THE ISSUE
 
 THE ISSUE 
 
 BY 
 
 J. W. HEADLAM, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "LIFE OF BISMARCK," "THE HISTORY OF 
 
 TWELVE DAYS," " ENGLAND, GERMANY, 
 
 AND EUROPE" 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 1917 
 
 V>1ftA^t
 
 Copyright, 
 
 BY HOUGHTON MlFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 reserved
 
 NOTE 
 
 CHAPTERS I, II, III, and IV of this book have 
 already appeared in the Nineteenth Century and After. 
 Chapter V is reprinted from the Westminster Gazette. 
 I have to express my obligation to the Editors for 
 permission to reprint them in the present form. They 
 are reprinted almost without alteration, and I have 
 not attempted to change them, even in those cases 
 where what was written some months ago would 
 now be expressed rather differently. The Introduction 
 is new.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 I. Two MANIFESTOES . 41 
 
 n. THE PARTY LEADERS 63 
 
 III. THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR AND PEACE . 74 
 
 IV. PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 103 
 
 V. CENTRAL EUROPE 122 
 
 APPENDIXES: 
 
 I. MANIFESTO OF THE Six INDUSTRIAL 
 
 ASSOCIATIONS 143 
 
 II. GERMANY'S PEACE TERMS 152 
 
 Vll
 
 THE ISSUE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE articles contained in this volume, which were 
 written during the summer of last year, contain 
 an examination of some of the suggestions as 
 to terms of peace which have from time to time 
 appeared in Germany. I republish them, for 
 they may be useful as helping to throw into a 
 proper perspective the complaints that now come 
 from Germany, that it is England, and England 
 alone, which, by the immoderate nature of her 
 demands, stands between Europe and the peace 
 which all desire. It is well to probe the nature 
 of the terms which many men in Germany would 
 have proposed at a time when a decisive German 
 victory still appeared probable. It is well that 
 we should not forget these things, for there are 
 still not only neutrals, but even Englishmen, 
 who continue to talk as though the British 
 Government had wantonly refused favourable 
 offers of peace and reasonable terms of reconcilia- 
 tion which had been offered by the German 
 Chancellor. 
 
 It would have been easy to increase the bulk 
 of the book, by including in it selections from the
 
 2 THE ISSUE 
 
 press and from the pamphlets issued in such 
 abundance by private individuals. I have deliber- 
 ately refrained from doing so. Nothing is more 
 pernicious than the modern habit of quoting freely 
 in other countries the foolish and exaggerated 
 utterances of obscure individuals and newspapers, 
 or the noisy leaders of extreme factions, who are 
 to be found in every country, and by transporting 
 them across the frontier giving them an import- 
 ance which no one at home would attribute to 
 them. It is a habit to which even distinguished 
 German historians have given their support, and 
 we find the official spokesmen of the Government, 
 and men such as Prince Biilow, quoting as evi- 
 dence of English intentions the words of English- 
 men which are treated at home with the neglect 
 that they deserve. In this I do not propose to 
 imitate them; I have endeavoured to confine 
 myself to evidence as to what seems to be the 
 considered opinion of the responsible Government, 
 the leaders of parties, the corporate opinion of 
 influential associations, or the writing of men 
 who appear to carry real weight in Germany. 
 
 Some apology is necessary from anyone who at 
 such a time says or does anything that may seem 
 to tend to postpone the arrival of peace. No 
 position is so contemptible as that of the man of 
 letters who, from the security of his home, where 
 he is himself free from danger and hardships, 
 adds to the spirit of national animosity which has 
 already reached so lamentable a pitch, or con-
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 tributes to the prolongation of the war, when he 
 knows that by so doing he is helping to send 
 thousands of men from every country in Europe 
 to misery and death. It would to me be far more 
 agreeable to join those who demand that the 
 slaughter and destruction should now cease, and 
 who ask with indignation what sound reason 
 can be given for its continuance. But, in public 
 as in private affairs he is not always the best 
 peacemaker who refuses to recognise the existence 
 of any real cause of difference. On the contrary, 
 a clear recognition and definition of the matters 
 at issue may often prove the best means towards 
 reconciliation. And so I have attempted to put 
 into the clearest light, using the evidence afforded 
 by the statements of the Germans themselves, 
 what is the real issue of the war, and the reason 
 why the only suggestions as to peace which have 
 come to us from Germany, with any claim to 
 authority, are unacceptable. 
 
 I call this book The Issue. There have been 
 in fact three great issues of the war, but it is on 
 one of them alone, that which was the first and 
 remains the last, that I wish to concentrate at- 
 tention. The three issues were what we may 
 call the Atlantic, the Eastern, and the European. 
 Of these, the first was in a way secondary; *. e., 
 it did not arise from the origin of the war and the 
 conflict with Russia, but was only brought into 
 prominence by the entry of England into the con- 
 flict. We can say with certainty, that it had not
 
 4 THE ISSUE 
 
 been the intention of the German Government, 
 and those who moved for war, to attempt to 
 settle the issue with Great Britain before that 
 with France and Russia had been decided. This 
 we must remember; but there is also no doubt 
 that in the German Nation itself this now holds 
 the most prominent place. The overthrow of 
 the British dominion at sea, the consequent dis- 
 solution of the British Empire, the transference 
 of sea power from Great Britain to Germany, is 
 that on which they have for many years set their 
 heart, and which is now their avowed aim. It is 
 an ambition which, as we may recognise, is natu- 
 ral enough, and I do not see that we have any 
 ground for complaint if they chose to challenge 
 us. Our Empire has been gained by war, and if 
 it is attacked it must be maintained by war. The 
 ambition, at least, was not necessarily an ignoble 
 one; it sprang not merely from vulgar jealousy 
 or from commercial competition ; there was in it 
 perhaps something of the great spirit of romance 
 and adventure. The new Germany which has 
 grown up during the last fifteen years has looked, 
 as in the past many generations of Englishmen 
 have looked, to the larger world beyond the seas. 
 The forests of Africa called them and the Coral 
 Islands of the Pacific, the romance of the East 
 and the limitless expanses of the ocean summoned 
 them to vistas and ambitions which had been 
 closed to their forefathers, shut up within the 
 narrow limits of their petty states and tiny
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 cities. They wished to be recognised in these 
 distant lands, not only as settlers, traders, and 
 explorers, but as members of a great imperial race, 
 as conquerors, rulers, and administrators. It was 
 a great ambition natural to a nation looking upon 
 the world full of the longing for great deeds, 
 desirous to take their place in the secular succes- 
 sion of great empires, desirous that Germany 
 and a German ruler should be one of the series 
 whose names are irrevocably written upon the 
 chronicle of the ages, wishful to emulate the 
 deeds if not of Alexander and of Csesar, at least 
 of Alani and of Attila. There is an immortality 
 awarded to destruction as well as to creation, and 
 there was one thing alone that seemed worth 
 doing, the overthrow of the British Empire. I 
 say that it is not an ambition which we need 
 grudge them; it sprang from their full knowl- 
 edge of the greatness of the task. They saw that 
 the British Empire was the only institution of the 
 present day which seemed to challenge, in the 
 greatness of its achievements and the magnifi- 
 cence of its ideals, the great empires of the past. 
 We hold the challenge cup of the world, and it 
 was by challenging us alone that they could be- 
 come one of the great world-empires. 
 
 Such a challenge could not be refused. Noth- 
 ing would be more lamentable than that the 
 countrymen of Drake and Hawke and Nelson, of 
 Give and Wolfe and Wellington, should shrink 
 from it or fail in the courage and resolution to
 
 6 THE ISSUE 
 
 keep up by their own deeds what had been ac- 
 quired by their fathers. 
 
 There were many among them who believed, 
 and I suspect believed with regret, that no con- 
 flict would be necessary, that the British Empire 
 would fall by the forces of decay which seemed 
 to be eating away its very heart, as did the 
 Empire of Spain; of this there was no doubt, 
 and for thirty years there has been no doubt that 
 the day would come that, if the British Empire 
 did not fall to pieces of itself, the Germans would 
 attempt to wrest from us the sovereignty of the 
 seas. 
 
 This was their golden fleece. But the golden 
 fleece was guarded by the dragon. They had no 
 Medea to charm the dragon to sleep. They 
 ploughed with their steeds and the armed men 
 sprang up from the earth, but they had no magic 
 to throw among them to make them turn their 
 arms against one another. 
 
 In truth this branch of the war had been 
 decided before the first shot was fired. It was 
 decided fifteen years ago. A successful attack 
 on England's maritime and naval position was 
 only possible on the hypothesis, either that it 
 was unexpected and unprepared for, and that the 
 self-governing dominions would not support the 
 mother country in the war, or that Germany had 
 allies who could give her efficient help on sea as 
 well as on land. What danger there was from 
 the first contingency had been removed owing to
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 the extraordinary folly of the Emperor and 
 Prince Biilow. They talked, they boasted, they 
 swaggered, and they bullied, but talk and boast- 
 ing, swaggering and bullying are not the best 
 preparations for victory. The issue was decided 
 in the South African War, for in this it was 
 shown that the enmity of Germany to this coun- 
 try was one which concerned not the British 
 Isles alone, but the whole structure and cohe- 
 rence of the Empire. This gave a new purpose 
 and conviction to the imperial naval strategy, 
 and England was therefore not unprepared, for 
 Great Britain became conscious that she was act- 
 ing as the trustee, not for herself alone, but for 
 all that was involved in the maintenance of the 
 integrity of the Empire. The second danger 
 was removed by the failure of German diplo- 
 macy, which brought it about that she entered 
 on this war without allies (except Turkey) who 
 could give her any effective assistance in the 
 struggle with the British Empire. 
 
 The second issue is that which centres round 
 Turkey. The instrument of it was German 
 patronage of Mahomedanism. Based as it was 
 on the perfidious intrigues carried on during the 
 years of nominal peace, it is the greatest crime 
 against European civilisation of which any state 
 has yet been guilty, for it depended on the alli- 
 ance between German and Turkish militarism, 
 the avowed object of which was to set up again 
 Turkish rule in Egypt, and to use the wild pas-
 
 8 THE ISSUE 
 
 sions of Islam for the overthrow of the civilising 
 influence of Europe. 
 
 In this part of the war the decision has long 
 been delayed. The issue in it will depend on that 
 in the European war. 
 
 There remains the third and the great issue, 
 that with which the war began, and with which 
 it will close: the question of the predominance 
 of Germany in Europe. In truth it includes the 
 other two, for to a Germany predominant in 
 Europe the conquest of the East would be 
 open, and against a Germany which wielded the 
 resources, military and material, of the whole of 
 Central Europe, England would eventually be un- 
 able to hold her own. Let us therefore consider 
 for a moment what is at stake in this matter. 
 
 The origin of the war and its object are iden- 
 tical; there has been no change in the views of 
 Germany. What the issue was in August, 1914, 
 that it is now. If we look beyond the details of 
 the discussions and the negotiations to the great 
 issue, that is, as it always has been, simple 
 enough, and there is, I think, no difference as to 
 the facts between the two parties. The strong- 
 est accusation which is made against Germany 
 by the Allies is in fact acknowledged and cor- 
 roborated by German statesmen and German 
 writers. The ultimate question is not whether 
 Germany wished for war ; it has been contended 
 by the Chancellor, and perhaps with truth, that 
 he did all in his power to avoid war. It is a mat-
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 ter of faith among the German Nation that the 
 Emperor was in 1914, as always, peculiarly 
 averse from war. Let us assume that these con- 
 tentions are true. There still remains the undis- 
 puted fact that, though Germany may have 
 wished to avoid war, the one condition on which 
 she would preserve peace was that she should be 
 allowed to dictate to the whole of Europe the 
 conditions on which peace could be maintained. 
 The real accusation against Germany is that she 
 attempted to use the fear inspired by her great 
 military power and her alliance with Austria- 
 Hungary, to put herself in a position in which 
 her preponderance over Europe would have been 
 practically assured. 
 
 The general custom of Europe is that when a 
 diplomatic question arises which affects Europe 
 as a whole, and in particular when this is one in 
 which there is a conflict of interests between two 
 great powers, neither shall proceed to military 
 action or take any irrevocable step without 
 first consulting and informing the other powers, 
 her friends or allies ( for in Europe all states are 
 in principle friends or allies), and shall certainly 
 not proceed to military action until every effort 
 has been made by negotiation and conference to 
 find a friendly settlement. The whole diplomatic 
 history of Europe since 1815 is an illustration of 
 this truth. If this rule were disregarded, it is 
 scarcely too much to say that there is not a year 
 in which a great war would not have broken out.
 
 io THE ISSUE 
 
 Now, in this case Germany and Austria deliber- 
 ately, and on principle, violated this rule. They 
 laid down the proposition that if Austria went 
 to war with Serbia, it was a local matter in which 
 the rest of Europe was not concerned. They 
 knew, and it can be shown from their own state- 
 ments that they knew, that this was a proposition 
 which could not be willingly accepted by Russia, 
 a proposition, that is, which could only be en- 
 forced either by the sword or by the threat of 
 war. They knew that it raised in the acutest form 
 fundamental questions of Russian interest. They 
 knew that for more than a hundred years it had 
 been understood that if either Russia or Austria 
 took a step forward in the Balkans, they would 
 at once meet the opposition of the other power, 
 and they knew that just because of this, either 
 state, whenever it proposed to take action, had 
 always consulted the other beforehand. This 
 had again and again been done by Russia. The 
 whole history of the negotiations preceding the 
 Crimean War and of those preceding the Russo- 
 Turkish War of 1877, illustrates this. On both 
 occasions Russia had, by a preliminary under- 
 standing with Austria, to clear the way before 
 she went to war with Turkey. If at that time 
 Russia had brought military pressure to bear, 
 either on Rumania or on Turkey, Austria must 
 at once have protected her interests by mobilisa- 
 tion or by war, unless she had been consulted 
 beforehand by Russia.
 
 INTRODUCTION n 
 
 Now in this case Germany and Austria deliber- 
 ately, and on principle, violated this rule; know- 
 ing as they did that the Austrian action raised 
 in the acutest form fundamental questions of 
 Russian interest, they claimed for Austria the 
 right to take what action they chose, and laid 
 down the cardinal principle that no other power 
 was to be consulted; that is, they eliminated 
 Europe from a question in regard to which the 
 whole of European diplomacy had been most 
 concerned. It matters not in the least whether 
 the Austrian demands were legitimate or not; 
 what does matter is that if their action had been 
 allowed to go forward unopposed, the principle 
 would have been accepted that Germany and 
 Austria were themselves the sole judges of their 
 action on matters of general import, and they 
 would have claimed and secured a privileged 
 position, the result of which would have been that 
 the rest of Europe would have had to remain im- 
 passive whenever German interests were involved. 
 
 It is this, then, which was the occasion of the 
 war, and as it was the occasion, so the avowed 
 object is that at the end Germany shall emerge 
 with such increased strength that she can, with 
 impunity, defy the united opinion of Europe. 
 
 This object will be attained, of course, if Ger- 
 many is victorious, but it will also be attained if, 
 as a few writers in England and some among 
 neutral countries suggest, the Allies acquiesce in 
 a draw.
 
 12 THE ISSUE 
 
 As to a complete victory of Germany, the 
 results are so obvious that it is scarcely worth 
 the labour to explain them. Moreover, a com- 
 plete victory such as they anticipated is now 
 clearly out of the question. None the less, it may 
 be worth while to give in a few words what the 
 result of this would have been. It is. desirable 
 to do so because it is perhaps not easy for many 
 to realise what would have been meant by it. We 
 are so accustomed to the Europe which we know, 
 to the Europe which consists of a number of in- 
 dependent states, differing, indeed, in power, but 
 equal in dignity and each enjoying full and com- 
 plete independence, that we are accustomed to 
 think that this state of things, which has in fact 
 existed for four hundred years, must continue to 
 exist for all time. And yet the history of the 
 past tells us that great and fundamental changes 
 have occurred and may occur again in future. 
 
 Now, a full German victory would undoubtedly 
 have meant that in some form or other all the 
 peoples inhabiting the central portion of the 
 continent of Europe, the peoples we know as the 
 Belgians, the Dutch, the Danes, the Poles, and 
 the Swiss, would have been brought into the Ger- 
 man system. It would not have been in the least 
 necessary that they should have been incorpo- 
 rated in the Empire. It is quite possible that 
 they might have continued to exist as independ- 
 ent autonomous states ruled over by families 
 allied to the German princely houses ; this is the
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 way in which, as a matter of fact, great empires 
 have been formed, whether by the Romans or by 
 the English in India. The student of ancient his- 
 tory will remember for how long the republics 
 of Greece and the dynasties of Asia continued to 
 enjoy a nominal freedom, while they were in fact 
 completely subject to the will of the Roman 
 State, and we know how, at the present day, the 
 Indian Princes are still recognised as sovereign 
 rulers, though they are incapable of independent 
 international action. Now a German victory 
 would have meant that the central part of the 
 continent of Europe, from the mouth of the 
 Dniester to the English Channel, would have 
 been brought into the same relation to Germany 
 that the subject states were to Rome. There 
 would have been no one who could have ventured 
 to disobey the orders issued from Berlin. 
 
 An empire of this kind is, of course, not com- 
 plete in a day ; there would have been opposition, 
 and we can be quite sure that a high-spirited 
 race, such as the Magyars, would have been the 
 first to rebel against a power which they them- 
 selves had helped to establish ; the final subjuga- 
 tion of the Bohemians and the South Slavs would 
 not have been completed without some further 
 trouble; there would have been disturbances, 
 perhaps serious disturbances, which could not 
 have been put down without bloodshed. But 
 these would not have been so much wars as what 
 the Romans called " tumultus " ; they would
 
 14 THE ISSUE 
 
 have been akin to the Indian Mutiny or the Irish 
 Rebellion of 1798, or the risings in Poland, and 
 if there had been no foreign assistance to look to, 
 however serious they were, the ultimate result 
 would have been certain from the beginning. 
 Nothing is rarer than a successful rebellion; 
 revolutions seldom succeed unless they are helped 
 by weakness in the governing authority, or by 
 disaffection in the army. The history of the year 
 1848 in Austria and Germany shows how help- 
 less, even in the most favourable circumstances, 
 is a popular rising, and if this was true even 
 in the old days, how much more so will it be 
 in the future, against a Government which has 
 the sole control of all the modern machinery of 
 warfare. 
 
 Against a united Central Europe, the outlying 
 states, France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, would 
 be helpless, and a Europe so organised would be 
 able so to strengthen and defend the frontiers 
 that an attack even from Russia would be cause 
 for little apprehension. In a Europe so organ- 
 ised wars would cease, and they would cease for 
 the only reason which would ever stop them, the 
 concentration of all military power in the hands 
 of a single Government so powerful that her 
 position is unassailable. Europe would have had 
 the Pax Germanica. 
 
 The difficulty of visualising the results of such 
 a growth of German power is that we are likely 
 to assume that men will continue to be governed
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 by the beliefs and principles in which we our- 
 selves have grown up. Among these the greatest 
 is the pride in the freedom of one's country. 
 But let us not deceive ourselves : had the Allies 
 been defeated, had a Central Europe of this kind 
 been established, this principle would not have 
 survived; it would have lingered for one or two 
 generations. Independence would have been the 
 dream of romantic men of letters; it would have 
 been like the traditional republicanism under the 
 Roman Empire, or like that of independence 
 among the Greek States after having been con- 
 quered by Macedonia; but as a real, active, 
 strong, controlling political influence, it would 
 have waned away and died, the results of the 
 great war would be irremediable. King Albert 
 and Joffre and the Serbian peasants would in the 
 history of the world have taken their places side 
 by side with the other heroes of lost causes, with 
 Sartorius and Demosthenes and Hannibal and 
 Vercingetorix and Cato and Llewellyn and 
 Schamyl and Kruger. But the world would have 
 gone on, and generations would have arisen to 
 whom political freedom would have been but a 
 memory and a dream. The Gauls and the Greeks 
 and the Sicilians and the Jews were conquered 
 by Rome, and the time came when their chains 
 ceased to gall them and they ceased to regret the 
 uncertain days of the past. They had order, 
 comfort, security, they had no more war; they 
 had civilisation and personal freedom and re-
 
 16 THE ISSUE 
 
 ligion, and they ceased to know that political 
 freedom was no longer theirs. 
 
 And so it might be again, and so it would have 
 been had Germany been successful in the war. 
 
 It is the attainment of this new Europe which 
 is either expressly stated or implied in all the 
 German suggestions for terms of peace analysed 
 in this volume, whether given in the documents 
 of the six associations, in the picture of Central 
 Europe drawn for us by Naumann, or in the 
 peace terms as stated by the Chancellor. For 
 all have this in common, that they demand that 
 Germany shall come out of the war so much 
 stronger as to be able to maintain herself against 
 the whole of Europe, and the Chancellor goes so 
 far as to tell us in so many words that we must 
 have a " new Europe, free from the trammels 
 of the balance of power." 
 
 As against this programme an Englishman 
 will be satisfied with the reasons for which he 
 entered on the war and the objects with which he 
 is continuing it. For these are not the selfish and 
 exclusive domination of a single state or nation, 
 however eminent in the arts of peace and war, 
 but the free and equal progress of all together in 
 a generous rivalry. For he knows that diversity 
 is the condition of life, and rivalry and conflict 
 the condition of progress. We want and we will 
 have, neither for ourselves nor for others, this 
 partition of the world into aggressive and mili- 
 tary world-states, least of all will we have Eu-
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 rope, which is the home and still is the hope of 
 civilisation and freedom, subjected to the deaden- 
 ing rule of a single power. We need feel no 
 chagrin that we are fighting, not to create some- 
 thing new, but to maintain the old, for we know 
 what the world owes to the secular rivalry and 
 juxtaposition of these free European races, 
 France and Spain and Holland and Italy and 
 Flanders. 
 
