their fight. It will stiffen the tyrants who have Germany under their heel ; but that is the affair of the Germans alone. If they are ready to suffer more for their gods, so be it ! But even if it did stiffen the German in his war, that is a poor reason for surrendering our all to the German Moral. All acts in the War should lead to a trial and judgment and punishment of the guilty, which are acts against the Law of Nations. If the German knew that this would be so, so far from it increasing his stiffness in the war, it would compel him to hesitate before he committed such acts. To-day he does not p 145 Reparation and Punishment hesitate because he thinks that Peace will still all records against him. Every man, whether King or Prince or Captain or Common Soldier, whether Chan- cellor or lackey, who has been guilty of a crime against the Law of Nations should be tried by a tribunal as a common felon, and punished as a common felon, regardless of all rank or precedent. By this means, and by this means alone, can that "romance " of in- ternational crime be broken; by this means alone can the guilty escape from that immunity w^hich hedges the acts of the great in war. If he who breaks the law of nations by sending a submarine to attack defenceless vessels and to murder innocent women and children be hanged for it according to the law of piracy, the crime will cease ; at present he knows that he is immune. If he who orders an airship to bring death and mutilation to an open town know^s that he will be tried as a common felon, he will hesitate to commit the crime. If the lords of German Ruthlessness know that the murder of Nurse Cavell, Captain Fryatt and others, means the hangman's rope 146 Reparation and Punishment when Peace is signed, then these crimes will cease. If the battalion commander who placed Belgian women and children in front of his advance knows that he will hang for it, his fellows love their skins too well to emulate his vile example. And by no other means whatsoever may such crimes be stopped. As it stands to-day, a crown is set on scoundrelism in War by the German Kultur and Moral. And a glamour results for which we are all quite as responsible if we flinch from tearing off the ' ' romance ' ' of War from the hideous thing that is called War, whereby the guilty are rendered immune and stand in the world's estimation as heroes to be envied, and leaders to be followed. As long as the great and chief instigators of war are allowed to go into an honoured retirement, so long will War be held a fine thing. So long as there is a glamour of a vile romance about such crimes as would be denied to the felon in peace, so long will there be no Lasting Peace. Not only so, their acts become precedents for the ages to come. The Hohenzollem and his son, his 147 Reparation and Punishment Ministers, and his Generals, and leaders, have all allowed, if indeed they have not directed, the foul acts that are boasted by them as ' ' f rightfulness . ' ' Why should they be immune? As long as Bismarck's Germany was victorious, " f rightfulness " was safe. To-day Germany's foul Moral lies in the gutter. Is it to be set up as an immaculate thing for ever because, forsooth, it wails disconsolate in the gutter? Britain found her soul two hundred and fifty years gone by ; France found her soul a hundred years ago, after Lafayette had helped the American Colonies to the achieving of their soul, but had shrunk from leading his own mighty people out of the abyss; Russia seeks to find her soul to-day ; and these, now being free and of one soul, are the fit champions of the lesser peoples of Europe to deliver them from bondage, sanctifying their sacrifice of blood in the doing to noble purpose. The time has come for a world-tribunal to dictate the universal law. 148 Reparation and Punishment I have tried to give the Man-in-the-Street a broad view of the strategy of the Great War. Every idealist who through mawkish senti- ment, no matter how deeply rooted in nobility, uses his influence to prevent the utter oblitera- tion of the German Moral from the face of the w^orld, is as criminally responsible for it as the Prussian. He is no more a benefactor of mankind than is the woman who, when a murderer attacks a man, flings her arms round that man and holds his hands whilst the mur- derer commits his ruthless design upon him. For the woman to say that the murderer was a naughty man to strike a defenceless and bound man does not add an inch to her inno- cence, nor mitigate one hair's-breadth from the guilt of her abomination. To come before the world and blame the murderer is futile. It is the business of the murderer to murder. And he who does not do all in his power to rid the world of the murderer is in the degree of his dehberate laxity a partaker in the crime. The whole Strategy of the Civilized World is bent to creating Universal Peace. Any 149 Reparation and Punishment peoples that deliberately set themselves to oppose that strategy must be conquered and compelled to Peace. Peace there must and shall be if Man is to reach to the supreme fulfilment of himself and the truest nobility. Commerce and Industry must be com- pelled to the democratic aim of a wide Brotherhood quite as sternly as any other activities of the human pilgrimage. To leave Industry or Politics a prey to Prussianism whilst we uproot Prussianism