 For what is the meaning of the old Europe? 
 At bottom it is the mutual respect for each other's 
 individuality, the consciousness of the limits set 
 by reciprocal obligations, the recognition that, if 
 there are to be wars, their methods will be deter- 
 mined by common agreement, and that the victor 
 will, in the enforcement of his will, have to be 
 bound by the general will of the political com- 
 munity to which he belongs. This old Europe 
 was founded on a conception of justice and reci- 
 procity, and it is for this reason that Germany 
 repudiates it, for she understands neither. Jus- 
 tice and reciprocity which are in fact identi- 
 cal, for they mean that there shall be a measure 
 to the exactions demanded by the strong from 
 the weak, that as a state measures so it shall be 
 meted to it again they are the union of the 
 weak against the strong, which is the only se- 
 curity against the tyrant state. 
 
 And -when Bernard Shaw and Bethmann-Holl- 
 weg and Bertrand Russell tell us that we must 
 be done with the doctrine of the " Balance of
 
 i8 THE ISSUE 
 
 Power," I can only marvel at the shallowness 
 and superficiality of a criticism which does not 
 trouble to look below the diplomatic formula for 
 the permanent truth. A strange trio. The Ger- 
 man I can understand; he, at least, would use 
 his sophism as a bait to win the suffrages of the 
 unwary, while Germany, as they sat talking and 
 arguing, established the dominion which would 
 indeed remove for all time the anarchy that they 
 deplore and would bring peace to Europe, but 
 would do so by subjecting all to a single will. 
 
 So much for a German victory. But it will be 
 said that no one now fears this. The German 
 plans are already doomed to frustration and their 
 hopes to disappointment. They have not suc- 
 ceeded in conquering Europe and they will not. 
 Everywhere they are on the defensive, and slowly 
 they are being driven back. Why, then, the 
 conclusion is drawn, not stop the war at once? 
 So far as the German Government is concerned, 
 there can be no doubt that they would gladly 
 welcome any terms of peace which would enable 
 them to come before their people without a 
 crushing and irremediable defeat. Is it necessary 
 to go on ? Admirable people in neutral countries, 
 in America, in Holland and Scandinavia, are 
 forming societies and publishing reviews with the 
 object of contriving to end a war which, in their 
 eyes, has ceased to have any definite object. 
 They have found even in England some few who 
 welcome these suggestions. It is said that
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 Germany would be willing to evacuate Belgium 
 and France, and if she has done this that is all 
 that we have to demand. They talk of the 
 " suicide of Europe," but they do not see that 
 the end of Europe would come, not by the con- 
 tinuance of the war, but by a cessation before 
 the ends had been completely attained. 
 
 The position is a plausible one, but let us look 
 the facts clearly in the face. Supposing that 
 peace were to be made now, peace made be- 
 fore the war had been fought to a conclusion, 
 with Germany still untouched and the German 
 armies unconquered, what would be the re- 
 sult? The German Nation, recognising that 
 they had not attained the ends which were at- 
 tributed to them, would persist in denying that 
 they ever had had these before them at the be- 
 ginning of the war. It would continue to be 
 asserted in Germany for all time that the war 
 was in truth a defensive warfare, forced upon 
 Germany by a hostile coalition framed for the 
 express purpose of destroying the Empire and 
 annihilating their power. In this war they had 
 been faced by a coalition as great or greater 
 than the final coalition before which Napoleon 
 fell. Confronted by Russia, France, and Eng- 
 land, together with Italy, Belgium, Serbia, Mon- 
 tenegro, and Rumania, they would boast, and 
 justly boast, that they had held their own; Ger- 
 many would have been unconquered and thereby 
 shown to have been unconquerable. The Ger-
 
 20 THE ISSUE 
 
 mans are more moved than we are by historical 
 analogies; long before the war began they re- 
 ferred, almost with pleasurable anticipation, to 
 the prospect of a new Seven Years' War, in 
 which the Germany of Bismarck would have to 
 fight against the whole of Europe, as the Prussia 
 of Frederick had had to do. They recalled also 
 the fact that, though Frederick was again and 
 again defeated, he was never conquered, and 
 that the power of resistance which Prussia 
 showed was the basis on which two generations 
 later Prussian expansion was built up. So they 
 anticipated it would be again. The great coali- 
 tion would be formed, and it was formed; Ger- 
 many would meet undaunted millions of enemies, 
 and she has done so; against the bulwark of 
 German breasts the rage of the enemy was help- 
 less. Peace would be made and Germany would 
 emerge from the conflict, whatever her losses 
 might have been, infinitely greater and stronger 
 than she had entered it. She would have with- 
 stood the trial by fire and by sword, and with- 
 stood it successfully. 
 
 Germany would have withstood, and with- 
 stood successfully, the greatest coalition ever 
 formed. They would have known that when 
 another war broke out, they would enter on it 
 relatively stronger than they had been before, 
 and their enemies weaker. For, let there be no 
 mistake about it if the present coalition does 
 not achieve complete and absolute success, it will
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 never again be established. Supposing it came 
 about that the Germans evacuated Belgium and 
 France, not because they had been driven out, 
 but only as the result of negotiations, and per- 
 haps in return for the restoration of some of the 
 German colonies, does anyone believe that on a 
 future similar occasion Belgium or France would 
 be in a position to defy Germany? It would be 
 impossible for them to do so, depending upon 
 the support of England. It would be clearly 
 written in history that, after England had put 
 forward efforts, far greater than anyone had 
 thought to be possible, she had still failed. Bel- 
 gium would still, as before, be subject at any 
 moment to be overrun by the German armies, 
 and the experience she had once endured w r ould 
 inevitably deter her from incurring a similar 
 risk again. Would Holland, with the example 
 of Belgium before her, ever venture seriously to 
 oppose German demands? Would Switzerland? 
 Would Denmark? 
 
 If peace were made by negotiation before 
 Germany were defeated, it matters not what 
 the terms of peace were, on the continent of 
 Europe and within her own domain she would 
 have gained the essential thing. Whatever were 
 the fate of Austria, Germany would have an in- 
 crease of her effective power, for no diplomatic 
 arrangements could eventually prevent the prac- 
 tical absorption of Austria in Germany. This 
 alliance would continue, but does anyone believe
 
 22 THE ISSUE 
 
 that the alliance of England and of France, of 
 Italy and of Russia could permanently be con- 
 tinued in the form of effective military and eco- 
 nomic cooperation? 
 
 A drawn war would therefore be a victory for 
 Germany. It would be. a victory for Germany as 
 complete as was the Second Punic War for 
 Rome, and Germany in the future would be able 
 to consolidate her position upon the Continent 
 and prepare for the next war, which so many 
 German writers are now anticipating, a war 
 which would be directed against England, but 
 one in which England would not be able to de- 
 pend upon the help of her present allies. And 
 the next war would be one in which, even though 
 Holland and Belgium retained in theory their 
 complete independence and self-determination, 
 at the first onslaught they would be crumpled up 
 before the German armies, and the attack upon 
 England would be made, not only from the mouth 
 of the Weser and the Elbe, but also from the 
 Rhine and the Scheldt. 
 
 An inconclusive peace would in fact imply 
 two things, the increased power of Germany and 
 the certainty of further war between Germany 
 and Great Britain. But in addition to this, it 
 would mean that after the war Germany would 
 be even more convinced than she was before, of 
 the essential value of that which we call " mili- 
 tarism " ; it would to them have been proved that 
 it was by the army and the army alone that she
 
 INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 had been saved, and therefore that it was on the 
 army alone she must continue to depend for her 
 existence and security in the future. In the days 
 of peace which followed, she would continue as 
 before to subordinate all her institutions to the 
 perfecting of her military power. If, as is indeed 
 the case, the ultimate object of the war is the 
 destruction of militarism, this can only be at- 
 tained by eradicating the spirit of militarism from 
 the heart of the German people, and there is no 
 other way in which this can be done than by the 
 defeat of the German army. 
 
 But let us suppose, on the other hand, that the 
 war is carried on to its inevitable termination, 
 that the resistance of the German armies is broken 
 down and the spirit of the German people is 
 broken by the effect of the blockade. A conclu- 
 sion of this kind would make clear to the Ger- 
 man Nation in the only way in which it could be 
 made, that immeasurable ambition inevitably 
 brings with it Nemesis. They would learn, what 
 every other country in Europe has learnt, that it 
 is impossible to defy with impunity the united 
 voice of Europe. 
 
 Men talk much of the terms of peace: it is 
 not the terms of peace which are important; 
 what is important is victory. Let those who 
 doubt this study the settlement of 1815. Then, 
 not only was France defeated, but the armies of 
 the victors twice in twelve months occupied 
 Paris. The French learned, and they have never
 
 24 THE ISSUE 
 
 forgotten, the lesson of the retribution which 
 comes to a nation which would allow itself to be 
 dazzled by the deeds of a Napoleon. But we 
 must notice this also, that it was the very com- 
 pleteness of the victory and the complete anni- 
 hilation for the time of French military power 
 which enabled the Allies, in the terms of peace, 
 to leave France as powerful and as united as she 
 had been twenty- five years ago before the begin- 
 ning of the great war. 
 
 It might be said by any German into whose 
 hands this book came, that if you contend that a 
 complete victory is necessary for the security of 
 the Allies, Germany also may justly maintain 
 that this is true for her also, and that she has to 
 protect herself against the " schemes of annihila- 
 tion " with which she is threatened. In doing so, 
 he would but be following the lead of the Chan- 
 cellor and the other authorities quoted in this 
 book, who again and again maintain that all that 
 they demand is that which is necessary for the 
 defence of their country against the threatened 
 annihilation. 
 
 To this we might well answer that it is not 
 England which annihilates states or peoples; if 
 we wish for illustrations of annihilation we must 
 go to those parts of Europe in which not Eng- 
 land, but the German States are supreme, to 
 Poland and Bohemia, to Serbia and Belgium. 
 Since modern Europe began there is no single
 
 INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 state in Europe of which it can be said that it has 
 been deprived of its natural territories, or that 
 its internal government has been permanently 
 warped by English supremacy. 
 
 But apart from this, the answer of any Eng- 
 lishman is simple when he hears the statement 
 that we are threatening Germany with annihila- 
 tion. There is one person, and one only in this 
 country, who is qualified to express authorita- 
 tively the objects with which England has 
 entered the war, and those which she puts before 
 herself for attainment in the case that victory 
 attends her arms. Mr. Asquith has done this in 
 words which it is scarcely necessary to repeat : 
 
 We shall never sheathe the sword which we 
 have not lightly drawn until Belgium recovers 
 in full measure all and more than all that she 
 has sacrificed, until France is adequately secured 
 against the menace of aggression, until the rights 
 of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed 
 upon an unassailable foundation, and until the 
 military domination of Prussia is wholly and 
 finally destroyed. 
 
 And when the last sentence, as he himself 
 points out, was first misquoted by the Chancellor 
 and then its obvious meaning and intention dis- 
 torted, he explains again the object in language 
 which cannot be misinterpreted: 
 
 Great Britain, and France also, entered the war 
 not to strangle Germany, not to wipe her off the
 
 26 THE ISSUE 
 
 map of Europe, not to destroy or mutilate her 
 national life, certainly not to interfere with (to 
 use the Chancellor's language) " the free exercise 
 of her peaceful endeavours." . . . On several oc- 
 casions in the last ten years Germany had given 
 evidence of her intention to dictate to Europe 
 under threat of war, and in violating the neutral- 
 ity of Belgium she proved that she meant to es- 
 tablish her ascendancy, even at the price of a 
 universal war and of tearing up the basis of 
 European policy as established by treaty. The 
 purpose of the Allies in the war is to defeat that 
 attempt, and thereby pave the way for an inter- 
 national system, which will secure the principle of 
 equal rights for all civilised states. 
 
 As a result of the war we intend to establish 
 the principle that international problems must 
 be handled by free peoples, and that this settle- 
 ment shall no longer be hampered and swayed by 
 the overmastering dictation of a Government 
 controlled by a military caste. That is what I 
 mean by the destruction of the military domina- 
 tion of Prussia : nothing more, but nothing less. 
 
 The whole of this book is in fact a comment 
 on and an expansion of these words, to which in- 
 deed it might appear that nothing had to be 
 added. 
 
 It would be impertinent at the present time to 
 enter on any discussion as to the details of the 
 peace terms which would be demanded supposing 
 the Allies were victorious in the war. And there 
 is something profoundly undignified in declaring
 
 INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 what we propose to do before we know whether 
 we shall have the power to carry it out. It is, 
 however, to be regretted that some French and 
 English writers have given their support to plans 
 which, if there were any chance of their being 
 adopted by the Allied Governments, might justly 
 be interpreted as bringing about the annihilation 
 of Germany, the partition of the country, the 
 overthrow of the Empire. For this reason it 
 may be well, even during the stress of war, to 
 suggest that whatever the result may be, it is 
 essential to keep clearly in sight the cardinal 
 principles of European policy. 
 
 These are two. The first is that Europe is and 
 should remain divided between independent na- 
 tional states. The second that, subject to the 
 condition that they do not threaten or interfere 
 with the security of other states, each country 
 should have full and complete control over its 
 own internal affairs. 
 
 From the first springs what I call the Magna 
 Carta of Europe, the doctrine that the soil of 
 Europe is not subject to conquest and annexation. 
 
 There can be no permanent settlement of Euro- 
 pean discord until this is generally accepted. 
 The truth of it has been taught during the last 
 hundred years of diplomacy. Since the time of 
 the Reformation, nearly every war has been 
 fought for the acquisition of territory. Wars 
 will always continue so long as there is a prospect 
 that success will enable the victor to extend the
 
 28 THE ISSUE 
 
 bounds of his own country. Permanent concord 
 can only come when it is recognised that every 
 state has the right to be protected against dis- 
 ruption by the cooperation of all the others. If 
 at the end of this war the victory is used as vic- 
 tory has so often been used in the past, then there 
 evidently will be laid the foundations for a fur- 
 ther struggle in the future. 
 
 To this maxim, however, the Allies must be 
 faithful in victory, as they would claim that it 
 should be observed were they defeated. Just as 
 we repudiate the claim of Germany to annex any 
 part of the soil of France or Belgium on the right 
 of conquest, so we cannot claim to annex or con- 
 quer any part of the soil of Germany. However 
 complete is the defeat of the German army, how- 
 ever far the Allied troops penetrate on to Ger- 
 man soil, the warnings of centuries must guard 
 us against the irreparable error of attempting to 
 separate from Germany any districts which are 
 clearly and without dispute German. 
 
 This maxim is easy to state in general, but the 
 application is not so simple. It has to be deter- 
 mined what are the natural frontiers of each 
 nation. When that has been done they must be 
 assigned and guaranteed by the general agree- 
 ment of Europe. 
 
 What, then, are the natural limits of Germany ? 
 What is German soil? Of France we may say 
 with certainty that there is not perhaps a single 
 village which would claim to be transferred to
 
 INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 another state. The annexations of 1861 in Nice 
 and in Savoy have been ratified in the only way 
 in which annexation can be ratified, by the 
 willing acquiescence of the inhabitants. We 
 know what are the natural limits of Spain, and, 
 as a result of the war, those of Italy will also 
 have to be determined. But what about Ger- 
 many? 
 
 So much we may say, that nine-tenths of what 
 is now included in the Empire is and will always 
 remain German. Berlin and Cologne, Hamburg 
 and Carlsruhe, Breslau and Aachen and Mainz, 
 as to these there is no doubt. But there are 
 border districts, Alsace and Lorraine, the north 
 of Schleswig, parts of the Province of Posen, of 
 which this cannot be said. Of these at least we 
 may say that there is a question involved in them 
 which may properly be brought before the Tri- 
 bunal of Europe. Of these, but of no others. 
 
 It is useful to recall the title by which Ger- 
 many holds these doubtful districts. The north 
 of Schleswig is held by direct and cynical viola- 
 tion of the Treaty of Prague, to which Prussia 
 had been herself a partner. It had been deter- 
 mined by this that Schleswig should be divided, 
 and that the inhabitants of the northern and 
 border districts should be allowed themselves to 
 determine by their votes whether they should be- 
 come Prussian or Danish. This clause was in- 
 serted in the treaty between Prussia and Austria 
 by the desire of the Emperor Napoleon III, who
 
 3 o THE ISSUE 
 
 of course was the chief champion in Europe of 
 the rights of the population to determine their 
 own destiny. It was never carried out. The fall 
 of the Empire, combined with the events of 1870 
 and 1871, deprived France both of the will and 
 of the power to require its enforcement, and in 
 1878, when the new alliance was formed between 
 Germany and Austria, it was agreed that this 
 clause should be allowed to lapse. It is clearly 
 open to Europe to require that it should be re- 
 vived, and against this no valid objection can be 
 raised on the ground that to do so would be an 
 injustice to Germany. 
 
 Alsace and Lorraine are, of course, held in 
 virtue of the Treaty of Frankfort. It is a treaty 
 imposed on France by the power of the sword, 
 and one in which Europe as a whole was not con- 
 sulted. The Germans could claim on their side 
 historical right ; they deliberately refrained from 
 appealing for their sanction to the will of the 
 population. With regard to one portion, Metz 
 and districts in Lorraine, they were seized with a 
 cynical disregard of everything but the right of 
 the stronger and strategical reasons. The Treaty 
 of Frankfort was imposed by the sword, and it 
 can be dissolved by the same instrument by which 
 it was created. But it is essential that the ultimate 
 possession, whatever it may be, should be one de- 
 termined not merelyibetween France and Germany, 
 but agreed to and ratified by Europe as a whole. 
 
 The question of the Polish provinces of
 
 INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 Prussia is from the point of view of international 
 relations more complicated. The present divi- 
 sion of the country derives from the Treaty of 
 Vienna, arid received the formal and definite sanc- 
 tion of the assembled powers of Europe. It is 
 in fact the only part of those provisions of the 
 Treaty of Vienna, which dealt with the countries 
 which had been conquered by Napoleon, that has 
 not yet been revised. The settlement for Ger- 
 many and for Italy, for the Netherlands and for 
 Norway and Sweden, has in the course of the 
 last hundred years been overthrown. Norway, 
 Belgium, Germany, Italy, have in the process of 
 time each attained the position of a self-govern- 
 ing and independent state. Poland alone re- 
 mains; and on every ground of international 
 convenience, of public policy and political equity, 
 the time has come when that which has been done 
 for Italy and for Germany herself should also be 
 done for the Poles. The difficulties of the task 
 will be enormous; but at this moment there is 
 only one point on which it is necessary to insist, 
 and that is that it is as absurd to speak of the 
 restoration of Poland, even if this includes the 
 separation of certain Polish-speaking districts 
 from the German Empire, as the annihilation of 
 Germany, as it would have been absurd to speak of 
 the creation of a Kingdom of the Belgians as the 
 annihilation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands 
 or the emancipation of Lombardy and Venetia 
 as the annihilation of the Austrian Empire.
 
 32 THE ISSUE 
 
 The proposition that the nationality of these 
 frontier and doubtful districts should at the end 
 of this war come up for reconsideration is en- 
 tirely consistent with the principle that the policy 
 of Europe should be based on the mutual recog- 
 nition among national . states. Looking at the 
 matter without prejudice and without passion, 
 we may recognise that the justification for this is 
 to be found, not so much in the historical ground 
 on which they were acquired, but on the facts of 
 the present moment. There have been many 
 annexations in the last hundred years which will 
 not and cannot be revoked. Lombardy was won 
 for Italy by the power of the sword, and Holstein 
 was separated from Denmark; if no one sug- 
 gests that this verdict should be reversed, the 
 reason is that it was one entirely in accordance 
 with the wishes of the population. Ultimately 
 the fault of Germany is not so much that she 
 wrested Alsace from France in war, as that she 
 has shown herself unable to win the allegiance 
 of the inhabitants in peace. Over forty years 
 have elapsed since the Treaty of Frankfort ; had 
 the result been that the Alsatians had shown 
 themselves willing and enthusiastic adherents of 
 the German Empire, as the inhabitants of the 
 other border districts, Metz and Lorraine, showed 
 themselves loyal adherents of France after Louis 
 XIV had forcibly annexed them to his crown, 
 then there would have been no claim for Europe 
 to interfere. It is notorious that this has not
 
 INTRODUCTION 33 
 
 been the case. The inhabitants of the Province 
 of Posen have been subject to the Kingdom of 
 Prussia for a hundred years; there has been 
 full opportunity to win over their affection and 
 their loyalty; the opportunity has been lost. 
 
 And if Germany even the German Social- 
 ists with indignation declaim against any sug- 
 gestion for severing from the Fatherland any 
 portion of these border districts, and if they cry 
 out about the annihilation of Germany, we are 
 at least justified in recalling the profound disre- 
 gard and contempt with which the protests of 
 France and the remonstrances of Europe were 
 met in 1864 and 1871. The cry against the 
 annihilation of the Fatherland and the division 
 of the country, so far as it applies to these dis- 
 tricts, comes with an ill grace from a nation 
 which has shown such complete indifference to 
 similar appeals for mercy from others. 
 
 As it is with the determination of German 
 frontiers, so also with the internal arrangements 
 and constitution of Germany. Suggestions are 
 from time to time being made that the Allies 
 ought to put before themselves the object of un- 
 doing the work which was achieved in 1866 and 
 in 1871, by restoring those states which were 
 annexed by Prussia and by revising the treaties 
 under which Bavaria and the Southern States 
 gave their adherence to the North German Fed- 
 eration. These suggestions seem outside the 
 scope of practical policy. It is indeed true that
 
 34 THE ISSUE 
 
 no action of the Prussian Government was so 
 counter to every principle of international moral- 
 ity as the treatment of Hanover. This event, on 
 which English writers have been strangely silent, 
 forms a much securer basis for criticism of Prus- 
 sian methods than did the treatment of Schles- 
 wig-Holstein. But it is impossible to reverse the 
 verdict of history, for the annexation has been 
 condoned by the only people who have a right 
 to be heard, and that is by the Hanoverians them- 
 selves. The relations of Bavaria to Prussia have 
 become a matter of internal German policy just 
 as much as are those of Wales or Scotland to 
 England. On this Europe has no claim to speak 
 unless, indeed, there came at any time a cry for 
 help from the Bavarians themselves. 
 
 M. Yves Guyot has suggested in his book The 
 Causes and Consequences of the War, and also in 
 an article published in The Nineteenth Century 
 and After, that when the time comes to discuss 
 terms of peace " The seventeen members of the 
 Bundesrat who represent Prussia could not be 
 admitted [to the Peace Conference], for the fate 
 of Prussia cannot be determined by herself; it 
 must be settled by the conquerors." This frankly 
 seems to me as absurd as it would be, were Ger- 
 many to have won a complete victory in the war, 
 that she should claim that the British Empire 
 should be represented in the Peace Conference 
 by Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the Dominions, 
 but that no representatives from England should
 
 INTRODUCTION 35 
 
 be admitted. On what grounds are the inhab- 
 itants of Cologne and Diisseldorf, of Hesse- 
 Kassel, Hanover and Schleswig-Holstein (I omit 
 the old Prussian provinces) to be debarred from 
 the opportunity of taking their part in the con- 
 sultations on which the future welfare of Ger- 
 many must depend? 
 
 When M. Yves Guyot supports this and similar 
 suggestions on criticisms made by Prince Biilow 
 and others that the ancient spirit of particularism 
 was not dead in Germany, he omits to take 
 into consideration the result of a three years' war. 
 Whatever may have been the case before (and 
 as to this there can, I think, be no doubt that 
 Prince Biilow and other German critics, to a great 
 extent deliberately and for political purposes, 
 overestimated the forces of disunion in Ger- 
 many), there can be no doubt that now, by the 
 mere fact of the common share which they have 
 all taken in this great conflict, the German Na- 
 tion has been welded into a complete and indis- 
 soluble unity in the same way in which Prussia 
 was so welded in the Seven Years' War. 
 
 We have these two great principles, and they are 
 principles to which the Allies have already given 
 their adhesion. To them they must remain true. 
 
 It may be objected, and it doubtless will be, 
 that in this criticism of the suggestions of many 
 eminent and patriotic writers, I am allowing 
 myself to be influenced by the desire that there 
 should be no humiliation for Germany. As to
 
 3 6 THE ISSUE 
 
 this I can only say that the " humiliation of 
 Germany " is not an object to be attained for its 
 own sake, but only so far as it will lead to a better 
 organisation of Europe in the future. Apart 
 from and beyond this, the " humiliation of 
 Germany " is certainly not worth the life of a 
 single British soldier. It has often been pointed 
 out that in these great matters of international 
 relations, it is unwise to allow ourselves to be 
 guided by sentiment rather than by reason and 
 calculation. But there is a sentiment of hatred 
 as well as of respect and affection, and the indul- 
 gence of the passion of hatred, however justified 
 it may be, is, as a practical guide, just as danger- 
 ous as that of sympathy. The " humiliation of 
 Germany " would be necessarily and implicitly in- 
 volved in the defeat of the German armies and the 
 disappointment in the ambitions with which the 
 war began; it would also arise from the con- 
 sciousness of the loss of respect which had arisen 
 from the manner in which the war has been con- 
 ducted. Beyond this it does not appear to be 
 a definite object of such a nature that a states- 
 man would put it before himself for its own 
 sake. 
 
 
 
 I have throughout this book deliberately re- 
 frained from referring to those questions involved 
 in the methods by which the Germans have con- 
 ducted the war. I have done so, not from any 
 indifference, for how could anyone be indif-
 
 INTRODUCTION 37 
 
 ferent to acts which threaten to undermine the 
 whole basis of modern European civilisation? 
 But it seems to me desirable to separate the con- 
 sideration of this matter entirely from the purely 
 political questions which are at stake, even though 
 these other considerations are (as I think is 
 still the case) more important. For the same 
 reason I have not considered the claims which 
 the Germans make that their culture and civilisa- 
 tion is superior to that of other nations. I care 
 not whether this claim is just or is foolish. What- 
 ever view we might take of this matter, it cannot 
 be contended that the superiority of modern Ger- 
 man society is more superior to that of France 
 and of England than was the civilisation of the 
 France of Louis XIV to the Germany which 
 emerged from the Thirty Years' War, or the 
 political condition of England to that of the Con- 
 tinent during the eighteenth century. But in 
 modern Europe no temporary superiority pos- 
 sessed for a few decades by a single state can be 
 made the justification for permanent political 
 ascendancy. No passage in Prince Billow's 
 recent work is wiser or more remarkable than 
 that in which he warns the Germans against too 
 insistent encomiums of their own culture, and 
 reminds them that the world fears a hegemony 
 of culture even more than political supremacy. 
 
 When will peace come? It will come when 
 Germany is ready for it, and the time is approach-
 
 38 THE ISSUE 
 
 ing. It will come when Germany has learnt the 
 lesson of the war, when it has found, as every 
 other nation has had to learn, that the voice of 
 Europe cannot be defied with impunity. It will 
 come when Germany is ready to repudiate the 
 persons and the principles that made the war in- 
 evitable, when the militarists and the chauvinists 
 have become a despised and repudiated remnant, 
 when the nation says : 
 
 To you we listened, and you we have obeyed, 
 to you we have sacrificed all that holds us to life, 
 the lives of our sons and our husbands and our 
 fathers, the ideals and beliefs of our ancestors, 
 and our own better nature. You have offered us 
 wealth and power and the kingdoms of this world, 
 and we accepted your offer and your promise, 
 and what have we ? For them we have bartered 
 our all, and there is nothing in return but hunger 
 and cold and nakedness, disease and death, ruin 
 and destitution. Never in the history of the 
 world has there been such unanimity in sacrifice ; 
 before our deeds the armies of Napoleon may 
 bow the head, and what have we won by it ? Two 
 years ago the world was at our feet, to our cities 
 men came from every land, and in every land 
 our merchants were the most prosperous, our 
 products were the most used, and it was our 
 thoughts that men thought. And now travel 
 round the globe, and we are the despised and 
 hated of mankind, we have the curse of Cain on 
 our brow, men shun us in the streets, and our 
 language is ostracised. To you we owe it that
 
 INTRODUCTION 39 
 
 the achievements of a century of national effort 
 have been lost. 
 
 Germany asks for security; she shall have it 
 precisely the same security that France and 
 Russia and Italy and Holland enjoy; a security 
 based partly on her own strength, but even more 
 on the recognition of the laws and principles of 
 Europe. Germany asks for guarantees ; she shall 
 have them precisely the same guarantees with 
 which every other state has to be content; the 
 guarantee that the tyrannical overgrowth of any 
 one state or confederation of states will inevi- 
 tably arouse in the rest of Europe a coalition be- 
 fore which every nation, even the strongest, must 
 bow. These laws of European life have been 
 learnt in the course of centuries by all nations and 
 accepted, and they have always been learnt in 
 the same way, in the bitter school of experience 
 and war. Germany is now learning the lesson, 
 and the war will continue till the lesson has been 
 completed; then it will stop. It will stop when 
 it has been burnt into the heart of the whole na- 
 tion so that it will never be forgotten. Men talk 
 of the terms of peace. They matter little. With 
 a Germany victorious no terms could secure the 
 future of Europe, with a Germany defeated no 
 artificial securities will be wanted, for there will 
 be a stronger security in the consciousness of 
 defeat.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 1 
 
 ONCE more the German Chancellor has made a 
 speech in which he has for the fourth time re- 
 peated in almost identical words his definition 
 of the reasons which brought Germany into the 
 war. Again we have had a debate in the Reichs- 
 tag, 2 in which the Chancellor and the party 
 leaders have repeated their catechism and have 
 told us their story of a peaceful Germany occupied 
 only in the work of quiet development at home, 
 forced unwillingly into war and waging it with 
 the single desire to obtain security against another 
 attack, and once more we see them attempting 
 to make England responsible for not only the 
 beginning but the continuation of the war. 
 
 It will, therefore, be worth while to examine 
 what evidence we have as to the real aims which 
 the " peaceful " German Nation have in fact put 
 before themselves. This will put in a truer light 
 the rhetoric of the Chancellor. I propose, there- 
 fore, shortly to examine the most authentic 
 expressions of German national feeling and to 
 compare them with his speeches. In doing so, I 
 
 1 The Nineteenth Century and After, May, 1916. 
 
 2 April 5, 1916.
 
 42 THE ISSUE 
 
 shall confine myself to those who can speak with 
 some authority, as, for instance, the official 
 spokesmen of the parties, and shall neglect the 
 overwhelming mass of material provided in news- 
 papers and magazines, so far as it can be repre- 
 sented to be merely the expression of private and 
 individual opinion. 
 
 First let us take two important documents 
 issued in the spring and summer of last year. 
 The one is a petition to the Chancellor, originally 
 drawn up in the month of March, 1915, and again 
 presented to him in May by six economic associa- 
 tions. These societies together represent all 
 classes in the Empire with the exception of the 
 working classes (whose interests are represented 
 by the Social Democrats, the Christian Socialists, 
 and the trade unions). They correspond to the 
 union of all the biirgerliche, or non-socialistic 
 parties in the Reichstag, of which we shall have 
 to speak below. The associations themselves 
 have very large numbers of members, and they 
 have affiliated branches in all parts of the country. 
 They are not confined to Prussia, they include 
 the manufacturers of Saxony and the peasant 
 proprietors of Wurttemberg. They have all been 
 founded at different times since the adoption 
 of protection converted German politics into a 
 struggle for supremacy between rival industrial 
 and financial claims. One of their chief duties, 
 as it is indeed the prime reason for their existence, 
 is the defence of the economic interests of their
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 43 
 
 members in connection with the discussion of 
 tariff and taxation; they have therefore a very 
 active and real importance, they represent not 
 so much opinions as interests, and for this reason 
 their decisions carry weight with the Reichstag 
 and the Government; a joint resolution by them 
 cannot be dismissed as negligible, rather it is the 
 weightiest form in which the wishes of the active 
 and driving elements in the nation could be ex- 
 pressed. Generally they are rivals and oppo- 
 nents; this is probably the first time that they 
 have all been found in agreement, but just for 
 this reason their unanimity gives to their mani- 
 festo a weight which can rarely belong to any 
 similar expression of opinion. 1 
 
 The second document (which purports to 
 emanate from "leaders of German thought") is a 
 manifesto drawn up in June, 1915, for the purpose 
 of being presented to the Chancellor ; it was pub- 
 lished in Berne in August. It is said to have re- 
 ceived thirteen thousand signatures, but a list of 
 the names is not attainable, nor is it clear when, if 
 ever, it was in fact presented to the Chancellor. 
 On all main points, though the wording is differ- 
 ent, it is in substance identical with the petition of 
 the economic associations, and the two clearly 
 have a common intellectual origin, unless indeed 
 (as is perhaps more probable) the ideas and de- 
 mands that they incorporate are so generally dif- 
 
 1 The two manifestoes are printed at length in the Appen- 
 dixes.
 
 44 THE ISSUE 
 
 fused among the more energetic and pushing 
 circles that the similarity of language merely in- 
 dicates how faithfully these documents reproduce 
 the prevailing opinion. 
 
 What we may call the preamble is common 
 form, common to all discussions of peace in all 
 nations. Both begin by protesting against the 
 idea of an immature peace or an indecisive peace. 
 
 The present war must be followed by an 
 honourable peace, corresponding to the sacrifices 
 made and containing in itself the guarantee of its 
 endurance. 
 
 It must never be forgotten that our enemies 
 declare unceasingly that Germany must be an- 
 nihilated and struck out from the list of great 
 Powers. In view of such aspirations we find no 
 protection in treaties which will be trampled 
 underfoot at the opportune moment. Our only 
 guarantee consists in an economic and military 
 enfeeblement of our adversaries, such that, 
 thanks to it, peace will be ensured for a period 
 as long as can be taken into consideration. 
 
 So far the economic associations. We have 
 similar language from the " leaders of German 
 thought " : 
 
 We want to defend ourselves with all our 
 might against the repetition of such an attack 
 from the other side, against a whole succession 
 of wars and against the possibility of our enemies 
 again becoming strong. Moreover, we are deter- 
 mined to establish ourselves so firmly, on such a
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 45 
 
 broad expanse of securely won homeland, that our 
 independent existence is guaranteed for genera- 
 tions to come. . . . Only one fear exists in all 
 classes of our people, that mistaken ideas of 
 atonement, or even nervous impatience, might 
 lead to the conclusion of a premature peace which 
 could never be lasting it may be that, owing 
 to the numerical superiority of our enemies, we 
 cannot obtain everything we wish in order to 
 secure our position as a nation, but the military 
 results of this war obtained by such great sacri- 
 fices must be utilised to the very utmost possible 
 extent. 
 
 We will pass over these preliminary remarks: 
 this general conception of the situation a Ger- 
 many which is to defend itself against threats 
 of annihilation, and does so by weakening its 
 enemies to such an extent that it need fear no 
 attack in future. We will turn for the moment 
 to the particular manner in which these desirable 
 results are to be obtained ; for what is remarkable 
 in these documents is not the vague generalities 
 with which they begin, but the precision with 
 which they are worked out in detail. Though 
 the wording is different the requests of the two 
 are, in fact, identical. 
 
 First let us take the " Leaders of Thought." 
 
 i. FRANCE 
 
 After being threatened by France for cen- 
 turies, and after hearing the cry of vengeance 
 from 1815 till 1870, and from 1871 till 1915, we
 
 46 THE ISSUE 
 
 wish to have done with the French menace once 
 for all. All classes of our people are imbued with 
 this desire. There must, however, be no mis- 
 placed attempts at reconciliation (Versohnungs- 
 beinilhungen) , which have always been opposed 
 by France with the utmost fanaticism; and as 
 regards this we would utter a most urgent warn- 
 ing to Germans not to deceive themselves. Even 
 after the terrible lesson of this unsuccessful war 
 of vengeance France will still thirst for re- 
 venge, in so far as her strength permits. For 
 the sake of our own existence we must ruthlessly 
 weaken her both politically and economically, 
 and must improve our military and strategical 
 position with regard to her. For this purpose, in 
 our opinion, it is necessary radically to improve 
 our whole western front from Bel fort to the 
 coast. Part of the North French Channel coast 
 we must acquire, if possible, in order to be strate- 
 gically safer as regards England and to secure 
 better access to the ocean. 
 
 Special measures must be taken to avoid 
 the German Empire in any way suffering inter- 
 nally owing to this enlargement of its frontier 
 and addition to its territory. In order not to 
 have conditions such as those in Alsace-Lorraine, 
 the most important business undertakings and 
 estates must be transferred from anti-German 
 ownership to German hands, France taking over 
 and compensating the former owners. Such 
 portion of the population as is taken over by us 
 must be allowed absolutely no influence in the 
 empire. 
 
 Furthermore, it is necessary to impose a merci-
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 47 
 
 lessly high war indemnity (of which more here- 
 after) upon France, and probably on her rather 
 than on any other of our enemies, however ter- 
 rible the financial losses she may have already 
 suffered owing to her own folly and British self- 
 seeking. We must also not forget that she has 
 comparatively large colonial possessions, and that, 
 should circumstances arise, England could hold 
 on to these with impunity if we do not help our- 
 selves to them. 
 
 2. BELGIUM 
 
 On Belgium, on the acquisition of which so 
 much of the best German blood has been shed, 
 we must keep firm hold, from the political, mili- 
 tary and economic standpoints, despite any argu- 
 ments which may be urged to the contrary. On 
 no point are the masses more united, for without 
 the slightest possible doubt they consider it a 
 matter of honour to hold on to Belgium. 
 
 From the political and military standpoints 
 it is obvious that, were this not done, Belgium 
 would be neither more nor less than a basis from 
 which England could attack and most danger- 
 ously menace Germany ; in short, a shield behind 
 which our foes would again assemble against us. 
 Economically, Belgium means a prodigious in- 
 crease of power to us. 
 
 In time also she may entail a considerable 
 addition to our nation, if in course of time the 
 Flemish element, which is so closely allied to us, 
 becomes emancipated from the artificial grip of 
 French culture and remembers its Teutonic 
 affinities.
 
 48 THE ISSUE 
 
 As to the problems which we shall have to 
 solve once we possess Belgium, we would lay 
 special stress on the inhabitants being allowed no 
 political influence in the empire, and on the 
 necessity for transferring from anti-German to 
 German hands the leading business enterprises 
 and properties in the districts to be ceded by 
 France. 
 
 But this is only one sector of the war: there 
 must be a similar extension of territory in the 
 East. " Russia is so rich in territory that she 
 will be able to pay an indemnity in kind by giving 
 lands, but lands without landlords." But let it 
 not be thought that Germany is going to conclude 
 the war without similar surrender by Great 
 Britain in the colonial field. " We must sup- 
 plant the world-trade of Great Britain." The 
 alliance with Austria-Hungary and Turkey will 
 open up the Balkans. " Thus we shall assure 
 ourselves of the Persian Gulf against the preten- 
 sions of Russia and Great Britain." To this is 
 to be added a new African Empire : " In Africa 
 we must reconstitute our Colonial Empire." 
 " Central Africa is only a huge desert, which 
 does not offer enough colonial wealth. We there- 
 fore require other productive lands, and herein 
 is to be found the importance of our alliance with 
 Islam and the utility of our maritime outlet." 
 " We must have Egypt that is where England 
 must be shaken. The Suez Canal route will then 
 be free, and Turkey will regain her ancient right."
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 49 
 
 The petition of the economic associations is 
 equally definite; they demand the incorporation 
 with Germany of the whole of Belgium, the ad- 
 jacent districts of France, including the coast as 
 far as the mouth of the Somme that is, the 
 whole coast of the Channel with Calais and 
 Boulogne, and the frontier borders of the Vosges, 
 including Belfort and Verdun. In the East they 
 ask for the annexation of at least part of the 
 Baltic Provinces with the districts to the south 
 of them that is, at least a large portion of the 
 Kingdom of Poland. If the demands in this 
 direction are comparatively moderate, this is to 
 be attributed to the fact that at the time the 
 petitions were drawn up the German occupation 
 of Poland was still incomplete. 
 
 These are the demands, the demands as formu- 
 lated a year ago. It will be well to keep them in 
 mind when we read these self-complacent expla- 
 nations of the Chancellor that Germany has in the 
 war no object but security and self-defence, and 
 that they have no lust for world-dominions. 
 
 But those who wish to understand the motives 
 and principles of these new statesmen should not 
 omit to consider the exposition of the reasons for 
 the annexations in Europe, and the choice of the 
 territories to be taken. We feel that we have to 
 do with modern men ; they are not romanticists, 
 they do not trouble us with the historical argu- 
 ments which were dear to the Germans of the 
 old school, nor is there any suggestion that
 
 5 o THE ISSUE 
 
 this reunion may be justified on the ground of 
 nationality. 
 
 The grounds are double : military and economic. 
 As to the first, the military and strategic point: 
 " Belgium must be annexed, as otherwise it would 
 be a point d'appui for England against us " ; and 
 as to France we have a sentence which alone 
 sums up the whole of German military thought. 
 " The lines of natural fortification of France, if 
 they remained in the hands of the French, would 
 constitute a permanent menace against our 
 frontier." This is one of those pregnant state- 
 ments the full signification of which grows upon 
 one. The natural line of fortifications of France, 
 is not that the defence of France, are not the 
 fortifications situated on the natural soil of 
 France, the barriers on the road into the country ? 
 Are they not the lock to the door, the drawbridge 
 and portcullis by which invaders, robbers, free- 
 booters are excluded? But they are a per- 
 manent menace to the German frontier; the 
 security of other nations is a menace to Germany. 
 What language is this, in what other country 
 could it have been used? Let us be done with 
 the childish talk of the " peaceful " German 
 nation, let us recognise that here we have not 
 from the mouth of the Government, not from 
 Prussian militarism, but from the leaders in 
 business and commerce, from those occupied 
 with the peaceful arts of husbandry and manu- 
 facture, the pure and unadulterated voice of the
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 51 
 
 tyrant State. Germany is to be protected by a 
 triple wall which guards her against every assault, 
 but the land of her neighbours is to lie open and 
 unprotected to every assault of the robber bands. 
 
 Germany is to have full security, a security 
 to be attained by a strategic frontier. But what 
 about France? Has not Metz for forty years 
 been held by Germany in conscious and deliberate 
 violation of every principle of nationality for no 
 other reason than that it should be used as a 
 sally-port, giving Germany the control of the 
 passage of the Vosges, a military position held on 
 the very soil of France itself, a pistol directed 
 against Paris? Germany is to have her strategic 
 frontier, but is not Italy entitled also to ask 
 for the same thing? In the final settlement of 
 Europe is Austria to continue to hold the passage 
 into Italy and from the summit of the Alps 
 dominate the plains of Lombardy and Venetia? 
 