from the chan- celleries of the world were as futile as dan- gerous. War from within is more horrible than War from without; it is more criminal. Progress to the heights of a noble way- faring demands virile vigour and forthright will to fulfil the brotherhood of man ; progress is not the timid handmaid to a pallid effemin- acy of soul that fears the dark or dreads to strike down an evil thing. POSTSCRIPT As a last word, let me say that every man and ev^ery woman in this land — indeed in every land — would do .well to possess themselves of three or four quite cheap books that wall increase their knowledge of the war. Un- fortunately the best writings on the war, consistently right and of clear and sane vision, are scattered through journals in the form of essays by Robert Blatchford ; but happily a small handbook is just being published which gathers his wisdom into concise form in a volume entitled "General von Sneak ^^ (Hodder and Stoughton : 2s. 6d.). A volume of absolute need to all, and all too neglected, which contains the careful researches of years of toil in simple and clear terms, is "Peace- ful Penetration,^^ by the Australian journalist A. D. McLaren (Constable : 3s. 6d.). A third volume, the value of which at tliis time it would likewise be impossible to exaggerate, is Cheradame's "Pan-German Plot Un- 151 Postscript masked'' (John Murray: 2s. 6d.). These books should be in every man's home. The debt that civiUzation owes to Cheradame and McLaren can never be repaid. The world was deaf to both or would not hsten. Both men spent prodigious labour in pursuing to its lair the terror that they discovered to be looming amidst the secret and malign aims of Ger- many. These little books are the keys to a prodigious discovery to the laying bare of which both far-sighted men sacrificed their best years. The war proved them both right to the uttermost fraction. Had our leaders only brought these men to their council board they would have been worth an Army Corps, as they were worth all the Embassies put to- gether. If such men could be at the peace table, civilization would be secure. He who would learn more of peaceful penetration, let him read the writings of a neutral professor of Lausanne — Millioud's "Ruling Caste and Frenzied Trade'' (Con- stable), which I have come across as I blot these Unes. SOME REVIEWS OF MAJOR HALDANE MAGF ALL'S BOOK ''GERMANY AT BAY" THE REAL RIGHT THING ABOUT THE WAR By ROBERT BLATCHFORD I HAVE read every book on the war which I have heard of, but I have only just found the one I wanted. This is '* Germany at Bay," by Major Haldane Macfall. My readers will understand me when I say that my object is not to describe, to criticize, or to praise the book, but to sell it. I want " Germany at Bay " to be read by ten millions of persons in the British Empire, in France, in the neutral countries, and in America. The book is conspicuous because it is wTitten by a practical soldier and a master of strategy, and because it gives a sane and lucid exposition of the war as a whole. We have had many fine books dealing with phases or aspects of the war, but I do not know of any book but this which deals with the war as a whole. Strategy, as the author points out, is a word which the ^lan-in-the-Street dreads as lie dreads metaphysics or the higher mathematics ; but strategy is only common sense dealing with " facts," and the Major makes this clear, and in a few pages with a few simple 155 Some Reviews of diagrams enables any reader to understand strategy and its relation to war. Don't imagine that this is a dry technical work. It is alive. It is graphic, forceful, picturesque, and logical ; it will thrill you, inspire you, inform you, buck you up. Its exposition of the strategy of Joffre and French, of the moves which led to the great retreat, of the great Allied victories of the Mame and Ypres and Nancy and Verdun, is as exciting and fascinating as any Conrad novel. It shows how Joffre fooled Moltke, and how French beat Kluck. It shows that the common belief that the Huns meant to rush straight through Belgium to Paris is a mistake. It shows that the whole of the German campaign in the west was a failure and a defeat, and that after the first battle of Ypres Germany was held, and besieged. But it shows also the designs of Germany in Central Europe, that these designs have been carried out, and that unless German dominance in Central Europe can be destroyed Germany will have won her war and will be in a position to attack her enemies in detail at her leisure. In short, the book makes it perfectly obvious that unless the Central Powers are defeated and com- pelled to accept the Allies* terms of peace nothing can save Europe from a succession of wars — or surrenders. No sane person could, after reading this book, fail to see through the specious reasoning of Pacifists and Bolsheviks and other stop-the-war cranks. Major Haldane Macfall makes evident to the most unsophisti- cated mind the fact that the Allies can only have peace 156 "Germany at Bay" by winning it, that unless Germany is defeated in this war she will soon make war again. I say that a book like this, so direct and forceful, so masterly and uncompromising, so destructive of the amateur strategist's favourite claptrap about "stalemate" and "German initiative," and " German supremacy in the art of war " ; a