 But these associations are not, of course, 
 primarily responsible for military matters; on 
 economic matters they speak with authority. 
 Their work comes in the division of the spoil. 
 The loot is not to be taken hastily and indis- 
 criminately, they will choose what is valuable 
 and leave the dross. They count up the spoil 
 of France and Russia, as the mother of Sisera 
 counted up the spoil from the slaughtered 
 Israelites. " Have they not sped ? Have they 
 not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or 
 two; to Sisera a prey of divers colours of needle-
 
 52 THE ISSUE 
 
 work, meet for the necks of them that take the 
 spoil?" 
 
 But there was no prey for Sisera and the 
 Amalekites ; only the waters of the river Kishon 
 and the lonely death in a desert tent. " So let 
 all thine enemies perish, O Lord," and then per- 
 haps " the land will have rest forty years." 
 
 Nothing is to be taken from France except for 
 strategic reasons which has no economic value. 
 
 What gives a nation wealth and power? 
 Mineral resources therefore the territory to be 
 annexed from France must be chosen to include 
 the mining district of Briey, and in addition the 
 coal areas in the Departments of Le Nord and the 
 Pas de Calais. 
 
 This with the coast-line will enable full use 
 to be made of the canals and enable the ports at 
 the mouth of the canals to assume their full 
 importance. The security of the German Empire 
 in a future war imperiously calls for all the beds 
 of minerals, including the fortresses of Longwy 
 and of Verdun, without which these mineral beds 
 cannot be protected. The possession of great 
 quantities of coal, and especially of coal rich in 
 bitumen, which abounds in the basin of the 
 North of France, is, at least in as great measure 
 as iron ore, decisive for the issue of the war. 
 Belgium and the North of France together pro- 
 duce more than forty millions of tons. 
 
 Here we have the very essence of Realpolitik. 
 It is naked and undisguised. You are rich and I
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 53 
 
 am strong, you have coal and iron and wealth 
 which I should like to have. My armies are 
 stronger than yours, and if I take these they will 
 become even stronger and yours will become 
 weaker. Therefore I will take them. 
 
 In this way the industrial resources of the 
 Empire will be increased. But experience has 
 shown that the prosperity of a nation and its 
 success in war require a certain equilibrium be- 
 tween industry and agriculture. " The present 
 economic structure of Germany has proved so 
 favourable in the present war that the necessity 
 for maintaining it ... may well be considered 
 as the general conviction of the people." And as 
 we all know, the political equilibrium of Germany 
 depends on a working compromise between the 
 great industrialists and what we call the landed 
 interest. In England we have neglected this, 
 industrial interests look on the landed classes 
 rather as a hostile interest to be kept down ; the 
 Germans are wiser. And so, as the two industrial 
 societies have chosen their share in the plunder, 
 the agriculturists must be treated with no less 
 generosity. Rivals at home, the two interests 
 coalesce in plundering other nations. The very 
 fact that the best mining districts are taken from 
 France is a reason why extensive agriculturist 
 districts should be taken from Russia. 
 
 And again Germany wants men. 
 
 If Germany failed to annex agriculturist ter- 
 ritories on our eastern frontier, we should be
 
 54 THE ISSUE 
 
 restricting the possibility of increasing by a suf- 
 ficient growth of the population of Germany her 
 military power as against Russia. . . . National 
 popular vigour depends on a vigorous agriculture, 
 and it is necessary to ensure the growth of our 
 population and to strengthen by that very means 
 our military power. 
 
 A mere Englishman or Frenchman might here 
 make objection that if districts already occupied 
 by alien and probably hostile races are annexed 
 they will not really increase German power, but 
 prove a source of weakness. But German science 
 neglects nothing, and he will find this objection 
 anticipated. It is an obvious danger to be 
 removed. This is easy enough : easy, at least, 
 to those who have freed their minds from " senti- 
 ment." The present owners will be expropri- 
 ated and German settlers placed on the land 
 in their place. " We must make possible a 
 German agrarian colonisation on a large scale, 
 and the repatriation upon German territory of 
 German peasants living abroad, and especially 
 in Russia." 
 
 These territorial increases assume that the 
 population of the annexed territories will not be 
 able to obtain a political influence upon the 
 destinies of the German Empire, and that all 
 the sources of economic power in these territories, 
 including properties great and small, will pass 
 into German hands.
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 55 
 
 This is at least simple; the French and Rus- 
 sians will be turned out, and their place will be 
 taken by Germans. The mistake made in dealing 
 with Alsace-Lorraine .will not be repeated. Lille 
 and Warsaw will not only be annexed by Ger- 
 many, they will become German. Could anything 
 be more satisfactory? 
 
 There will be no difficulty in doing this ; the cost 
 of the expropriation will be borne by France and 
 by Russia. It will be part of the war indemnity. 
 
 Do not let it be thought that it is the associa- 
 tions alone who advocate these measures. They 
 receive the full approval of the " leaders of 
 thought." " In order not to have conditions such 
 as those in Alsace-Lorraine the most important 
 business undertakings and estates must be trans- 
 ferred from anti-German ownership to German 
 hands, France taking over and compensating 
 the former owners." As in France, so also in 
 Russia. 
 
 It will be convenient to consider for a moment 
 this last demand which is common to the two 
 documents. Here we have deliberately put 
 forward by large numbers of highly influential 
 Germans the request, not only for annexation 
 of the conquered territory, but annexation in such 
 a form that the inhabitants of the conquered pro- 
 vinces are to be deprived of all political rights and 
 disappropriated of their possessions, which are 
 to be transferred to German hands. In a word, 
 parts of Europe are to be treated as we should
 
 5 6 THE ISSUE 
 
 never treat conquered territories of Africa ; once 
 more the condition of subjects deprived of the 
 rights of citizenship, a condition which we 
 thought had been finally abolished from Western 
 Europe, is to be reestablished. Those who have 
 been citizens of the two freest countries in Europe 
 are to become Helots and outlanders. In their 
 own homes these French, these Belgian, these 
 Polish subjects are to become as Rayahs or 
 Fellaheen of the Turkish Empire. They are to 
 be hewers of wood and drawers of water for their 
 German lords. Two years ago it would, I think, 
 have been considered impossible that a sugges- 
 tion of this kind for the treatment of any district 
 in Western Europe should have been made by 
 any civilised individual, but in truth the doctrine 
 of German Kultur drags us into strange places. 
 
 Many and strange indeed are the ideas that 
 spring up like weeds in the brains of Germany. 
 Turning over the pages of the Turmer, I find an 
 unknown writer who tells us that " Germans 
 abroad must be collected together." " As many 
 as possible of them must be rescued from their 
 present position." This must be done by far- 
 reaching transplantation. 
 
 In a time of the mass movement of the armies, 
 we must not shrink from mass movements of the 
 population. William the Second must carry out 
 on a great scale a policy of transplanting adopted 
 by the Assyrian and Babylonian kings. Why 
 not, for instance, drive out the Walloons of
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 57 
 
 Belgium to France, Algeria, Morocco, Brazil, and 
 occupy the country with Germans? 
 
 At the beginning of the war I ventured to 
 compare the spirit of modern Germany with that 
 of the Assyrian kings it seemed a bold com- 
 parison, but I now find that it was even truer 
 than I thought. 1 My experience is that no sug- 
 gestion can be made so contrary to right reason 
 and to European tradition but it will soon be 
 outdone by some German writer. 
 
 It may be said that we need not trouble about 
 these wild thoughts, they will have no effect 
 in practice. We cannot content ourselves with 
 this. After all the fundamental conception of 
 the Germans as a superior race, annexing and 
 if necessary dispensing the lands of inferior 
 peoples, is in complete accord with the history 
 of the policy of Prussia. It is not merely the 
 chimera of a few exaggerated theorists. It has 
 behind it practical experience, and is merely the 
 reproduction, on a larger scale and under what 
 would be more favourable conditions, of what the 
 Prussian Government have already begun. The 
 proposed annexations in France and Belgium are 
 merely a repetition on a larger scale of what has 
 already been done in Schleswig and in Alsace- 
 Lorraine. And the method of expropriation is 
 the principle on which the Polish districts of 
 Prussia have in fact been governed for the last 
 
 1 England, Germany, and Europe. Macmillan.
 
 5 8 THE ISSUE 
 
 twenty years that the Poles should become 
 Germans, that the German language should be 
 substituted for Polish, and that the Polish landed 
 proprietors should be expropriated and make 
 room for Germans. The only difference is that, 
 while hitherto it has been necessary to do this 
 at the expense of the Prussian Government, the 
 fact that there has been a war would enable the 
 same ends to be carried out at the expense of 
 others, and with far better prospects of success. 1 
 We may even go further and recognise that 
 under modern conditions action of this kind is 
 the necessary result of annexation. We must not 
 look on these suggestions as the wild vagaries of 
 theorists. They are based on the recognition of 
 a practical truth. The modern state, depending 
 as it does on universal suffrage and universal 
 military service, requires a certain amount of 
 homogeneity of feeling among the inhabitants. 
 Its close texture will not admit the presence of 
 large districts the people of which revolt from the 
 fundamental principle on which the state is es- 
 tablished. You cannot have in a national state 
 such as France or Germany provinces which deny 
 assent to the nationality, refuse so far as they 
 can to accept the obligations which the state 
 requires from all its members, and use their 
 political power not to strengthen but to destroy 
 it. This the Germans have learnt from the pre- 
 
 1 The reader will find a considered defence of this policy in 
 Billow's Imperial Germany.
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 59 
 
 sence in the Reichstag of the Reichsfeindliche 
 parties, the Poles, the Danes, the Alsatians. In 
 an assembly summoned to assist in the govern- 
 ment of the Empire there is no place for those 
 whose only wish is either to destroy it or at least 
 to separate from it. Especially dangerous is the 
 presence of this element in the State when the 
 revolting provinces are situated on the very 
 frontiers of the country immediately contiguous 
 to its permanent enemies. Even now the pre- 
 sence of these alien enemies has been an embar- 
 rassment; were the numbers increased it would 
 be a serious danger. 
 
 If, then, there is to be annexation, it must be 
 followed by some such measure. These writers, 
 starting from the assumption that everything 
 that is for the strength of Germany must be 
 adopted, do not shrink from the conclusion that 
 annexation must be accompanied by that which 
 they rightly see is its logical conclusion. To this 
 end all must be sacrificed; justice, honour, hu- 
 manity are dismissed as mere sentiment. But 
 we will be thankful to them for pointing out to 
 us the dilemma, and we shall adopt the conclusion 
 that as this is the logical result of any annexation, 
 then the policy of annexation is ipso facto con- 
 demned not only for Germany, but for every other 
 civilised state, and boldly accept what is the 
 Magna Carta of our times that the soil of 
 Western Europe is not and cannot be the subject 
 of annexation and conquest.
 
 60 THE ISSUE 
 
 And what, if the suggestions of the petition 
 were carried out, would be the fate of the French- 
 men who still are to belong to France ? Belgians 
 there will be no more. 
 
 Before this new Germany, with its 80,000,000 
 inhabitants, this Germany which rules from the 
 mouth of the Somme to the Gap of Bel fort, this 
 Germany, whose frontier is brought within fifty 
 miles of Paris, what will be the position of 
 France, a France deprived of the great manufac- 
 turing districts of the North? It will have but a 
 precarious independence, enjoyed by the favour 
 of Germany, an independence such as that which 
 Austria would have deigned to allow to Serbia, 
 or Napoleon to Prussia. 
 
 It will doubtless be said: Why trouble about 
 these manifestoes? After all, they do not repre- 
 sent the opinion of the whole of Germany, and, 
 even if they did when they were drafted represent 
 what many thought, much has happened since 
 then; opinion is changing, the voice of reason 
 and moderation has been making itself heard. 
 This is true; men like Professor Delbrueck and 
 Harden, not to speak of the writers in papers 
 such as Die Hilfe, expressly or by implication, do 
 what they can to stem the effect of the more 
 extreme writers, and a careful reading of some of 
 the more important daily papers, such as the 
 Berliner Tageblatt and the Frankfurter Zeitung, 
 shows a growing desire for reconciliation and 
 peace, if not with England, at least with France.
 
 TWO MANIFESTOES 61 
 
 But this is just the reason why it is necessary to 
 keep these earlier expressions in mind. There 
 has been a change, the change is constantly work- 
 ing, the time will come when it is completed. 
 But the cause of the change has been the war, 
 and it is this change which is the best justification 
 for the continuance of the war, for the work is 
 not yet finished. Had Germany secured, as she 
 expected, a speedy and complete victory, it is by 
 the men whose words I have quoted that the 
 policy of the country would have been decided; 
 their demands would, if not completely at least 
 to a large extent, have been carried out. The 
 war will not have done its work till the very con- 
 ception of such schemes has been finally and 
 irrevocably eliminated from the German mind. 
 When this has been done, then Germany will 
 once more be ready to take her place as an equal 
 member of the European federation. 1 
 
 Both the petition and the manifesto were sup- 
 pressed by the German Government, no discus- 
 sion of them was permitted, and we do not know 
 to what extent they would have commanded the 
 support of the nation. The very fact of the peti- 
 tion being made was indeed most inconvenient to 
 the Government. What they show is the spirit 
 and the conception that were moving in the heart 
 of the German Nation; they show what Europe 
 would have had to face had Germany come trium- 
 
 1 As is pointed out below these proposals have received the 
 express approval of Premier Billow, see Chap. IV.
 
 62 THE ISSUE 
 
 phant out of the war. They were suppressed, for 
 the result was doubtful; we can be sure that 
 were victory secured these ideals would have 
 been pressed on the Government with great force, 
 and would have found expression in the Reichstag 
 and in public agitation. Against a condition 
 such as this, so far as it prevails, there is one 
 remedy only, war and defeat. With victory it 
 would thrive, and had Germany been victor, it 
 would have spread throughout the nation; with 
 every week that the war continues this spirit will 
 weaken and decay, and by defeat it would be 
 destroyed. 
 
 But it must not be thought that these docu- 
 ments are in contradiction to the general ten- 
 dency of German thought. If we leave out the 
 Assyrian element the essence of the whole is that 
 the result of the war must be an alteration in the 
 political condition and in the map of Europe, 
 the object of which will be to give to Germany 
 that complete security which can only be attained 
 by undisputed ascendancy. The essential thing 
 is that there are to be large annexations which 
 will completely guarantee the territory of Ger- 
 many from attack, and thereby leave all other 
 countries open and defenceless to attack from 
 Germany. An enlarged empire, an empire so 
 strong that no one alone or in coalition will be 
 able to attack it that is the avowed aim of 
 every responsible political leader or party.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE PARTY LEADERS 1 
 
 IT is well known that any discussion of the end 
 of the war is forbidden; none the less all the 
 German political parties have found an oppor- 
 tunity, both by their spokesmen in the Reichstag 
 and by formal resolutions of their committees, to 
 give their opinion on these matters. With the 
 one exception of the Socialists there is in these 
 opinions an absolute identity, and in all essentials 
 they are at one with the two manifestoes that we 
 have been considering. What they require is 
 terms of peace which shall give to Germany the 
 opportunity for free development of her power, 
 and as a means to this they demand such exten- 
 sion of territory as may be necessary for this 
 purpose. They differ from the manifestoes only 
 in this, that they do not attempt to determine 
 precisely how great the extension shall be. 
 
 It will be interesting to quote some of these 
 dicta. And first let us put that of the second 
 man in the Empire, the King of Bavaria : 
 
 The heavy sacrifices which the whole German 
 people has made, require that we shall not con- 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century and After, May, 1916.
 
 64 THE ISSUE 
 
 elude peace until the enemy has been over- 
 thrown, and we get a peace which, for as long as 
 we can foresee, ensures the free continuance of 
 every kind of development of the whole people, 
 till we have frontiers which will take away from 
 our opponents the desire of falling on us again and 
 calling upon enemy after enemy against us. 1 
 
 The German parties fall into three groups: 
 first, the Conservatives and National Liberals, 
 which together form the coalition on which the 
 Government depends. Side by side with them 
 are the two great independent parties, the Centre 
 and the Socialists. The opinion, as to peace, of 
 the government parties is unanimous. First we 
 have the Conservatives. The committee have 
 published their opinion; after speaking of the 
 necessity for overthrowing definitely the gigantic 
 power of the Russians and securing national 
 security in the East ; after pointing out that the 
 overthrow of England must always be kept in 
 the first rank as the most important object of 
 the war, it continues : 
 
 With the whole Conservative Party and with 
 the whole German people, the committee is at 
 one in the resolution not to shrink from any 
 sacrifice which is necessary to carry on the war 
 to a permanent and honourable peace which will 
 secure the foundations for the future of Germany. 
 
 1 These quotations are taken from a useful collection entitled 
 Deutsche Kriegszielkundgebungen, by Heinrich Michaelsen, Verlag 
 Edwin Runge, Berlin Lichterfelde.
 
 THE PARTY LEADERS 65 
 
 It will as a matter of course support all the annex- 
 ations which are necessary for this purpose. 
 
 On December 5 and 6, 1915, there was a com- 
 mon meeting of the Conservative and the Free 
 Conservative Parties; they came to the follow- 
 ing resolution : 
 
 . . . The German people is strongly and unani- 
 mously convinced that the great sacrifices in life 
 and wealth which it offers and will continue to 
 offer willingly and with enthusiasm must not be 
 in vain. They demand, as the aim of peace, a 
 Germany strengthened in its whole position, 
 enlarged beyond its present borders by retaining 
 the greatest amount of those territories which are 
 now occupied. These frontiers must be secured 
 from every attack on East and West, freedom on 
 the sea must be unconditionally guaranteed, and 
 a strengthening of our national power must be 
 secured which corresponds to our great stakes. 
 
 The National Liberals hold an important part 
 in German politics; they are connected by an 
 unbroken historical lineage with the great party 
 which before 1870 put themselves at the head of 
 the national movement for a united Germany; 
 they are the party which have above all others 
 given dignity and credit to parliamentary dis- 
 cussions. Their leader, Herr Bassermann, has on 
 several occasions explained the views of the party 
 on peace. In July, 1915, he tells us:
 
 66 THE ISSUE 
 
 As at the front our brave warriors persevere 
 in the heat of the conflict and will hear of no peace 
 which does not bring us the frontiers in which we 
 find security against future wars, those who re- 
 main at home stand firmly and decisively for an 
 energetic policy. . . . There can be no talk of a 
 policy which thinks of a restoration of the condi- 
 tion before the war the victor who in millions 
 of his best sons stakes his life for the fatherland 
 will bring back from the war a greater and 
 stronger Empire, a security in the future against 
 a new criminal war. 
 
 In an article in the Deutsche Kurier of Au- 
 gust 4, 1915, he speaks of the heroic nation: 
 
 Filled with the firm will for power for a 
 greater and stronger Germany, we do not aim at 
 Utopias in the Black Continent; it is not there 
 that our future lies. So long as England can 
 close the realm of proud Amphitrite all posses- 
 sions in other continents are insecure. It is on 
 the soil of Europe which has been manured by 
 blood that there is growing up for us a German 
 crop, and we will still the tears of those who have 
 given their dear ones if we can say to them: 
 Thy son, thy husband has fallen for this greater 
 and stronger Germany bloody sacrifices have 
 been offered, and more will fall; they must pro- 
 vide the foundation for a territorial expansion 
 of our country, for boundaries in the East and 
 West which wilt secure us peace for a generation. 
 
 In the Reichstag, in the debate of August 20, 
 1916, he spoke in similar language of the firm
 
 THE PARTY LEADERS 67 
 
 determination to secure frontiers in East and 
 West which would forbid the repetition of so 
 terrible a war. 
 
 The central committee of the party has ex- 
 pressly approved of his language, and in a meet- 
 ing of August 15 defined the objects of the war 
 as follows: 
 
 The result of the present war can only be a 
 peace which, by enlarging our frontiers on the 
 East and West and overseas, gives us military, 
 political, and industrial security against new 
 attacks, and recompenses the immense sacrifices 
 which the German people has made and is deter- 
 mined to continue until a victorious end. 
 
 The Freisinnige, or Progressive People's Party, 
 are the small remnants of the once powerful party 
 which upheld in Germany the cause of liberalism 
 and free trade. On this matter they do not 
 differ from those to whom they are generally 
 opposed. Their committee drew up a resolu- 
 tion on December 4 and 5, 1915. In this they 
 state : 
 
 The committee is convinced that the condi- 
 tions of peace must not offer to the German 
 Empire, as our opponents still continue to write, 
 at best restoration of the conditions before the 
 war, but rather permanent protection against 
 foreign attacks and a permanent increase of 
 power, of wealth, and, so far as its security seems 
 to require, also of territory.
 
 68 THE ISSUE 
 
 The Centre party are more cautious. They 
 do not definitely commit themselves to the re- 
 quirement of territorial annexation. In their 
 resolution of October 24, 1915, they say: 
 
 The external conditions for a prosperous de- 
 velopment of the German people are, as the 
 experiences of the war fairly show, increased 
 security against the military and industrial plans 
 of our enemy for our annihilation. The terrible 
 sacrifices which the country has laid upon our 
 people call for a strengthened protection of our 
 land in East and West, which will take from our 
 enemies the wish to fall upon us again and which 
 will permanently secure the industrial provision 
 for our growing population. To this increased 
 security of our Empire there must be added a 
 similar security for our allied States. 
 