book like this which plays skittles with the conventions of inexpert experts ; a book like this which puts the sentimentalist and the theorist down and out ; a book written by a man for men, will very likely meet with the stolid, sour opposi- tion generally given to all new and masterful ideas. And, as I said before, my object is to sell this book and so enable the masses of the Allied people to under- stand the war ; who made it, why it was made, how it has gone, how it is likely to go, what the belligerents are fighting for, and why a heedless or premature peace may bring disaster to our Allies and ourselves. " Germany at Bay " is not only the best book of the war, it is the only book which can put our people wise and keep them alert and keep them cheerful. I want everyone to read it. It will do more to help us win the war than all the great speeches and glowing specials and strategic piffles that have been read or heard in this country since hell broke loose in the August of 1914. And I want every reader to get at the book and study it, and to write about it, talk about it, shout about it, everywhere he goes. That is our duty ; it is our duty to our country, to the Army, to the Navy, to our Allies, to posterity. 157 Some Reviews of If I had the power I would issue a million copies of this book to our soldiers, our workers, our journalists, and our Members of Parliament. I would send a million copies to America. I would have the book translated into French, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, Portu- guese, Hindustani, Arabic, Flemish, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. Then I would offer the author an Earldom and put him into the Cabmet, and I would provide that he should have a Dismal Jimmy for dinner every day and two on Sundays. I mean to say it is a great book. It is a great national service, and I'm just cracking my brains in the effort to find a way of getting everybody to read it. Ladies and gentlemen, you know that I do not shout often. Well, this time I don't know how to shout loud enough. Read it for my sake, read it for your ovv-n sakes, read it for the sake of the boys at the front, read it for the sake of the old country, for the sake of humanity. Read it, and be cheered up. Read it and know ! Ladies and gentlemen, I assure you : It is the Goods. " Germany at Bay," by Haldane Macfall. Cassell and Go. 6s. —The Clarion. •'Germany at Bay" II A TONIC FOR THE DISMAL JIMMIES BY ROBERT BLATCHFORD This is going to be one of the most important and useful articles written since the declaration of war. Please read every word of it and follow the advice it offers. No ; there is nothing the matter with my modesty ; it has not even lost its bloom. All the value of this article will consist in its recommendation of the remark- able achievement of another man — a Pukka soldier. Now to business. I mentioned in a recent article the announcement that Major Haldane Macfall was writing a book to explain to the Man-in-the-Street and to the man in the Army the causes and objects of this war. He has done it. I have read the book. It is called " Germany at Bay," and is published by Cassell and Co. at the price of six shillings. It is the most practical, powerful, logical, instructive, fascinating, and valuable book I have ever read on the war, on strategy, and upon the matters at issue between the Germanic Powers and the Western Allies. This lucid and masterly work ought to be at once adopted by the AUied Governments as their sole means of propaganda. It is a complete vindication of the Allies and a complete expose of the Huns. It utterly destroys the mischievous propaganda of the peace-by- '59 Some Reviews of negotiation cranks. It dispels the fog of ignorant pessimism with which the Dismal Jimmies have obscured the achievements of the Allies and the defeats and failures of the Germans. It ought to be bought up by the British Government by the hundred thousand and circulated amongst Members of Parliament, Cabinet Ministers, munition workers, colliers, and the general public. It ought to be made a textbook in the Ai-my. It is the real right thing. It covers the whole ground. It is as fascinating as a first-class novel. And it is so plain and workmanlike and straightforward that a child could understand it. As an eye-opener, as a tonic, as a cure for the dumps, and as a grateful and stiitiulating tribute to the splendid genius and courage of the French, Russian, and British Generals and soldiers it is beyond all praise. By writing this magnificent book Major Macfall has laid his country and the Allies under an obligation which cannot be repaid. To offer a man a peerage for such a national and cosmic service would be a gross error in proportion. The reader will gather from these remarks that this book has pleased me. It has. It has cheered me, stimulated me, encouraged me, instructed me, and astonished me. I vv^ant everybody to read it. I applaud it and recommend it as a simple act of duty. I should not be doing my duty as a citizen if I failed to help the circulation of this book by every means within my power. All this is written in the hope of arousing public interest and curiosity. Major Macfall will do the rest. I am convinced that if this book is universally i6o '* Germany at Bay " read it will make it impossible for the Allies to lose the war. That