 If they have not in their own party meeting 
 committed themselves to the policy of annexa- 
 tion, they joined in the common declaration made 
 by all the parties, except the Social Democrats, 
 in the great sitting of December 9, and it will be 
 noticed that the spokesman of this joint mani- 
 festation was Dr. Spahn, the leader of the Centre. 
 The declaration ends as follows: 
 
 We await in full unity, with quiet resolution, 
 and, let me add, in trust in God the hour which 
 makes possible peace negotiations, in which the 
 military, industrial, and political interest of Ger- 
 many must be completely and permanently se-
 
 THE PARTY LEADERS 69 
 
 cured, including those extensions of territory 
 which are necessary for this purpose. 
 
 We have, then, the unanimous declaration of 
 the parties in favour of annexations, the object of 
 which is what they call the security, what we 
 call the domination of Germany; for for them no 
 security is sufficient which leaves any one strong 
 enough to oppose their will. But these annexa- 
 tions must be the forcible conquest of men of 
 alien race, against their will. Where in Europe 
 is there a single village that desires to be annexed 
 to Germany? The end of the war is, then, ac- 
 cording to these men, to be a simple reversion 
 to the old law of conquest, a return to the days 
 when each state held its lands, as it had won 
 them, by the sword, and the politics of Europe 
 was an endless scheming and struggle for terri- 
 tory ; for that which is won by the sword may be 
 lost by the sword. 
 
 This solution is to make this war but one in an 
 endless chain of wars, but it is the one which the 
 responsible leaders are trying to force upon the 
 Government. 
 
 What credit, then, are we to give to the Chan- 
 cellor when in his latest speech (April 5, 1916) 
 he says: 
 
 What is it that gives us strength to continue 
 fighting? Who can seriously believe that it is 
 lust for an extension of our frontiers that inspires 
 our storming columns before Verdun, and makes
 
 70 THE ISSUE 
 
 them accomplish ever more heroic deeds? It is 
 not for a piece of foreign territory that Germany's 
 sons are bleeding and dying. 
 
 The united voices of the responsible and elected 
 representatives of the people give him the lie. 
 It is for an extension of territory that they are 
 fighting; it is by the attainment of this that the 
 tears of the mothers are to be stilled. If this is 
 not won, the sacrifices will have been in vain. 
 
 We will still the tears of those who have given 
 their dear ones if we can say to them: Thy son, 
 thy husband, has fallen for a greater and stronger 
 Germany; bloody sacrifices have been offered, 
 and more will fall; they must provide the foun- 
 dation for a territorial extension of our country. 
 
 And let it not be thought that time has made 
 any real change in their desires. The insistence 
 on annexation remains to-day. In the last 
 debate the Chancellor, as always, avoided the 
 word " annexation." His references to Belgium 
 were not explicit enough ; all that he spoke of was 
 the protection of the Flemings. It might seem 
 that he was hedging. His words did not satisfy 
 the assembly, and he had to be corrected. Once 
 more Dr. Spahn spoke as the mouthpiece of his 
 party, and this time he insisted that, at any rate 
 for Belgium, the proposals of the Chancellor were 
 insufficient.
 
 THE PARTY LEADERS 71 
 
 Peace aims must be power aims. The war 
 must end with a tangible result. Towards the 
 East the Chancellor has held one out to us; 
 towards the West he has spoken more guardedly. 
 In respect to Belgium he has said that we must 
 see to it that it shall no longer be an advanced 
 post of England, but as I conceive necessarily 
 follows pass militarily, politically, economically 
 into our hands. 
 
 It is to be noted that the Chancellor had avoided 
 saying this. Dr. Spahn gives to his words a force 
 which they did not really have. It is not an 
 explanation, but a correction ; the German " doss 
 Belgien in unsere Hdnde kommt" can have no 
 meaning but annexation. This is shown by the 
 continuation : 
 
 This leaves the political internal organisation of 
 the country untouched. This will be decided by 
 peace when it is really made. We wished for no 
 war of conquest, that I repeat with the Chan- 
 cellor, but now we must rectify our frontiers in 
 our own interests. Our enemies must not remain 
 untouched in their political and military nucleus. 
 
 What the Chancellor really meant is discussed 
 in Chapter III. He had obviously carefully 
 chosen his words so as to leave the way open for 
 a settlement which would secure full German 
 control without a formal annexation. This was 
 not enough for the representatives of the German 
 nation or the Centre Party. They would not be
 
 72 THE ISSUE 
 
 put off with anything short of an explicit declara- 
 tion that Belgium was to become German. 
 
 It is interesting to quote the comment of the 
 Kolnische V olkszeitung, one of the most impor- 
 tant Catholic papers in Germany : 
 
 Unfortunately the war aim, which the Chan- 
 cellor sketched for the West, is not so clearly 
 defined [as that for the East]. This the leader 
 of the Centre, Spahn, clearly showed. It is true 
 that the Chancellor promised that the occupied 
 countries in the West, in which the blood of the 
 people had flowed, should not be given up without 
 a complete security for the future. It is true that 
 the Chancellor again announced real guarantees 
 that Belgium should not become an English- 
 French vassal-state, and should not be used as 
 a military and industrial bulwark built out against 
 Germany. The Flemish race, which has so long 
 been kept down, must not again be given over to 
 Frenchification. But the stormy applause and 
 the clapping, with which his announcement of 
 war aims in the East was followed, could not 
 accompany these words of the Chancellor, be- 
 cause they sounded indefinite. It is to be wished 
 that the Chancellor had spoken with equal deci- 
 sion and firmness about the war aims in the West, 
 as Spahn did amid the applause of the House. 
 
 It is the old story they will be satisfied with 
 nothing less than that Belgium should come into 
 the absolute possession and control of Germany. 
 The rest of the debate illustrated this. The
 
 THE PARTY LEADERS 73 
 
 Socialist speaker protested against Dr. Spahn's 
 words, for he desired no violence to other na- 
 tions. The other speakers supported Dr. Spahn; 
 the National Liberal said that, as to Belgium, 
 " not only must the status quo ante be ex- 
 cluded, but the military, political, and economic 
 supremacy of Germany must be secured." The 
 Conservative speaker definitely expressed his 
 disagreement with the Socialists on this point: 
 " treaties would not be sufficient ; they must keep 
 a firm hold on the country." 
 
 Now, as at the beginning of the war, the aims 
 of the nation as expressed by the politicians are 
 the extension of the German Empire by the an- 
 nexation to it, or the permanent subjugation, of 
 at least Belgium and parts of Poland. 
 
 And even if there is, as seems to be the case, 
 a growing tendency to moderation in the state- 
 ment of the claim, this is due solely to the events 
 on the field of battle. As the difficulties of 
 achievement become more obvious the note be- 
 comes lower. Once again we see the effect of the 
 war. But let there be any weakness in the con- 
 duct of the war, let the French relax their almost 
 superhuman efforts, let the English give signs of 
 disunion, let the Russians hold out hopes of some 
 accommodation, and immediately the strident note 
 would once more be heard ; and we cannot doubt 
 that it would have been heard had the attack 
 on Verdun met with the success that was hoped 
 from it.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR AND 
 PEACE * 
 
 DURING the last few months the world has been 
 the witness of a new phenomenon the German 
 Chancellor as the emissary and apostle of peace. 
 If we are to believe his words there is nothing 
 which he and the German Government, of which 
 he is, if not the guide and leader, at least the 
 figure-head and mouthpiece, have so much at 
 heart as the peace of Europe and the freedom of 
 the smaller nations. He would persuade the 
 world that if the war continues it is not the 
 fault of Germany but of England, that his own 
 country, now as always the model of reason and 
 justice, does not stand in the way of a speedy and 
 permanent peace. 
 
 Those who have followed his previous attempts 
 to show that it was not Germany but England 
 that was responsible for the outbreak of the war 
 will not expect that he will have much greater 
 success in dealing with the conclusion of it. His 
 task is indeed as difficult in the one case as 
 
 1 The Nineteenth Century and After, July, 1916.
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 75 
 
 in the other, for there can be little doubt that 
 in both he is the advocate of a policy and actions 
 of which he disapproves, and has to defend be- 
 fore the public that which he opposed in the coun- 
 cil chamber; and one often feels that the very 
 violence and noisiness of his protestations are 
 evidence of the conscious weakness of his cause. 
 His attempts to throw the guilt on England need 
 not trouble us. England has broad shoulders, 
 and the experience of many centuries of history, 
 an experience which Germany has not enjoyed, 
 has made the nation indifferent to the misrepre- 
 sentations and calumnies which are the inevitable 
 accompaniment of a prolonged and bitter war. 
 The mind of the nation has long been made up. 
 We know that the present is the time not for 
 words but for deeds, and that it is by deeds, not 
 by words, that peace alone can be achieved. 
 England will go on her way and continue the 
 work that she has undertaken, not from any love 
 of it, but because no other course is possible. 
 
 But none the less it is worth while to inquire 
 what amount of truth underlies the campaign of 
 assurances and protestations that the Chancellor 
 has undertaken, for, if not here, there are some 
 in other countries who are inclined to be im- 
 pressed, and the constant reiteration of state- 
 ments, however remote from the truth, never 
 fails to have some effect on opinion. 
 
 What are the claims that he makes? We will 
 give them in his own words :
 
 76 THE ISSUE 
 
 Twice within the last few months Germany 
 has announced before the world her readiness to 
 make peace on a basis safeguarding her vital 
 interests, thus indicating that it is not Germany's 
 fault if peace is still withheld from the nations of 
 Europe. 
 
 These words are taken from Herr von Jagow's 
 despatch to the German Ambassador in America. 
 They are corroborated by an interview of the 
 Chancellor with the Chicago journalists on 
 May 23 : 
 
 Twice, publicly, I stated openly that Ger- 
 many was ready to negotiate on a basis which 
 would protect her against future attacks by a 
 coalition and secure the peace of Europe. 
 
 The two occasions referred to are, of course, 
 the Chancellor's speeches in the Reichstag in 
 December and April last. We had all read these 
 speeches and considered their bearing on the 
 question of peace. It was not easy to know how 
 much importance we should attach to them. We 
 were not disposed to criticise them very minutely ; 
 we remembered the difficulties with which he 
 was confronted. He was addressing an assembly 
 of his own people, and on these occasions it 
 seemed probable that it was the immediate rather 
 than the remoter audience which he had in mind. 
 His own countrymen might well be to him of 
 greater importance than the outer world. His
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 77 
 
 first duty must be to preserve unity at home. It 
 was not an easy one. 
 
 He was confronted by two great masses of 
 opinion supremely antipathetic to one another 
 and each very suspicious of him and the Govern- 
 ment. He could not risk offending either, and if 
 possible he must aim at maintaining the tem- 
 porary but uncertain truce which existed. On 
 the one side was the bloc of the biirgerliche par- 
 ties insistent that the war in which Germany had, 
 as it seemed to them, won such great successes, 
 should not be allowed to conclude without a strik- 
 ing addition to German strength and territory; 
 on the other side the Socialists, who insisted 
 that the war should not be continued a moment 
 longer than was necessary, and whose formula 
 was that no humiliation of other nations was per- 
 missible. If he offended the first his own position 
 would be compromised. We can well believe 
 that Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, who has 
 already sacrificed so much on the altar of patriot- 
 ism, would willingly leave the office he holds 
 were he to think that this would be for the benefit 
 of his country; but he could not but know that, 
 were he to fall, his place would in all probability 
 be taken by one who would be a mere instru- 
 ment in the hands of the chauvinists, and he 
 realises well how essential it is to keep up at least 
 the appearance of moderation. Did he alienate 
 the Socialists, then the unity of the nation would 
 be destroyed and the Government would no
 
 78 THE ISSUE 
 
 longer be assured of the moral support of the 
 nation, which alone would enable it to contend 
 against the hardships which he could see ap- 
 proaching. Were he to commit the Government 
 to a policy of annexation, a great agitation 
 would be started with the cry that the blood 
 of the German soldiers was being shed, not 
 for the protection of the Fatherland, but for 
 aggression. 
 
 We were, therefore, more inclined to regard 
 these speeches as evidence of the position of 
 parties and opinions in Germany than as a seri- 
 ous contribution to the question of peace. We 
 seemed justified in this view because the terms 
 held out were of such a kind that he must himself 
 have known that they could not for a moment 
 have been considered by the states with which 
 Germany is at war, as they were terms which 
 completely conceded to Germany every matter 
 of controversy. Now, however, the situation is 
 changed. The German Government officially 
 refers to them as proof that it is not Germany 
 which is prolonging the war. They are used to 
 throw the onus for this upon the Allies, and 
 especially upon England. We must, therefore, 
 examine them more carefully than we need other- 
 wise have done. 
 
 II 
 
 The Chancellor alludes to two speeches, but 
 we have in reality four, for on four occasions the
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 79 
 
 Chancellor has spoken of the end of the war, and 
 the two later to which he specifically refers can- 
 not be understood unless read in connexion with 
 the two earlier. 
 
 The first was delivered on May 28, 1915. It is 
 chiefly occupied with the change in the situation 
 caused by the entrance of Italy into the war. 
 At the end he considers the general position, and 
 sums it up in the following words : 
 
 Gentlemen, if the Governments of the coun- 
 tries hostile to us believe that they can put off 
 the day of awakening by deceiving the people 
 and can conceal the responsibility for the crime 
 of this war, they are stirring up blind hatred. 
 We, supported on our good confidence, on our 
 just cause, and on our victorious sword, will not 
 allow ourselves to be moved a hair's-breadth 
 from the course which we have recognised as the 
 right one. In the midst of this confusion of 
 spirit and feelings, the German people goes its 
 own way, quietly, and in confidence. It is not with 
 hatred that we wage this war, but with anger, 
 holy anger. The greater is the danger which, 
 surrounded by enemies on every side, we have to 
 endure, the more the love for our home stirs our 
 heart, the more we care for our children and 
 grandchildren, so much the more must we endure 
 till we have gained and created every possible 
 real guarantee and security, so that none of our 
 enemies not alone, not united will again 
 venture on a trial of strength with us. [Enthusi- 
 astic applause, shouts of " Bravo," and clapping
 
 8o THE ISSUE 
 
 of hands in the House and among the spectators.] 
 The wilder is the storm that rages round us, the 
 firmer must we build up our own house for 
 ourselves. 
 
 Here, then, we have the pose assumed by the 
 German Nation injured innocence, a just 
 cause, and a victorious sword. A glorious spec- 
 tacle; a nation disturbed in the peaceful work of 
 culture; but willingly she accepts the challenge 
 and goes her way surrounded by enemies a 
 modern Galahad without hate, but in holy anger. 
 Of course, we might point out that the holy anger 
 of the German Nation is lightly kindled, that 
 they do not know the difference themselves be- 
 tween hate and anger. Else why this collection 
 of one hundred poems of hate, of which Lis- 
 sauer's is merely the best known ; else why these 
 enthusiastic appreciations of the young art and 
 literature which are to be built up on the basis of 
 hate; else why Professor Sombart and Professor 
 Lasson, who tell us that the hatred of England is 
 shared by the whole nation down to the cab- 
 drivers of Berlin? 
 
 Not hate, but holy anger. The sentiment 
 seems strangely familiar. " I feel no hatred," 
 observed Mr. Pecksniff. " I am hurt, I am 
 wounded, but I have no malevolence. If there is 
 anger in my bosom it is, I hope, a sacred and, 
 shall I say, a holy emotion; but I do not hate 
 you, my good sir, I do not hate you."
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 81 
 
 That which concerns us, however, are the last 
 words, for they show what is the end to be 
 achieved "a real guarantee, a security," so 
 that " no one of our enemies, alone or united, 
 will ever again venture to take up arms against 
 us." 
 
 It is a thought which constantly recurs; it is 
 the key of his speeches, just as the freedom of 
 the small nations and the destruction of Prussian 
 militarism is that of Mr. Asquith's ; it is his one 
 contribution to the peace controversy. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In his next speech it is explained and expanded. 
 This was delivered on August 18. He could then 
 speak with greater decision and certainty; Ger- 
 many had won great and perhaps unexpected 
 successes. Warsaw had fallen, and nearly the 
 whole of Congress Poland was occupied by Ger- 
 man and Austrian troops. The English offensive 
 at Neuve Chapelle had failed; there seemed 
 every prospect that Germany would at the worst 
 be able to hold all she had won in the West, while 
 she could look forward to fresh conquests in the 
 East. 
 
 And so with even greater confidence he fore- 
 shadows the permanent " freedom " of Poland 
 from Russia, and in his peroration opens out the 
 prospect of a new Europe firmly established on 
 the victories of Germany :
 
 82 THE ISSUE 
 
 The war, the longer it lasts, will leave Europe 
 bleeding from a thousand wounds. The world 
 that will arise then shall and will not look as our 
 enemies dream. They strive for the restitution 
 of the old Europe . . . with a powerless Ger- 
 many as the tributary of a gigantic Russian Em- 
 pire. . . . No, this gigantic world war will not 
 bring back the old situation. A new must arise. 
 If Europe is to come to peace it can only be by the 
 inviolable and strong position of Germany. . . . 
 The English balance of power must disappear, 
 because it is, as the English poet Shaw recently 
 said, " a hatching of other wars." 
 
 We cannot read the last words without calling 
 to mind former speeches made on the same spot 
 by the greatest of his predecessors. Strange in- 
 deed it is to hear the successor of Bismarck ap- 
 pealing on the questions of international principle 
 and policy to the amateur diplomacy of an Eng- 
 lish playwright, and one is sure that no one will 
 have more readily recognised the full humour of 
 the position than the entertaining author whom 
 he quotes. It was not on such authorities that 
 Bismarck depended when he dealt with questions 
 of peace and war. But then he had spent a life- 
 time in studying the rules and principles of inter- 
 national relationships; the creation and dissolu- 
 tion of coalitions was to him the normal instru- 
 ment of policy. To him the attitude of his suc- 
 cessor would have been the incapacity of the 
 clumsy workman who will in a fit of irritation
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 83 
 
 throw away and destroy the machine which he is 
 incapable of using. 
 
 And observe the subtle dishonesty of this com- 
 parison. He speaks of the contrast of two 
 Europes that before 1870 and a Europe of 
 the future ; a Europe with a divided and helpless 
 Germany and a Europe in which Germany is the 
 sole predominant power. But there was another 
 Europe which he does not mention a Europe 
 in which Germany took its place as one among 
 the other kindred states strong, united, self- 
 governing, with full and complete opportunities 
 for internal development, and able to share in the 
 division and rule of other continents ; but a Ger- 
 many willing to keep its place as one of many 
 equal powers. There was such a Germany, the 
 Germany of the eighties, the Germany which 
 declined the very idea of further accessions of 
 territory, the Germany which was a satiated 
 state ; it was a Germany which just for this rea- 
 son enjoyed the confidence of other countries, 
 and was exposed to no attack. And this Germany, 
 when it naturally looked for colonial possessions, 
 recognised that all extension of influence and 
 territory must be the result of agreement and 
 bargaining with the other powers. And this 
 Germany, based on the inviolable security at 
 home, provided for its people a free scope for the 
 unparalleled development of their institutions, 
 both by growth at home and by free development 
 abroad.
 
 84 THE ISSUE 
 
 But much has changed since then. 
 
 At least we cannot complain that the pro- 
 gramme is obscure: the war is to be continued, 
 as he concludes his speech, " till the road becomes 
 free for the new liberated Europe, free of French 
 intrigue, Muscovite desire of conquest, and Eng- 
 lish guardianship." So a new Europe will arise 
 that is dependent entirely on Germany, a new 
 Europe in which Germany will be so strong as 
 to be unassailable, a new Europe which will be 
 freed from the influence of England and France 
 and Russia, and in which all nations will depend 
 for their freedom on Germany, for " we are and 
 will remain the shield of peace and freedom of 
 large and small nations." This will indeed be a 
 new Europe. There was an old Europe which we 
 all knew, a free and equal federation of states 
 and nations, joint inheritors of a common civili- 
 sation and common religion, in which each played 
 its part and contributed its own share to the 
 common life. Each is the guardian of its own 
 traditions, and all profit by the contributions of 
 the others. In this Europe no state can take 
 its share unless it is assured of full and complete 
 independence and political self-determination, 
 for, as none know so well and tell us so often as 
 the Germans, political sovereignty is the neces- 
 sary condition for the development of internal 
 culture. In the old Europe this independence and 
 sovereignty were maintained by a highly artifi- 
 cial equilibrium which secures that no state can
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 85 
 
 be deprived of its independence, for each can 
 appeal to the protection of the common con- 
 science. It is the justice which, as we learn from 
 Plato, is the union of the weak against the strong, 
 and is the only protection against the tyrant or 
 the tyrant state. It was a Europe in which, side 
 by side with Germany and Austria, England, 
 France, Italy and Russia each played its part, 
 and in which the ruling and controlling force 
 was to be found not in the arbitrary power of 
 a single state, but in the result of the discus- 
 sions, negotiations, and compromises between 
 them all. 
 
 This Europe the Chancellor would destroy, 
 and the announcement of his purpose he calls 
 suggestions for peace. By the refusal to con- 
 sider any such terms " our enemies," he says, 
 " will incur a terrible blood-guiltiness." 
 