is not extravagance ; it is sober fact. For this book will enable everybody who reads it to understand the war. Major Haldane Macfall is a soldier with ideas and with the rare faculty of conveying his ideas to others. The author begins with a delightfully simple and helplul explanation of strategy which any boy can grasp at once. He goes on to explain the new German psychology, the cult of force and ruthlessness, which he accomplishes with remarkable conciseness and con- viction. He tells us " A people should never attempt to shape its own strategy on anything but its own psychology," and he then lays before us the strategy and the purposes of the Central Powers. . . . I cannot do justice to this great book in the space at my command, but I can indicate two more of the great services its author renders — the masterly ex- position of the strategy of General Joffre and the ex- plosion of the myth of German military invincibility. Major Macfall says the Man-in-the-Street believes in German military supremacy ; that the belief is shared by all kinds of people in Allied and neutral countries, even by many soldiers, and, he says, " no more dangerous doctrine could be held by the enemies of Prussia lor their own undoing." He then sets to work in his own competent and forthright way to prove that the Germans were out-generalled and out-fought by the French and British from the very first days of the Western campaign ; that Joflre's strategy defeated i6i Some Reviews of and deluded them ; that Joffre's generals and soldiers, with inferior numbers and weaker artillery, de- feated them time after time ; that all their blows at France were foiled ; that so far from " losing the initiative " they never had it ; that the splendid and heroic French and British victories of the Marne and Ypres lost them the war with France and destroyed their first strategic plan ; and that they were finally pinned down and held in a grip they could not loosen or escape upon the Western Front — defeated and be- sieged. . . . Jofire and French, by masterly generalship, drew the Germans into the position most favourable to the Allies and then hammered them. The Germans were beaten at Nancy, at the Marne, and at Fere Champenoise, and were driven back on the Aisne. As I pointed out in the first article I wrote on the war a few days before the battle of the Marne, the Germans were beaten, and they knew it. The story of this campaign, from the declaration of war to the victory of Ypres, is the most illuminating, inspiring, and thrilling story written of this great struggle between Right and Might. It is a story to fill the people of France and Britain with pride and gratitude and to link them together as friends with hoops of steel. " Germany at Bay " ought to be imme- diately translated into French, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, and Italian, and should be sold in America by the million. But this marvellous battle picture is only one of its merits. Its great merit is that it gives a view of the war and of the causes and aims of the war as a whole 162 " Germany at Bay " — a merit which no other book on the war contains, so far as my knowledge goes. To return to the legend of German invincibility — a legend I have fought against from the first. Major Macfall says : ** Yet the world said that Germany was all-conquering ! The Press and even our statesmen could think, and, indeed, could say, that so far Germany had not yet lost a battle." This was said after Gennany had lost a score of battles, every one of them of a magnitude which made Waterloo seem like an affair of outposts. But let us take a few examples. The Germans were beaten by the French and British in August, September, and October of 1914, in the battles of Guise, Mezieres, Nancy, the Marne, Fere Champenoise, St. Mihiel, Berry-au-Bac, St. Hilaire le Grande, St. Menehould, La Bassee, Bailleul, Verdun, the Lys, Ypres — to name only a few. . . . This is a very weak attempt to give an idea of the value and importance of this great book. I can only make amends by begging our readers to get the book and to read it and to speak of it as they find it. I wish I could get it published as a serial in every popular paper in the v.orld. To conclude, I will quote from the preface written by Viscount French : " If there be any man who desires peace simply for the sake of peace this volume will swiftly dis- illusion him. If it had been written with no other chapters than those pointing out the German peace strategy', and what that strategy really means. 163 Some Reviews of I would say to the Man-in-the-Street that he should read the book and make himself conversant with its contents/' Finally, please remember that Major Macfall's work gives a clear view of the war as a whole, and that it is the perfect and much-needed tonic for pessimism and war-weariness, and pacifism and sentimentality. It is the right thing, done in the right way, at the right time. — Sunday Chronicle, III A SHEAF OF PRESS NOTICES " Grips the reader throughout. ... He knows what he is talking about, and he has a definite message to convey. . . . The book is tonic, and Field-Marshal French's recommendation that men should read it is one that every thinking man will endorse. ... A call to action for the man behind the armies. ... A work deserving of the widest publicity.** — Land and Water. " An arresting and compelling book.'* — ^Vanoc in The Referee, " Major Haldane Macfall's fascinating work . . . in clear and forceful language . . . concise and pointed ... is one of the most ably-written and informing books that the war has produced.*' — Glasgow Citizen. *' For the War . . . Haldane Macfall's ' Germany at Bay * is what you want ... he writes as an ex- 164 (( Germany at Bay" pert, but, unlike most experts, knows how to make himself intelligible and interesting to the Man-in-the- Street." —Sketch. " A very important book. . . . You must read for yourselves. . . . His book must be read, and will be read." — Every man. " I advise all who can get the book to read it. It is the finest and the most helpful book yet written on the war." —Clarion. " A good book and timely." — Illustrated London News. *' Sketched in brief and striking descriptions." — East Anglian Daily News. " As Lord Denbigh has very rightly pointed out, the Pan-German doctrines of Mittel Europa are by far the greatest danger now in front of us. . . . If you want to realise the right way to prevent it, read Major Haldane Macfall's ' Germany at Bay.' As he says, if the laws which civilization has formulated, at Hague conventions, at former Peace negotiations, and in other ways, are to be set aside with impunity in any single detail, then there will not only be no law, but there can be no peace. A signature that can at any future moment be repudiated on the plea of * necessity * is worthless from the moment it is written. It is grotesque to imagine that those who insist upon these principles are merely ' stiffening the resistance ' of Germany ; they may be stiffening the Militarist, but that is Ger- many's own business ; and if we are to surrender every- thing the world has hitherto called justice and morality merely because we fear to offend a set of liars, thieves, 165 Some Reviews of and murderers, who have been strong enough to break the law, we may just as well give up the fight at once and ask them to come over here and trample on us. Morality is strategy. Apart altogether from the ideal principles of right and wrong, if we consider merely the lowest material terms on which we could base the possibility of national or personal safety for the future, we should find that judicial punishment and strict reparation are in themselves strategical necessities for the well-being of the world. For it is essential to a lasting peace that the peoples of Europe should be free ; and the freedom of the peoples included in the map of the Militarist Mittel Europa would wreck completely and for ever all the Pan-German plans based on the military servitude of subject nations. Upon that map depends the whole future of the world. If the Germans secure the greater portion of that map in their ' Terms of Peace,' they will eventually secure the whole of their ' War Aims,* and every sacrifice made by ourselves and our Allies since August, 1914, will be completely wasted. As the Germans have made it quite clear, in repeated acts and statements, that no treaty or convention signed either by a Hohenzollern's representative, or by a Government controlled by the Militarist party, is worth the paper it is written on, it is obvious that we cannot accept any ' paper-guarantees ' whatever. We can only impose peace on such conditions that neither immediately nor within the next fifty years will Prussia have the power to break it. The determination to do this, with the united help, moral and material, not only of all our present Allies, but eventually of the whole i66 ** Germany at Bay" world outside Prussia, must be uppermost in the mind and heart of every Englishman." . . . — HisTORicus in The Field. " He sees the theatre of war not as a thing of sand- bagged trenches and bristling frontiers, but as spun over with the fine lines of inevitable plan and purpose.'' — Amateur Photographer. " As clear-sighted and comprehending as any writer who has put pen to paper about the war. . . . Public Libraries ought to possess themselves of copies of ' Germany at Bay ' in generous supply." — Eastern Morning News. " Major MacfalFs vigorous and trenchant style, and his compressed but luminous survey of recent German history impress these facts powerfully on the mind. . . . Will deeply interest all readers of this book." — Aberdeen Free Press. " Everybody who reads it will associate himself or herself with Lord French's foreword that * Ever>' man and woman should study it before they give a thought to a peace into which the guile of the German may delude us all to our undoing.' " — Daily Dispatch. " Major Macfall's deeply interesting book." — Western Morning News. " Luminous . . . clear and powerful . . . Major Macfall's book is a most valuable tract for the times." ^Sheffield Telegraph. " A really powerful book." — Daily Chronicle. " Stirring book." — Daily Graphic. " Major Haldane Macfall's valuable work." — Yorkshire Herald. 167 Some Reviews of *' In a masterly analysis of the progress of the war . . . the author gives the Man-in-the- Street a valuable history of the Great War." — Newcastle Journal. " Exceedingly effective, for the author possesses an animated style. . . . Major Macfall is deeply inter- esting.'* — Aberdeen Journal. " Should enlighten and stimulate public opinion.