 We can picture to ourselves this new Europe 
 which he will create in its place, this Europe 
 freed from the English doctrine of the balance of 
 power. We know it well: it was the Europe 
 that Napoleon created. A Europe in which there 
 is a single emperor throned in his imperial city, 
 surrounded by an obsequious band of subject and 
 obedient princes, who attend and decorate his 
 court, and who at the call of war will lead out 
 their armies to take their place by his side. A 
 Europe in which the mineral wealth and manu- 
 facturing skill of the Poles and Flemings would 
 be at the service of the German system as surely
 
 86 THE ISSUE 
 
 as if they were incorporated in one of the Ger- 
 man States. If this were won, then indeed the 
 war would not have been fought in vain by Ger- 
 many, and this is the aim which the Chancellor 
 constantly puts before his people, disguised 
 under the specious phrase " security." For why 
 is this change from the old Europe to the new to 
 be made ? For the security of Germany. It is a 
 high price we are asked to pay. Germany wishes 
 to pursue her peaceful work of culture free from 
 the menace of foreign invasion. It is a natural 
 desire. It is what every state wishes, and that to 
 which the policy of every state has been directed. 
 It is an idea that should be attained by all. To a 
 large extent it has, as a matter of fact, been won 
 for England alone, and it is just for this reason 
 that no other country can so well sympathise as 
 can England with the desire of other states. We 
 have often heard in the past of this security. 
 It was for this that the Allies fought and won in 
 1814. It was then established by mutual agree- 
 ment between the Powers, and by the system 
 under which no one power was so great that it 
 could with impunity assail any other, and by so 
 arranging the map of Europe that if any one 
 state threatened the common security of the 
 other, a coalition would quickly be formed by 
 which this would be prevented. The settlement 
 of 1815 gave security not to one but to all the 
 nations, not only to the victors but to the de- 
 feated, to Prussia, to Austria, to Germany, and
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 87 
 
 in an equal extent to France. The system was a 
 complicated one, it seemed mechanical; but, in 
 fact, as far as anything can be secured in a fabric 
 so imperfect and changing as political affairs, it 
 answered its purpose. In bringing this about 
 England took a chief part, and it has always 
 been the object of English policy to help in 
 maintaining the security, not of one, but of all 
 nations. 
 
 But is this the German idea as put forward by 
 the Chancellor? It is exactly the reverse. The 
 English idea is security for all ; the German solu- 
 tion is security for Germany and for Germany 
 alone, and a security won by making Germany 
 so strong that she can stand out against the 
 whole of Europe. A Germany that could feel 
 herself able to withstand the united public opin- 
 ion of Europe is, however, a Germany which is 
 able also to impose her will on each individual 
 state. Germany is to be secure ; but what about 
 France? What about Russia? What about 
 Italy? What about Holland? On what has this 
 security of Holland in the past depended? On 
 nothing but the knowledge that an attack upon 
 Holland would involve war with England and 
 with France, and Germany was not strong 
 enough to encounter this danger. The terms of 
 peace suggested by the Chancellor are definitely 
 and categorically that Germany should be so 
 strong that she would be able to look with in- 
 difference on an alliance not only of France and
 
 88 THE ISSUE 
 
 England, but of France and England supported 
 by Russia and Italy. 
 
 IV 
 
 In this speech he still confines himself to gen- 
 eralities; he states the general objects to be 
 attained, but does not specify the particular 
 methods by which they will be won. 
 
 The next speech was delivered in December, 
 1915, and in it he moves a step forward, though 
 always with great caution. This is the one in 
 which he himself tells us that we are to find his 
 peace proposals. The debate during the course 
 of which they were made had been carefully 
 heralded in the press. Great expectations had 
 been aroused. New and great successes had been 
 won. Serbia had gone the way of Poland and 
 Belgium. The road to Constantinople had been 
 cleared, and, except where the Allies clung to the 
 narrow strip of land about Salonica, Germany 
 and Austria were supreme in the western Bal- 
 kans. It was a great success, diplomatic as well 
 as military, and it might well be the beginning of 
 greater successes in the future; for, now that 
 the connexion with Turkey had been established, 
 what might not be done in the East ? Egypt and 
 Persia were open, and at last might it not be that 
 a fatal blow might be struck at that which the 
 Germans have come to think is the nerve-centre 
 of the British Empire? 
 
 The Chancellor made two speeches. The first
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 89 
 
 need not detain us. We need not grudge him the 
 paean over the victories that had been won, for 
 in truth they had been great, greater probably 
 than had been anticipated; nor his pleasure at 
 the diplomatic victories in the Balkans : hcec 
 olim meminisse juvabit. Nor need we demur 
 to his description of the strength of Germany as 
 shown by the works of peace carried out behind 
 the line of battle. It is no consolation to the 
 Allies, nor will it help in an accommodation, that 
 even during the time of war Germany's civil 
 government is being firmly established over Bel- 
 gium, and that the organisation of the Belgian 
 schools has been made subservient to the cause 
 of Teutonism. 
 
 In truth the natural delight expressed by the 
 Chancellor in the achievements of the German 
 people has a double edge. For, after all, the very 
 strength of their armies and the degree of success 
 which they have attained is the best justification 
 of the cause of the Allies. Had it appeared that 
 the German Nation was not really prepared for a 
 great offensive war, then the apprehensions 
 caused by German ambition would not have been 
 justified. Had the raid on Belgium shown itself 
 to be a hasty improvisation undertaken in a not 
 unnatural panic, then it might have been con- 
 tended that the Triple Entente was an unneces- 
 sary, and therefore wanton, threat to German 
 security. What we see was, in fact, a strength 
 far greater than anyone suspected, a degree of
 
 go THE ISSUE 
 
 preparation which could only be explained on the 
 hypothesis of a long-matured plan for conquest, 
 worked out in all its details during peace and car- . 
 ried out on an arranged programme. The Chan- 
 cellor complains that the Allies refuse to accept 
 the verdict of the war and give way to the suc- 
 cesses of the German army ; but does not he see 
 it is the very success of Germany that makes 
 peace impossible, unless the success is carried to 
 that point that all possibility of resistance is 
 broken down? 
 
 This speech was the preliminary. At an ad- 
 journed sitting it was followed by the real debate. 
 This was opened by Herr Scheidemann, who 
 spoke on behalf of the Socialist majority. If 
 report is true, and we may well believe it, his 
 interpellation had been arranged beforehand be- 
 tween his party and the Government. His speech 
 was very remarkable and deserves to be remem- 
 bered. He began by pointing out that a war of 
 this kind differed from the normal war between 
 small states ; in the latter it might be possible for 
 one party to declare itself defeated and therefore 
 to beg for peace, but, he added, " in a war which 
 involves nearly the whole of Europe it is impos- 
 sible for one party to be forced down upon his 
 knees," and he draws the conclusion that in such 
 a war the first proposals of peace must come, not 
 from the defeated, but the victorious, nation. 
 Germany so far has been victorious; it is there- 
 fore Germany which must speak the first word.
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 91 
 
 He definitely rejected the common conception 
 that to be the first to speak of peace was a sign 
 of weakness. 
 
 On what terms, then, could Germany offer 
 peace? While repudiating any weakness as re- 
 gards the voices in enemy countries which de- 
 manded the crushing and destruction of Ger- 
 many, he equally dissociated himself from those 
 Germans who ask for annexation 1 : 
 
 We will not conceal from ourselves the fact 
 that in this country, too, claims of conquest have 
 been put together which no sensible man in the 
 Empire would think of realising. My party has 
 always strongly opposed this. Abroad these 
 claims were looked upon as sufficient reason for 
 continuing the war. Annexation would weaken 
 the sovereign rights of nations and, for Germany 
 in particular, the strength and unity of the Ger- 
 man National State. Our foreign political rela- 
 tions would thereby be seriously impaired. It 
 would produce an increased danger of war and 
 an addition to the burden of our armaments. 
 We are, therefore, decidedly opposed to all who 
 wish to convert this war into one of conquest. 
 
 In the following passage he is equally emphatic 
 in his rejection of all claims against the German 
 Empire and its security : 
 
 It has been said abroad that there can be no 
 question of peace until German militarism has 
 been destroyed and Alsace-Lorraine given back
 
 92 THE ISSUE 
 
 to France. Our opponents' ideas of militarism 
 differ from our own. By militarism we do not 
 mean the army in which our sons and brothers 
 serve. What we combat as militarism is a matter 
 to be decided only within the bounds of our own 
 country, just as French militarism and English 
 naval ism must be decided beyond the Vosges and 
 the Channel. Of course, we will hear nothing of 
 a separation from Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 He concludes by pointing out that the danger 
 to German integrity and independence is over : 
 
 East Prussia has shown what was the extent 
 of the Russian danger. There are now no longer 
 any immediate dangers threatening our frontiers. 
 It is, therefore, our duty to ask the Imperial 
 Chancellor on what terms he is willing to nego- 
 tiate for peace. The German Nation will not 
 wage war a day longer than is absolutely neces- 
 sary to attain its ends. For the independence of 
 our land our people will do their utmost, but for 
 the special interests of capitalists it will not risk 
 the life of a single soldier. When our comrades 
 hastened to the standard, they did not do so to 
 subject the world to the will of Germany, but to 
 prevent our position as a country from being 
 shattered by a tremendous hostile coalition. A 
 peaceful people like the Germans can be un- 
 manned by rage, but does not revel in thoughts of 
 vengeance and destruction. 
 
 We may publicly declare that we want peace 
 because the Germans are strong and determined
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 93 
 
 enough to go on defending hearth and home if 
 our adversaries will not have peace. The whole 
 world is waiting in breathless expectation for the 
 Imperial Chancellor's reply. I hope he will find 
 the word of salvation and express his readiness to 
 make peace. Then to-day's parliamentary sitting 
 will be an important one in history. We wish the 
 first decisive step towards the conclusion of this 
 fearful war to be taken by Germany. 
 
 These were notable words. They afforded an 
 opening on which it would, in truth, have been 
 possible for the Chancellor to have done what he 
 professes to have done, to have opened the way 
 for some kind of negotiation. How were they 
 met ? We have a definite and categorical refusal 
 both in form and in substance. Herr Scheide- 
 mann had made two points : first, that Germany, 
 just because she had been victorious, could open 
 the way for discussion; the second, that any 
 terms which Germany might suggest should not 
 include claims of conquest which would naturally 
 strengthen the resolution of her enemies. Both 
 suggestions were rejected. The Chancellor made 
 a long and involved speech of which a large part 
 was devoted to a violent attack upon England, 
 but when at the end he comes to the real issue he 
 has nothing to say. As to the first point he would 
 not accept Scheidemann's suggestion. Germany 
 could not offer terms : that was the function of 
 the defeated. It was from the enemy that the 
 first step must be looked for :
 
 94 THE ISSUE 
 
 So long as the tangle of guilt and ignorance 
 continues amongst those in power among our 
 enemies, and their intellectual attitude governs 
 the hostile peoples, any offer of peace on our side 
 would be folly, which would not shorten but 
 would prolong the war. This we must take into 
 account. With peace suggestions on our side 
 we shall not advance, and above all we shall not 
 come to any result. Peace proposals of our 
 enemies, which correspond to the dignity and 
 security of the German Empire, I constantly 
 repeat it, we are always ready to discuss. 
 
 The self-deception is that the enemy did not 
 believe that they were defeated, that they did not 
 recognise that the war was decided. No pro- 
 posals, therefore, would be made by Germany 
 in the capacity of victor. The Chancellor tells 
 us that he will not refuse to consider offers that 
 are made to him; so far his condescension will 
 go. Like another Napoleon, he will not refuse to 
 listen to those who come to him as suppliants for 
 peace, and then he proceeds to tell us what the 
 terms will be. The words are familiar, but we 
 must quote them in full : 
 
 It shall not be said that we have prolonged 
 the war for a single day because we wished to 
 conquer this or that additional pledge. In my 
 earlier speeches I have explained the general! 
 aims of the war. I cannot go into details to-day. 
 I cannot say what guarantees the Imperial Gov- 
 ernment will require e.g., in the Belgian ques-
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 95 
 
 tion, what foundation of power it will consider 
 necessary for these guarantees. But one thing our 
 enemies must see themselves : the longer and the 
 more bitterly they wage war against us, the more 
 will grow the guarantees that are necessary for us. 
 
 So far we have, then, the old conception of guar- 
 antees for the future greatness and security of Ger- 
 many guarantees which are to be based on an 
 undefined increase of power. Then he proceeds : 
 
 If our enemies will for all future time erect 
 a barrier between Germany and the rest of the 
 world, they cannot wonder if we also arrange 
 our future on similar lines. Neither in the East 
 nor in the West must our enemies of to-day 
 dispose of gates through which they can fall 
 upon us and threaten us more sharply than they 
 have done in the past. It is known that France 
 gave her loans to Russia only on the express 
 condition that Russia should build her Polish 
 fortresses and railways against us ; and it is just 
 as well known that England and France looked on 
 Belgium as a starting-point for an attack on us. 
 Against that we must protect ourselves politically, 
 militarily and economically we must secure our 
 development. What is necessary for this must 
 be attained. I think that there is no one in the 
 German Fatherland who does not desire these 
 ends. What means are necessary for this end 
 on that we keep the decision in our own hands. 
 
 Now the Chancellor himself refers to this 
 speech as the authentic expression of German
 
 96 THE ISSUE 
 
 peace terms. It is the only one that we have 
 yet had. There is nothing in his later speech 
 to alter them. Here he says nothing about 
 Austria, the East, and the other fields of war; 
 he confines himself to that which immediately 
 and solely affects Germany, and his terms are 
 categorically that Poland and Belgium are to 
 be brought under the commercial, military, and 
 political control of Germany. How this is to be 
 done he does not say; he does not commit him- 
 self to or against annexation; the future rela- 
 tions of Poland to Austria are for obvious rea- 
 sons left untouched. But these are matters which 
 do not concern the enemies of Germany; they 
 are matters on which Germany will at her own 
 good time give her decision. What does concern 
 the Allies, and what especially concerns England, 
 is that Poland and Belgium are in some form or 
 another to be brought into the German system, 
 so that Germany will have guarantees that for 
 the future she shall have control over them. 1 
 
 1 In his latest speech on September 29, 1916, the Chancellor 
 has again referred to this speech as containing the authentic 
 evidence of his willingness to make peace on reasonable terms: 
 
 "From the very first day the war meant for us nothing 
 but the defence of our right to life, freedom, and development. 
 For this reason we were the first and the only ones to declare 
 our readiness for peace negotiations. On December 9 of last 
 year I spoke of this clearly enough, and have since repeated 
 it. Mr. Asquith and Lord Robert Cecil cannot do away 
 with my words by the statement that we had announced no 
 conditions of peace, or only such as were intolerable and 
 humiliating. We have done our part." 
 
 The reader must judge for himself whether terms of peace
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 97 
 
 In the circumstances in which it was made 
 this speech was well devised. It gave a formula 
 which enabled the Government to avoid commit- 
 ting itself to the party of the annexationists or of 
 opposing them. It was admirably suited to keep 
 up the unity of the German Nation, and at least 
 for a time it answered that purpose ; but what are 
 we to think of the statesmanship of the man who 
 months later refers to it as evidence of his will- 
 ingness to make peace, who supposes that this 
 formula may be the beginning of negotiations ? 
 
 One can indeed imagine circumstances in which 
 these terms would be a fitting basis for negotia- 
 tions. If the German armies had occupied, not 
 Lille and Warsaw but Paris and Moscow; if the 
 English army had been defeated and was no 
 longer able to resist the advance of the Germans ; 
 if a final decision had been given on the battle- 
 field ; if we were in presence of a victory such as 
 that of 1866 or 1870; then indeed the Allies would 
 have to consider the abandonment of all for the 
 sake of which the war was accepted by them 
 the liberties of Europe, the security of France, 
 and the integrity and independence of Belgium. 
 
 If we are to understand the full insolence of 
 the Chancellor's language we must recollect that 
 the one great question from which the war 
 originated was the refusal of Germany to allow 
 
 which included the permanent control of Germany over 
 Belgium answered to the description which the Chancellor 
 gives of them, or whether Mr. Asquith and Lord R. Cecil are not 
 justified in criticising them as "intolerable and humiliating."
 
 g8 THE ISSUE 
 
 the other powers to be consulted in a matter 
 which had always been held to be a common 
 European concern; if the Allies were not strong 
 enough to enforce the claim of Europe to be 
 heard, then for all time it would be determined 
 that there was to be only one voice heard in 
 Europe. His conditions were therefore such as 
 could naturally be suggested only after a complete 
 defeat of the armies which left the enemy at the 
 mercy of Germany. But these terms were pro- 
 pounded when no such defeat had taken place. 
 He confounded a temporary strategical gain with 
 a decisive victory, and when the struggle was at 
 its height presumed to use the language of a con- 
 queror. What a prospect does this hold out of 
 the fate of Europe were there to be a real and 
 decisive success for Germany! 
 
 It is, then, on this, and on this alone, that the 
 claim made that he is working for peace is based. 
 For to this his later speech which was made 
 in April adds nothing, and from it takes away 
 nothing. It is perhaps less explicit, it is perhaps 
 more apologetic and less positive in tone, but on 
 all that concerns the positive suggestions for 
 ending the war there is nothing. As to Belgium, 
 which is for Englishmen always the essential 
 thing, we have indeed the additional suggestion 
 that in any settlement Germany will have to 
 guard the Flemings in the use of their own 
 language from the oppression of the Walloons. 
 But how can this be done if the independence and
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 99 
 
 integrity of Belgium are to be restored ? And he 
 knows that there is no possibility of any discus- 
 sion except on the basis that the full restoration 
 of Belgium is the first point : 
 
 Gentlemen, Russia must not again march her 
 armies for a second time to the unprotected 
 frontier of East and West Prussia. Not for a 
 second time must she be allowed, by the use of 
 French gold, to make the land of the Vistula 
 a sally-point against unprotected Germany. Can 
 anyone believe that we will surrender the lines 
 which we have occupied in the West, in which 
 the blood of our people has flowed, without 
 complete security for our future ? We will make 
 for ourselves real guarantees that Belgium will 
 not again become an English-French vassal- 
 state, and that she shall not be built out as a 
 military and economic bulwark against Germany. 
 Here also there is no status quo ante. Here also 
 Germany cannot surrender the Flemish race, 
 which has so long been kept down, to Frenchifi- 
 cation. We must secure for it a healthy, broad 
 development, corresponding to its characteristics 
 on the basis of its Low German (Niederldndisch) 
 speech and character. 
 
 Germany is to have real guarantees. What is 
 meant by a " real guarantee " ? Real guaran- 
 tees military, economic, and political. It is not 
 to be supposed that the Chancellor would be 
 content with the security merely of a treaty, 
 neither a simple treaty nor a general treaty, nor
 
 ioo THE ISSUE 
 
 the decision of a conference ratified by all the 
 powers and enforced by formal guarantees. 
 These are the securities on which other states 
 in the past have from time to time depended: 
 the security of Germany is too precious to be 
 allowed to rest on so frail and uncertain a basis. 
 The currency of treaty obligations and of paper 
 guarantees has been depreciated. After all, it 
 might be that the time would come when some 
 other nation might find itself in a state of neces- 
 sity; it might be remembered that treaties have 
 only a conditional application, that they dis- 
 appear with changed circumstances, and so Ger- 
 many must have her real guarantees. 
 
 What does he mean by this? The words can 
 have no meaning, and, in fact, obviously are 
 intended to have no meaning except that Belgium 
 and Poland are to be brought under the political 
 system of Germany, to be associated with the 
 German commercial system and controlled by 
 the German army. The formula as to Belgium 
 deserves attention; it is one of those unsurpass- 
 able suggestions in which the German Chancellor 
 is supreme. They cannot allow that Belgium 
 shall be a place from which France and England 
 can begin their march against them. Belgium 
 must no longer be a sally-port threatening the 
 German Empire. Well, one would have thought 
 that experience showed that Belgian territory 
 was the base of operations, not against Germany, 
 but against France. Who else in the world
 
 THE CHANCELLOR AND PEACE 101 
 
 could, at less than a week's notice, have thrown 
 a million soldiers into Belgium under the plea of 
 necessity, used Belgian territory as the base of 
 operations for marching straight upon Paris, and 
 then, with smug self-satisfaction, come before the 
 public assembly of his own countrymen, and 
 speaking, not only to them but to the whole of 
 Europe, have seriously laid down the proposition 
 that in future Belgium must not be used by France 
 as the base of operations against Germany? 
 
 The Chancellor cannot tell us in what these 
 guarantees are to consist. We are really not 
 curious. The details do not matter. It does not 
 matter in the least whether Belgium is annexed 
 to the Empire or to Prussia or left in the enjoy- 
 ment of its own dynasty and nominal and legal 
 autonomy. It did not matter whether Saxony 
 was annexed in 1866, as was Hanover, or allowed 
 to remain a separate kingdom. It matters noth- 
 ing whether a future King of Belgium enjoys 
 the privilege of the Duke of Mecklenburg, or 
 whether the Kingdom of Poland is to take its 
 place among the seventeen territories over which 
 the House of Hapsburg rules, or to be partitioned 
 between Hapsburg and Hohenzollern. That 
 which does matter is that these nations shall not 
 come into the German system in such a way that 
 their industry goes to swell the resources of Ber- 
 lin, their armies fight by the side of the Prussians, 
 and the development of their institutions is as- 
 similated to those of Germany.
 
 102 THE ISSUE 
 
 His last formula used in his speech of June 18, 
 1916, is the "geographical situation of the war 
 map." Schemes of peace could attain their ob- 
 ject only if carried on by statesmen of the bel- 
 ligerent countries on the basis of the military 
 situation as shown by the war map. Well, the 
 war map is a very serious thing, but it is not the 
 same as the military situation, and peaceful 
 though his career has been, little part though he 
 may have taken in military affairs, he cannot be 
 so ignorant of the writings of the soldiers of his 
 own country as not to know the difference. That 
 which tells in war is not the extent of territory 
 occupied at any moment, but the number and 
 efficiency of the armies 1 which can be brought 
 into the field on either side. So long as the 
 forces of the enemy are able to keep the field 
 intact, so long any territory occupied is only a 
 precarious possession. And of the enemies of 
 Germany there is not one except Serbia which 
 is not in the field with an army, relatively, as 
 regards the German forces, as strong as or 
 stronger than when the war began. 
 