*' — Scotsman. " With force and abundant interest . . . gives a masterly sketch of the military events of the war . . . It is fascinating and illuminating ; it is encouraging.*' — K. R. in Liverpool Courier. " Major Haldane Macfall is cordially to be thanked for his sane book. . . . Strikingly significant.'* — Graphic. " There have been two volumes whose interest and importance eclipse all others. They are * My Four Years in Germany,' by ex-Ambassador Gerard and * Germany at Bay,' by Major Haldane Macfall." — North Mail. " No man who cares for his country should fail to buy it, to read it carefully, and lend it to those of his friends to whom its price may be prohibitive. Every library, free or otherwise, should have a dozen copies, and should recommend it by posting a prominent notice. . . . Buy it, beg it, borrow it, or steal it, but anyway read and study it, and spread its teaching all round by every means in your power, if you wish well to your country." -^-A. L. in Nottingham Guardian. *' That revealing book." — Wolverhampton Express and Star. i68 " Germany at Bay " '* One of the most notable books published dealing with the war." — Nottingham. Express. " Masterly analysis." — Western Daily Press. " A stimulus and tonic for the war-weary." — Aberdeen Journal. " If my friends want to know why I believe in the victory of the Allies let them read Major Macf all's recent book ' Germany at Bay.' " — A Student of War in The Liverpool Post. *' A thoroughly illuminating book, marked by a wealth of incisive insight and conclusions, the origin- ality of which will compel the attention of the Man-in-the- Street. . . . Most brilliant and searching. . . . Should be read by everybody. . . . Major Macfall's masterly interpretation of the influences which have been, and are now, shaping the destinies of Europe. Pungent epigrams thread the text, but the clear, cold reasoning of the author is never sacrificed to a straining after literary or theatrical effect. The terse and sparkling passages carry the reader always on the crest of the waves of anticipation and approbation." — Western Press. ** A good book and a good writer. ' Germany at Bay * should be read by everybody. ... It is a great book .... and you should buy, borrow — well, get a copy without delay. . . . Major Haldane Macfali is a man and a brother, and the Man-in-the-Street doffs his bonnet to him, and wishes there was more of him — tons of him." — Stirling Sentinel. " A lucid and masterly study of the strategy of the 169 Some Reviews of war, and especially of the Peace strategy which Ger many is subtly developing with a view to securing by diplomacy the victory she cannot win in the field. . . . Essentially a book for the Man-in-the-Street. . . . Here the expert speaks in the language of reasonable men. The average man, whose vote will determine the sort of peace we shall have when the last gun is fired should, as Lord French says, master the contents of this book* so that he may fully understand before the day for his decision arrives not only the causes and origin of the war, but what may and what should be its outcome.*' — -The Bookman. " Convincing and helpful. . . . Much that is un- intelligible to civilians is lucidly explained by Major Macfall, who reduces technicalities to simplicities.*' — Christian World. " May I direct the attention of your readers to those two most excellent books — ' Germany at Bay,' by Major Haldane Macfall, and * The Pan-German Plot Unmasked,' by Andre Cheradame. Anybody reading these cannot fail to see the intense danger we should be courting by opening or consenting to any sort of negotiation for peace with Germany still unbeaten. . . . There would be fewer pacifists and fewer labour troubles if people would only read these books." — Lord Denbigh in Eastern Daily Press. " Its power of intuition . . . grips the interest. . . . The book seems to have been written at a white heat." — Birmingham Post, "The author's exposition of the Allied strategy is engrossing." ^ —Athenaeum. 170 " Germany at Bay " "Vivid and illuminating . . . thrilling chapters." — -Bristol Times. " In the interest of a lasting peace and of civilization our Government ought to do well in seeing that a copy goes into every house as regularly as the sugar card. It provides a summary that everyone should read and consider and keep for handy reference." — G. G. G. in Hastings and St. Leonards Observer. " Admirably done ... a vivid picture of Ger- many's strategic aims both before and throughout the war, a picture which can be grasped and understood by the Man-in-the-Street. . . . The whole book is most enlightening, and should certainly be read by everyone at this time. . . . The whole story of the Marne and the important early months of the war is told in such a way that the hidden strategy behind the crowding events leaps out and evokes renewed admiration." — The Sphere. " A book which should be in the hands of every elector in the Empire." — Francis Heatherley in The Daily Mail. " Germany at Bay " by Major Haldane Macfall With an Introduction by Field-Marshal The Viscount French House of Cassell 6s. net. Printed by Cassell & Co., Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.G. 4. F 200.318 FOURTEEN DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 6Sep'553G ^"63 1 955 Ltr Ve 2(392 Z^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY ■;i;!'\: !■;: ;|r;i;i„;:-'-' ;i:;!ii:ii;l;;:ti;;i^" :;;!i