 The armies are still in the field, but he will 
 make a peace as though they had disappeared, for 
 that is what it comes to. Peace on the war map 
 is another way of saying what he has said so 
 often before. Peace on the assumption that 
 Belgium and Poland and Serbia are not only 
 occupied but conquered.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 1 
 
 IN a former article I discussed the attitude of 
 the present German Chancellor towards peace, 
 and attempted to show how little hope there 
 was that from him we could expect any reason- 
 able proposals. Since then we have had a con- 
 tribution to the same question from one who is 
 both a past, and may we not add ? a possible 
 future Chancellor. Prince Biilow is undoubtedly 
 the most distinguished of living German states- 
 men ; he is, above all, the man in whom the Bis- 
 marck tradition lives, he has held the office of 
 Chancellor longer than anyone since Bismarck's 
 retirement, and it is not probable that a man of 
 his experience and ability will be allowed to re- 
 main in retirement at a time when the country 
 needs all that it has of the wisest leadership. If 
 the time comes when Herr von Bethmann-Holl- 
 weg finds, as he easily may do, his position un- 
 tenable, it is Prince Biilow who is clearly marked 
 out to be his successor. 
 
 If doubt is felt in this by anyone, it is certainly 
 not felt by Prince Biilow himself. 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century arid After, August, 1916.
 
 104 THE ISSUE 
 
 For Prince Billow's suggestions as to the terms 
 of peace which may properly be imposed by Ger- 
 many when victorious we have to turn to the 
 new edition of his book, Imperial Germany. 1 
 With much that is contained in this work I am 
 not here concerned. Most of it is occupied with a 
 review of German history for the last twenty-five 
 years and a defence of his own policy. But 
 both in his Introduction and from time to time 
 in the course of the new edition, he has intro- 
 duced valuable suggestions for the future. 
 
 He is indeed in a very favourable position for 
 doing so, more favourable than the Chancellor 
 himself. He at least is free from the responsi- 
 bility for the outbreak of the war ; he therefore 
 can approach the future with a free mind. 
 Between him and the countries at war with 
 Germany there has been no personal breach. 
 There is nothing to prevent him meeting at the 
 council-table the statesmen of enemy countries. 
 And we may be grateful that he has observed 
 throughout the book a discretion which is now 
 too rare. He has kept himself free from the 
 passion, the anger, the invective that are too 
 common in all that comes to us from across the 
 water. There is none of the heady indignation, 
 the passionate invectives, the crude denunciation 
 of English hypocrisy and English brutality to 
 which we are now so accustomed. There is 
 
 1 Imperial Germany. New and revised edition. Cassell & 
 Co., Ltd., 1916.
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 105 
 
 criticism of the enemy countries, but criticism 
 phrased in language which even those who differ 
 from it cannot for a moment object to. We see, 
 indeed, the desire to restore relations, even in the 
 protest against the expression used by Lord 
 Rosebery of Judas kisses. That the expression 
 was a not unfair description of German policy, as 
 expounded by the Prince himself, most English- 
 men will believe. Here we need only note the 
 obvious desire to resume the cool business tone 
 which normally exists between the ministers of 
 modern states even when they are most opposed 
 to one another. 
 
 Indeed the note of the book is discretion and 
 conciliation. It is the book of a man who will 
 make himself persona grata to every country. 
 For Italy there is regret that she so misunder- 
 stood her own interest as to leave her own Allies 
 and trust herself to England: 
 
 To avoid the breach between Italy and Austria 
 lay especially in the interests of Italy. Will 
 Italy get with her new Allies what she sacri- 
 ficed by giving up the old? The greatest inter- 
 ests which Italy had, her Mediterranean interests, 
 have always been looked on by England with 
 cool indifference, by France with traditional 
 jealousy, by Russia with scarcely concealed 
 distaste. 
 
 This is the language of a friend who, though 
 grieved, is still at heart a friend. It is far from
 
 io6 THE ISSUE 
 
 the wrath and revenge that generally are heard 
 from Berlin. It is the language of a man who 
 would make the reconciliation easy. It is the 
 language of a man who hopes to sow dissension 
 between the Allies, and who knows that more 
 is to be won by conciliation than by indignation. 
 Even Japan is not without the pale : " it will 
 rest with her to win once more the confidence of 
 the victorious German Empire." For the neutrals 
 there are well-chosen words of kindness and 
 sympathy. Except for America : " The anger 
 which is so widely felt in Germany against the 
 American people with whom they had such 
 friendly feelings is only too natural and compre- 
 hensible." With America reconciliation will, it 
 seems, be difficult. 
 
 The coolness and dispassionate tone are, 
 however, not without a purpose. Prince Biilow 
 has his eyes on the future, and again and again 
 we find indications of the manner in which he 
 hopes to treat the problems that will arise after 
 the war. It would not be going too far to inter- 
 pret the book as a bid for power, as a suggestion 
 that it is in his hands that the peace negotiations 
 would best be placed. There is not a word in 
 it that would prevent him from taking up the 
 thread of international problems ; he would come 
 to the task unencumbered by the passions that 
 have been excited. 
 
 What, then, has this accomplished statesman, 
 this amateur of Realpolitik, this pupil of Bis-
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 107 
 
 marck, to offer to the world when the time comes 
 that he anticipates and Germany is called upon to 
 announce the terms on which peace will be 
 restored? It is all clearly explained. England, 
 France, and Russia, each is dealt with in its 
 place. They are set out with admirable cour- 
 tesy; all is reasonable, so reasonable that we 
 seem to share his belief that they are nothing 
 more than the other countries might willingly 
 offer of themselves. There is nothing of revenge, 
 no, waving of the sword, and if the mailed fist is 
 there, and the shining armour, the mailed fist is 
 clothed in a thick glove of satin, and the shining 
 armour is hardly seen beneath the court dress 
 of the diplomatist. 
 
 We have nothing of the crude arrogance of 
 the Nationalists, of Count Reventlow and Herr 
 Bassermann or the Crown Prince of Bavaria. 
 We are spared the heavy denunciations of the 
 Chancellor against the plans for the annihilation 
 of Germany. He does not take as his text the 
 uncritical collection of extracts from journalists 
 and novelists which the German Foreign Office 
 seems to keep as material for the time when the 
 Chancellor has to make a speech. With him all 
 is dispassionate reasoning; in fact, he makes his 
 demands in such a way that we feel he expects 
 that they will be assented to by the enemies of 
 Germany. But different as the tone and attitude 
 are, there is no difference in the substance. 
 
 What are his proposed terms? Let us take,
 
 io8 THE ISSUE 
 
 first, England. From England he demands 
 nothing less than that she should accept the 
 " freedom of the seas " and a strengthening of 
 the German coast-line: 
 
 After a war that has been waged by the 
 German people with incomparable heroism, but 
 also with terrible sacrifices, against half the world, 
 we have the right and also the duty to require, 
 not only our own security and independence at 
 sea, but above all a real guarantee for the free- 
 dom of the seas, for the further completion of 
 our economic and political tasks in the world. 
 
 Although after we had trod the road of world- 
 policy, we had often had England as an opponent, 
 our relations to England, when we had attained 
 the necessary strength at sea, could be genuinely 
 and without reserve friendly. Just by the build- 
 ing of our fleet we had removed the chief hin- 
 drance to cooperation between us and England on 
 the basis of full equality and mutuality, we had 
 freed the road for an understanding between the 
 two countries on all domains of world-policy. 
 The English ministers would not recognise this, 
 they did not wish for an understanding, and did 
 not desire a reasonable cooperation. Therefore 
 they cannot be surprised if, in view of the un- 
 favourable nature of our coast for security and 
 independence, we demand from England serious 
 and real guarantees. 
 
 Well, England would not be surprised at any- 
 thing that Germany demanded, but we should
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 109 
 
 like to see translated into the prosaic language 
 of a diplomatic instrument these suggestions. 
 German independence at sea can in this connex- 
 ion mean nothing less than a German superiority 
 to England in naval strength; the insecurity of 
 the German coast, whatever that may mean (it 
 would have appeared that no country has a coast 
 which by its geographical nature is so secure 
 from attack as that of Germany), can only be 
 remedied by the extension of German naval power 
 over other parts of the coasts of the North Sea. 
 
 So it all comes to this : Germany was to build 
 a fleet so strong that it would be a danger to 
 England, and during the dangerous period of 
 transition England was to be kept quiet by clever 
 diplomacy. Then, when the fleet was built, 
 England was to recognise that, as Germany was 
 so strong that her enmity would be dangerous, 
 she must enter into an alliance with Germany. 
 As she did not do that, and a war has ensued in 
 which Germany has, as will happen in a war, 
 incurred severe losses, there is nothing for it but 
 for England to acquiesce in German superiority, 
 with all this means of danger to English safety. 
 
 The prospect held out to France is similar. 
 France had always refused to acquiesce in the 
 loss of Alsace-Lorraine. " There was no under- 
 standing of the fact that what seemed to them 
 the brutal harshness of the conqueror was a 
 national necessity for us Germans." Of course 
 it was their duty to see that what Germany
 
 no THE ISSUE 
 
 thought was a national necessity for herself must 
 therefore be accepted as the only right and proper 
 solution by the French. They have not done 
 this voluntarily, therefore they must be made 
 to do so. 
 
 Perhaps the French people will in the course 
 of time adapt themselves to the decisions of the 
 Peace of Frankfort when they see that they are 
 unalterable, and especially if we succeed in con- 
 firming our strategic position as against France, 
 which has always remained an unfavourable one. 
 
 It is all so simple and reasonable. Germany 
 took Alsace and Lorraine; they were wanted by 
 her, the nation demanded them; on this there 
 is nothing more to say. In order to secure the 
 booty, Metz was taken purely for strategic 
 reasons. It was taken, as Bismarck said, because 
 Moltke told him that in a war it would be worth 
 100,000 men. The French were, after all, not 
 convinced. They are an emotional and idealistic 
 race, they do not understand Realpolitik; it is all 
 very melancholy, but there is nothing to be done 
 but to apply the same remedy in a stronger form. 
 The frontier must be again altered, the weakness 
 of France must be confirmed ; they must give up 
 their dreams. What is to be taken we do not 
 know. Is it only Belfort, or is Nancy to be 
 added? That matters little. It will be enough 
 to show the French their proper place in the 
 world and then things will go smoothly.
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE in 
 
 It is precisely the solution that every other 
 German offers us. Wherever the experience of 
 the war has shown that there is any weakness in 
 the German strategic position, there this must 
 be remedied. England at sea has advantages 
 that Germany has not; they must be removed. 
 France is indeed weaker than Germany, but the 
 difference is not sufficiently marked; it must be 
 made clearer. 
 
 Could we have clearer evidence than this that 
 no satisfactory conclusion to the war can be given 
 until it has been clearly shown that the Peace of 
 Frankfort, a peace enforced on France purely 
 by the power of the sword, is not unalterable? 
 But there is another passage which shows in an 
 even more remarkable manner the attitude of 
 Prince Biilow, a passage which clearly indicates 
 that on the great question of annexation or no 
 annexation, he is to be found on the side of the 
 extreme German annexationists. I have dealt 
 at length with the demands of the six indus- 
 trial associations; their manifesto has be- 
 come a sort of confession of faith which divides 
 Germany, and it has been shown that the 
 Chancellor has carefully refrained from express- 
 ing his approval of their demands. But Prince 
 Biilow is to be found among those who have 
 subscribed to their doctrines. He has, in fact, 
 gone out of his way, quite unnecessarily for the 
 purpose of his argument, to express his general 
 approval of their action :
 
 ii2 THE ISSUE 
 
 Turning to the international teaching of the 
 world war and to the future position of the 
 German Empire in the world, our six great 
 industrial associations have joined together for 
 a common manifestation of united and deter- 
 mined patriotic purpose, and have dealt with 
 that question which is of the greatest importance 
 for Germany's present and future, the question 
 of the position of Germany as it emerges from 
 the war in Europe and in the world, both in 
 regard to political and industrial power. This 
 constitutes a serious warning to foreign coun- 
 tries who reckon on the old party and industrial 
 discords in Germany. 
 
 What this appears to mean is that their 
 manifesto is to be a point of unity for all parties 
 and all classes a suggestion which is not indeed 
 likely to reconcile foreign countries with the aims 
 of united Germany. 
 
 So much for France; but Russia, too, must 
 be weakened. Here, again, there is a right and 
 a duty. It is always the duty of Germany to 
 weaken her neighbours. 
 
 There was perhaps no country that Russia 
 so seldom found in her way as Germany. That 
 has naturally altered since an enormous war has 
 broken out between us and Russia. 
 
 We might have added that it had been altered 
 since Germany embarked on an active policy 
 in the Balkans which was in open opposition to
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 113 
 
 that of Russia. We might have pointed out that 
 it was Prince Bulow himself who in 1909 chal- 
 lenged Russia in the Balkans. 
 
 We have now the right and the duty to de- 
 mand a real guarantee that East Prussia, the 
 province that in the course of centuries has suf- 
 fered more than any other from foreign inva- 
 sions, shall not again be exposed to barbarous 
 devastation. King Ludwig III spoke from the 
 heart of the Bavarian and German people when 
 he said that we require a peace which will secure 
 us rest for many decades. Such enormous sacri- 
 fices must not be made in vain. We require in 
 the East a greatly increased and strengthened 
 security, which in the nature of things can only 
 consist in a correction of our unfavourable east- 
 ern frontier, a correction which protects us from 
 further invasions. 
 
 It is the old story: Germany is to be secured 
 from invasion on every side. Whatever wars 
 take place in the future, this at least shall be 
 secured that they shall not be fought on the 
 soil of Germany. This will be a holy land. When 
 the new frontiers have been mapped out, then all 
 will be well, for any future war will be fought on 
 foreign soil. 
 
 The eastern frontier is of course the same thing 
 as the Polish question. On this Prince Billow 
 is a special expert. He had studied it in the 
 school of Bismarck, and on it he speaks at greater
 
 ii 4 THE ISSUE 
 
 length and in more detail than on most of these 
 questions. One thing that emerges is that Poland 
 is to be sacrificed. He has no solution but the 
 old one the continued partition of Poland, and 
 the continued subjection of those Poles who fall 
 to the share of Prussia to that process of German- 
 isation with which his administration was iden- 
 tified. He reprints the old chapter on the 
 problem of the eastern frontier, and asserts with 
 full conviction that no course is possible except 
 that of defending Germanism by expropriating 
 Polish landowners and discouraging the use of 
 the Polish language. This is a part of the 
 German mission of Kultur. It is again " a 
 national duty of the German people to itself." 
 
 The struggle for the soil, which is in its es- 
 'sence the struggle for a sufficient stiffening of 
 the East with German men, will always be the 
 Alpha and Omega of our national German policy 
 in the East. The struggle for German Kultur 
 and culture, above all for the German language, 
 must accompany it. With our plantation policy 
 we fight for Germanism in the East, with our 
 school policy in truth we fight for our Poles, 
 whom we wish to bring nearer to German intel- 
 lectual life. 
 
 Whatever may happen across the border the 
 Prussian Poles are to remain Prussian and to be 
 Germanised. They are to have no part in the 
 fortunes of their fellow countrymen. As he says
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 115 
 
 again and again, " Prussia cannot allow Posen 
 to become a second Galicia." 
 
 The policy of the eastern frontier is at bottom 
 as simple as possible. Its solution is less a ques- 
 tion of political wisdom than one of political 
 courage. 
 
 In the Polish provinces of Prussia there is, 
 then, to be no change. There will be added to 
 them what is necessary to guard East Prussia 
 against invasion. What is to happen to the 
 rest of Poland? It is a question that does not 
 interest him. He recognises that the result of 
 the war might be the reconstruction of an inde- 
 pendent or autonomous Poland, but he does not 
 desire it. He does not desire it for the very 
 sufficient reason that " it is a matter for con- 
 sideration whether the separation of Congress 
 Poland would mean a weakening of Russia," but 
 it certainly would be a danger to Prussia. 
 
 Were the world war to fulfil the dream of the 
 Poles, were it to be that we really carried out for 
 the Poles what they gained for a short time from 
 our most dangerous enemy, Napoleon the First; 
 and were, a hundred and fifty years after the 
 Great King and the First Partition, an inde- 
 pendent or autonomous Poland to be created, then 
 the indissoluble connexion between the Prussian 
 monarchy and the eastern provinces must be se- 
 cured with all the more resolution, the future 
 of Germanism in the mixed districts be guarded
 
 u6 THE ISSUE 
 
 all the more carefully and conscientiously. What 
 the German sword has won for the Poles by 
 German power and German blood must not, as 
 a result, bring injury to the Prussian State and 
 to Germanism. 
 
 He does not wish for a restoration of Poland 
 in any form, and he quotes with approval a 
 saying of Bismarck when discussing the possi- 
 bility of a war with Russia: 
 
 And what should we do if we had defeated 
 Russia? Restore Poland? Then in twenty 
 years we could have a new alliance between the 
 three Empires in order to finish with a fourth 
 partition of Poland. But this amusement is not 
 worth a great war. 
 
 The Polish question is one which is necessarily 
 outside the special interests of England ; it is one 
 in which she never has been, and never will be, 
 able to exercise a decisive influence. On the one 
 occasion when she attempted to interfere she did 
 more harm than good. It has, however, been 
 the hope of every Englishman that, whatever 
 might be the result of the war, it would not fail 
 to do much towards restoring to the Poles their 
 nationality. Here at least it seemed that it 
 could not be but that something would be 
 achieved towards settling the most difficult of 
 European problems. 
 
 It is clear that from Prince Biilow no help will 
 be found. Russia must indeed be weakened.
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 117 
 
 She must share the fate of France and England ; 
 but it is elsewhere that this must be done, not 
 in Poland but in the Ukraine: 
 
 Naturally also we cannot wish for a recupera- 
 tion of the Russian Empire. We shall have to 
 count on this, however, in view of the constant 
 increase of the Russian population, and the na- 
 tional and religious homogeneity of the mass of 
 the Russian people, unless Russia falls to pieces 
 politically or socially, or loses the Ukraine, its 
 corn store, and the basis of its industry. 
 
 The principle put forward is it not a danger- 
 ous one? If Germany were after all not victori- 
 ous, cannot we imagine, say, a French statesman 
 quoting these words to their author at a peace 
 congress? Could we not see him pointing out 
 that France could not wish the recuperation of 
 Germany, showing how in view of the yearly 
 increase of the population and the homogeneity 
 of the people this must inevitably come about, 
 and that therefore, unless Germany fell to pieces, 
 unless the Empire were dissolved, or a social 
 revolution broke out, it would really be necessary 
 to take away those Western provinces which 
 were the basis of its industrial prosperity? For, 
 after all, the sacrifices of the war have not been 
 confined to Germany. It is not German soldiers 
 alone that have fallen. There are widows and 
 orphans in France too. It shows less than his 
 usual foresight, but it also shows in its barren
 
 n8 THE ISSUE 
 
 nakedness the crude national egoism on which, 
 despite the appearance of reason, is built up his 
 whole political thought. In him, as in every 
 German, there is no conception of any principle 
 governing the relations between states beyond 
 that of the eternal struggle which, whether by 
 war or diplomacy, shall do most injury to the 
 other. 
 
 And this it is which will be the final verdict on 
 him and his policy. It is not to him that we can 
 look as to the deus ex machina who will rescue 
 Europe from her present distress. This able 
 statesman, this skilled and experienced diplo- 
 matist, this accomplished man of the world, what 
 has he to offer us? There is no trick of the 
 trade that he does not know; compared with 
 him the Chancellor is, in fact, an inexperienced 
 bungler. He has learnt to look at the States 
 of Europe as pawns to be moved by the master 
 hand, and he is never tired of explaining the 
 admirable game that he played when it was for 
 him to play. As it seemed to him, he knew, 
 better than they themselves did, the true interests 
 of every country in Europe; he could tell what 
 was the right move for England, and how Italy 
 should play. When the German fleet had been 
 built, then of course there was nothing for 
 England to do but to come into an alliance with 
 a country which was now so strong that it could 
 not be her interest to be at enmity with it. 
 And so the friendship of Germany was offered to
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 119 
 
 England. Italy he knew as a second home, and 
 he could see that the interest of Italy was to 
 remain in the Triple Alliance; she would get 
 more from it than from the other side. 
 
 And then the whole house of cards which had 
 been built up with such care collapsed. England 
 was offered the friendship of Germany ; the two 
 countries would indeed have had the world at 
 their feet. But the friendship was offered at a 
 price, the price of leaving those with whom we 
 had been on the closest terms of friendship, and 
 it was friendship with a country which openly 
 boasted that they had beguiled us. It was an 
 offer that required close scrutinising, and the 
 answer was made : " We do not wish for new 
 friendships at the price of sacrificing our old 
 friends." One honest word dispelled all the mists 
 and baffling clouds of poison gas. And Italy 
 answered : " Yes, we should no doubt get much 
 from you; we should get it at once and without 
 a struggle; but by doing so we should for all 
 time sacrifice our independence and our power 
 of self-determination; we should be a mere 
 vassal State of Germany. Better than this a 
 contest, for even if we are defeated in it we shall 
 have saved our honour." 
 
 Prince Biilow is indeed like the magician in the 
 old story who found that unwittingly he had 
 raised up daemonic forces which he was unable to 
 control. In order to get the money to build his 
 fleet he had to give the reins to the German Navy
 
 120 THE ISSUE 
 
 League, who would not put to their open hopes 
 and ambitions the limits that were necessary if 
 England were to be properly beguiled ; and while 
 he was explaining that, after all, the strong 
 German fleet would be all to the good of England 
 and would be the proper basis for friendly rela- 
 tions in the future, they with a foolish honesty 
 insisted that it should be used to wrest from 
 England the supremacy of the seas. To Serbia 
 and Poland and Rumania he was as blind as 
 was Metternich to the aspirations of Italy and 
 Germany; he did not see that these national 
 forces could not for all time be kept down by 
 acute diplomacy and bargaining, nor even kept 
 under by the soldier and the policeman. 
 
 And for Europe as a whole he has no message. 
 So blinded is he by his admiration for Bismarck 
 that he does not see how far the world has 
 moved ; he does not understand that that which 
 was right and necessary in order to build up the 
 German State, and to secure it during the first 
 years of its existence, now belongs to the past. 
 There has never entered into his mind a Europe 
 different from that of the past. All he sees is a 
 continuance of the old game of the rival Powers 
 intriguing for place and power, with this differ- 
 ence, that in the future Germany is always to 
 hold all the trumps. Even the German scheme 
 of a Mitteleuropa, which at least is a real attempt 
 at construction, he passes over without a word. 
 Still less has it occurred to him that there is
 
 PRINCE BULOW ON PEACE 121 
 
 possible a Europe in which, when each state has 
 attained those frontiers which are necessary for 
 the completeness of its national existence, the 
 period of war and rivalry which belonged to the 
 stage of formation may be over; that a peace 
 congress should leave a state of things in which 
 the ceaseless struggle for territory which has been 
 the cause of so many wars should cease, at least 
 in the West, and that the apportionment of terri- 
 tory and the guarantee for its continuance should 
 not depend on the mere strength of the sword 
 but on the verdict of the united Continent.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 1 
 
 I 
 
 THOSE who have studied the history of German 
 political thought cannot fail to observe the in- 
 genuity with which at each stage in the progress 
 of the Prussian State there have been found his- 
 torians and philosophers to proclaim the theory 
 and principle by which it is justified. The ag- 
 gression of the Government and the tyranny of 
 war and the cruelty of organisation have to be 
 properly decked out that they may take their 
 place in high intellectual society. For the satis- 
 faction of their own spirit they require a formula. 
 The Prussian Government has never wanted 
 priests and prophets. There was a time when 
 we were told that the state was the end in itself, 
 and the pupils of Hegel taught that its existence 
 was its own justification. A generation passed, 
 and the Prussian Government, which in 1815 
 had been the strongest enemy of the national 
 idea, clothed itself in the fashionable doctrine of 
 the time, and the conquest of Germany disguised 
 itself as the unity of the German Nation. 
 
 1 Westminster Gazette, May 8, 1916.
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 123 
 
 The idea of nationality has been useful, and 
 for forty years it has been proclaimed by the his- 
 torian apologists of the Empire. But the idea of 
 nationality will do no more. It imposes limits. 
 It has been stretched to its uttermost by the 
 Pan-Germans, but it has been stretched beyond 
 its capacity. It involves a logical contradiction. 
 The conception of nationality requires reciproc- 
 ity. A state which is based on this idea cannot 
 refuse to recognise the nationality of other states 
 as equally justified. For a few weeks in the 
 spring of 1848 this was recognised, and there 
 was a time when the German patriots held out a 
 hand of sympathy to the Poles and Italians and 
 Hungarians. It was not for long, for the logic 
 of facts showed that the recognition of other 
 nationalities must lead to a diminution of Ger- 
 man ascendancy. The achievements of 1866 and 
 1870 for a time freed the German Nation from 
 the necessity of thinking. They had gained 
 sufficient for the moment; the absorption and 
 incorporation of what had been achieved sufficed 
 for a generation; the catchword of nationality, 
 of the National-Staat, would suffice. But the 
 success which they have gained in this war opens 
 out further ambitions. German Kultur is no 
 longer merely the' expression of the full con- 
 sciousness of German nationality. It is a sacred 
 positive truth, world-wide in its application, to 
 which other less favoured nations have to bow. 
 But the imposing of German Kultur upon them
 
 i2 4 THE ISSUE 
 
 is obviously a diminution of their own national 
 self-consciousness. The work cannot be carried 
 out under this category. And so we find that 
 the most thoughtful of modern Germans tell us 
 that nationality has played its part, and that now 
 its exaggerations must be curbed, for the prin- 
 ciple of nationality means the dissolution of the 
 Austrian Empire, and the greater Germany of 
 the future depends for its security on an alliance 
 with an Austria stronger and greater than be- 
 fore ; " the national democratic fever must be 
 subdued " ; " it is a destructive element." To 
 subdue it would be an enormous gain in peace 
 and security. It must give way to the idea of 
 German freedom. 
 
 It is the exposition of this new attitude that 
 gives its interest to Herr Naumann's book, Mit- 
 teleuropa, 1 one of the most important contri- 
 butions to political thought that has appeared 
 since the war began. Herr Naumann, who has 
 long been known as a prominent exponent of 
 Christian Socialism, is no mere chauvinistic rhet- 
 orician; he takes a place apart from the mob 
 of pamphleteers who repeat with vacant uniform- 
 ity the virtues of Germany and the crimes of 
 England. He does not merely require the world 
 to accept German Kultur, he explains to us what 
 it is, and he paints in firm outline the new Eu- 
 
 1 Mittdeuropa, von Friedrich Naumann. Berlin, 1915: 
 Druck und Verlag von Georg Reimer. There is now an 
 English translation, published by P. S. King & Co.
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 125 
 
 rope for, of course, like the Chancellor, he 
 wants a new Europe which it is to produce. 
 For it is on German Kultur and not on German 
 nationality that the new world is to be built up. 
 
 This is not the place for a full examination of 
 the principles of Naumann's book. Those who 
 are interested in these things will find much that 
 is stimulating in his discussion as to the essential 
 characteristics of German culture. On the Con- 
 tinent discussion has been chiefly confined to 
 the economic questions involved, and there has 
 been a serious consideration of the practical 
 difficulties in bringing about any permanent com- 
 mercial union, first between Austria and Hun- 
 gary and then between the Dual Monarchy and 
 Germany. This concentration on one element 
 of the problem is misleading and dangerous. It 
 obscures what is even more important the 
 political questions at stake. For though the new 
 state which he desires is to be erected on an in- 
 dustrial basis, it is to be something much broader 
 in its effects than this, and it implies nothing less 
 than a permanent transfiguration of the whole of 
 Europe. 
 
 That which at this moment alone is important 
 are the practical results which he advocates. In 
 them, though his formula is different, there is 
 nothing to choose between him and the craziest 
 of the Germano-maniacs or the headstrong fire- 
 eaters of the Kreuz-Zeitung and the Hamburger 
 Nachrichten. What he wants and what he hopes
 
 126 THE ISSUE 
 
 to attain is a Europe which would be completely 
 subject to Germany, and his whole book is an 
 explanation as to how this is to be brought about. 
 It matters nothing that it is to be done in the 
 name of organisation rather than nationalism, 
 that the new state is to be called Central Europe 
 and not Germany, that he talks more of bankers 
 than of armies; the essential thing is that he 
 postulates a new Europe, a new Europe that is 
 to be governed from Berlin. But the Allies do 
 not intend to have this new Europe ; they prefer 
 the old. 
 
 What is the new Europe to be? The kernel is 
 a permanent union between Germany and Aus- 
 tria-Hungary, a union commercial, political, and 
 military. It is not to be a mere treaty arrange- 
 ment, but an organised federal union with com- 
 mon institutions. There is to be a common 
 army, a customs union, and common commercial 
 policy, and, what is even more important, com- 
 mon industrial legislation. This is more impor- 
 tant; for it means common legislation on the 
 details of life which will affect the habits of each 
 individual. The whole industrial organisation of 
 the German Empire, improved and adapted 
 where necessary, will be applied to all the con- 
 stituent states. The committees and public offices 
 by which this will be done will therefore have a 
 control over the economic conditions which will 
 put each individual in complete subjection to 
 them.
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 127 
 
 In explaining his point of view, Naumann does 
 not scruple completely to throw over the whole 
 doctrine of German nationalism, and to pour 
 contempt on the suggestion that the war was 
 one merely for the defence of the German Na- 
 tion. It is, he tells us, " a mistake to speak of 
 this war as a decisive struggle between Germans 
 and Slavs." They have to give up singing, 
 " Deutschland, Deutschland iiber Alles." They 
 have to remember that they have non-Germanic 
 allies. It is no good to continue laying stress on 
 the national idea. " The highest temperature of 
 the struggles of nationalities is past." " After 
 the war there will have to be a great revision of 
 methods, with relaxation of the Germanising 
 force." " The Germans are bad Germanisers." 
 " How pleasing it would be for us to make the 
 Czechs into Germans, if we could ; but it is simply 
 impossible," and so we must talk less of nation- 
 ality. These matters must be put into the back- 
 ground; they are of secondary importance. 
 They must give way to the state-forming prin- 
 ciple of the future, and that is organisation. 
 
 But let us not be deceived : all this might lead 
 us to think that this European State of the 
 future was to be an equal federation of equal 
 races. No one who knows his Germany would 
 believe that for a moment. When we say that 
 nationality is no longer the creative force of the 
 future, we only mean that it is not to be the 
 creative force for the Poles and the Hungarians
 
 128 THE ISSUE 
 
 and the Czechs and the Croatians. They have 
 to recognise that these ideas belong to the past 
 in order that they may be brought into the great 
 mid-European State; but here it comes out 
 nakedly and boldly: " Mitteleuropa will in its 
 kernel be German; it will, of course, use the 
 German language as the medium of communica- 
 tion." It is true there is to be concession to the 
 languages of all races which have their part in 
 it, but these would be subordinate and local 
 languages; they would be as Welsh or Gaelic 
 is with us, and will accept, with proper humil- 
 ity, their subordinate position as local dialects in 
 the great state, which will be, in its heart and 
 essence, German. On the continent of Europe, 
 from Constantinople to Antwerp, and from Riga 
 to Trieste, there would be one great organisation, 
 one army, one financial and commercial system, 
 and this will be German. 
 
 An admirable picture, an enticing future, but 
 will these small, inferior, and secondary races 
 accept it? Will the Poles and the Hungarians 
 acquiesce in a future which condemns them in- 
 evitably to be absorbed into the great Germany 
 of the future, in which their own language, their 
 own traditions, and their own culture will be 
 irrevocably condemned to a gradual and passion- 
 less extinction ? They will remain with the peas- 
 ant costume and quaint local customs, to be 
 visited by the antiquarians of the future who 
 wish in the dead monotony of this commercial
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 129 
 
 state to find the dying remnants of the old days 
 in which there still were separate races in Europe. 
 Are they willing to look forward to a future in 
 which they will be but as the few Wendish peas- 
 ants who still maintain their language among 
 the marshes and forests of the Spreewald, and 
 provide wet nurses for the children of their 
 German masters? 
 
 What are to be the limits of the new state he 
 does not tell us. He is debarred from discussing 
 this by the prohibition of any writing on the 
 conditions of peace. He is, however, quite de- 
 cided that it is not to be confined to the two 
 great Central Powers. Their union is to be the 
 nucleus to which the other lesser states of Cen- 
 tral Europe are to be attracted. 
 
 In order to understand the central problem 
 we must keep in mind the explanations as to the 
 extent of the industrial territory. Industrial 
 Central Europe must be larger than the present 
 territory of Germany, Austria, and Hungary. 
 We have, owing to the military situation, re- 
 frained from naming definite neighbouring states, 
 and have only dwelt on the general idea that there 
 must be further additions. 
 
 His contention is that first the union with 
 Austria-Hungary has to be completed, and then 
 this will be followed by the adhesion of other 
 countries. Which these countries will be he 
 leaves an open question; he warns his readers
 
 i 3 o THE ISSUE 
 
 against the exaggerated hopes of some of his 
 countrymen, but he leaves no doubt that exten- 
 sive additions are necessary, and will be secured, 
 and the complete picture of Central Europe, as 
 we can gather it from his words, is a state as 
 powerful, as dominant as any of the dreams of 
 the most uncompromising Pan-Germans; it is, 
 in fact, greater, for by giving up the formula of 
 Germanism he in reality gives up what must be 
 a limiting condition. To an enlarged Germany 
 there must be limits, for, after all, no one can 
 maintain that the whole of Central Europe is 
 Germanic; to a new state governed and directed 
 from Germany, but one which definitely takes no 
 account of nationality, the binding force of which 
 is the commercial and industrial union, no limit 
 need be placed. 
 
 And so he asks the question : " Whom shall 
 we invite to enter the union ? " But he does 
 not answer it ; for this is " a section of our work 
 over which more than over any other the word 
 * caution ' is written, for we are in the midst of 
 war, and for very sufficient reasons must not 
 publish anything on ' Kriegsziele,' in the ordi- 
 nary sense of the word." But we have a warning 
 against the exaggerated hopes which are not 
 uncommon in Germany, a warning which is a 
 useful criticism on the statements of those who, 
 like the Chancellor, are never tired of telling us 
 that the Germans are fighting merely for safety 
 and security.
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 131 
 
 There are, indeed, in Germany, as in other 
 parts of Europe just now, a number of people 
 who place no restraint on their unbridled imag- 
 ination, and speak as though they had entrusted 
 to them, as a secondary duty, the administration 
 of Holland, Scandinavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, 
 Greece, and the Turkish Empire, and only need 
 write the names of these countries down on paper 
 in order to bring them into the domain of Cen- 
 tral Europe. Yes, there are bold thinkers who 
 will at once bring in Switzerland, France, Spain, 
 and, after a short period of purification, even 
 Italy, and then found the United States of Eu- 
 rope with or without Belgium. 
 
 If he does not categorically answer his own 
 question, at least he gives us, with all discretion, 
 an indication of how he would answer it, and 
 the possibilities which he opens show what is 
 reckoned as moderation in Germany. 
 
 The territory of Germany and Austria-Hun- 
 gary, as it lies before us shut off by the war, is, 
 of course, not sufficient as an industrial province, 
 for it is in far too high a degree an importer of 
 food and raw material, and already is dependent 
 in much too great an extent on industrial expor- 
 tation to be able to maintain itself by its own 
 exertion even in the chief articles. A Central 
 Europe that is to be self-sufficient requires bor- 
 dering agricultural districts, and must make their 
 adhesion possible and desirable to them; it re- 
 quires, if possible, an extension of the northern
 
 132 THE ISSUE 
 
 and southern seacoast, it requires its share in 
 colonial possessions. But how can we speak of 
 all these things without intruding on investiga- 
 tions as to neutrality or the coming negotiations 
 of the peace congress? Whether and in what 
 condition we shall get back our colonies by 
 exchange at the peace no man can say. In our 
 opinion we must not let ourselves be robbed of 
 our colonial activity at any price, and, if it is 
 unavoidable, must make concessions of the land 
 we have occupied in order not to cease to be a 
 colonising nation. And who can say how, after 
 the war, the future lines of trenches will run 
 through Central Europe? Will they run on this 
 or the other side of Rumania and Bessarabia? 
 Will they follow the Vistula ? Is Bulgaria to be 
 counted as belonging to the " sphere of interest " 
 of Central Europe? Shall we gain a railway 
 line to Constantinople, placed safely in the hands 
 of our Allies? What harbours on the Mediter- 
 ranean will come into consideration as the 
 terminus of the Central European railway lines? 
 What is to happen to Antwerp? How will 
 the Baltic look after the war? There are a 
 hundred questions the answer to which is still 
 to come. 
 
 Well, Naumann is a wiser man than many of 
 his countrymen. He knows that it is not enough 
 to state what you would like to get ; a premature 
 publication of their demands will do more harm 
 than good; there is a virtue in silence and re- 
 serve. But he clearly indicates where his de-
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 133 
 
 sires go. This new state will be well endowed. 
 He will not mention Switzerland . or Holland, 
 for that would raise difficult questions of neu- 
 trality; he is not sure where the boundary is to 
 be drawn in Poland at the Vistula or at the 
 marshes of Pripet; which Mediterranean ports 
 will come in we do not yet know, whether it will 
 be Salonica or Vallona or Smyrna; and they 
 cannot be sure that they will secure Bulgaria and 
 Rumania and Bessarabia, or whether the gain 
 will be in the Baltic Provinces of Russia. The 
 details of the picture are not complete, but the 
 general idea is there, and in its essential features 
 it does not differ from that of the Pan-German 
 writers whom he repudiates, a Germany ruling 
 all Central Europe and choosing the districts that 
 are to be included on the sure ground of their 
 commercial and industrial value. 
 
 II 
 
 Central Europe will not be national; it will 
 only be the rule of Germanism. It will not be 
 peaceful; for it will primarily be organised for 
 war. Neither will it be free. Only children and 
 dreamers will believe that this new organisation 
 will find any place for parliamentary government 
 or democratic control. We have to picture to 
 ourselves, as Naumann points out, a gradual 
 separation of the new industrial and military 
 state from the old national states ; this will have
 
 134 THE ISSUE 
 
 its own institutions, and will administer the 
 common affairs. 
 
 Now, how will these common affairs be con- 
 trolled? Not by a separate parliament, but by 
 special commissions consisting of experts ap- 
 pointed by the constituent states. The work of 
 those commissions, and that means the whole 
 government in all that concerns the highest and 
 essential functions of the state, will be concen- 
 trated in a new bureaucracy. 
 
 If such important departments of life as 
 customs, provisions, the administration of war 
 loans, the control of trusts and syndicates, are 
 made the subject of Central European treaties 
 and commissions, then there will remain indeed 
 the final approval to the parliaments, but it 
 cannot be maintained that they will not be 
 excluded from practical participation in them 
 more than has been the case hitherto. 
 
 Naumann adds, quite justly, that even now 
 the influence of parliaments on these matters 
 has in fact been small ; in particular, commercial 
 policy has become highly technical, and no mem- 
 ber can understand all the details of commer- 
 cial life. The withdrawal of these matters 
 from parliamentary control will then only be 
 the continuance of a tendency that has already 
 begun: democratic control has shown itself in- 
 effective, and it is quite natural that it should 
 be diminished. And as for commercial affairs,
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 135 
 
 so also for military and naval. Central Europe 
 will be a single military union: 
 
 In this there lies for all the states that take 
 part in it a certain limitation of their own policy, 
 for they give up waging war alone. In this 
 limitation there is at the same time contained a 
 powerful protection of their existence, for they 
 are no longer exposed to being attacked alone. 
 Whoever belongs to the military union is thereby 
 secured as far as lies within the power of the 
 common army. 
 
 We have, then, our Union, commercial, indus- 
 trial, and military, with common institutions 
 managing these great departments of public life 
 which are withdrawn from the administration of 
 the individual states, just as in modern Germany 
 they are withdrawn from the administration of 
 Saxony or Baden. In Germany they are in the 
 hands of the Imperial administration, with which 
 is coupled the Reichstag elected by universal 
 suffrage. Well ! The Reichstag has not been 
 able to establish control over ^he administration 
 as has the English Parliament, but none the less 
 it has been able to exercise what has often been 
 a very inconvenient, because effective, criticism. 
 And it has always exerted a real control over the 
 provision of money. New laws cannot be passed 
 and new taxes cannot be levied without its as- 
 sent, and had it not been there the Government 
 of Germany would have been very different.
 
 136 THE ISSUE 
 
 There would have been no power able to curb 
 the Prussian bureaucracy, the Court, the landed 
 classes, and the great financial interests. There 
 would have been no workmen's protection, for 
 there would have been no socialistic party to be 
 combated and appeased. What is proposed 
 and it is an inevitable result of the Union 
 of Europe is a German Empire without a 
 Reichstag. 
 
 In this enlarged Empire who will govern? 
 
 First will come military matters, for it will be 
 on the army that it will rest, as it was by the 
 army that it was created. This army will be 
 one raised by universal and compulsory enlist- 
 ment, but the conditions of service, the size of 
 the army, the discipline, will be controlled on 
 purely military considerations, and there will be 
 no parliamentary assembly constitutionally quali- 
 fied to discuss and criticise. In the hands of 
 these central authorities will next be placed the 
 full control of imports and exports, all that con- 
 cerns the daily food of the people, the organisa- 
 tion of industry, and the conditions of labour; 
 but there will be no central parliament with its 
 representatives of all classes who can voice their 
 hardships and demands. All will be in the hands 
 of the expert and the specialist. And who are 
 the experts and specialists? In military matters 
 they are the General Staff and the War Office; 
 in commercial affairs they are the great Jewish 
 bankers. Naumann tells us in so many words
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 137 
 
 that it is to the Jews that he looks to help in 
 the introduction of German commercial habits to 
 the more backward countries, such as Hungary. 
 And in this society a place will be found, as soon 
 as the destruction of the British Empire has 
 made way for the " freedom of the seas," for the 
 managers of the great shipping firms. 
 
 Well, we can easily imagine this great state of 
 the future, a state in which military power 
 prepares the way for commercial efficiency, in 
 which all production is controlled by the great 
 financiers working through the constitutional and 
 orderly channels of a highly trained and obedient 
 bureaucracy, in which a close tariff provides that 
 the Union shall be self-sufficing and not depend- 
 ent on trade with other countries. But in this 
 new political condition what place will there be 
 for freedom, and what for democracy? The 
 soldier who has risked his life in the trenches, as 
 he was taught, for the security of Germany, the 
 father who has lost his son, and the woman her 
 husband, will see that what they had fought for 
 is not the permanence and security of the old 
 Germany that they knew and loved, a Germany 
 in which a fresh step had been made to smooth 
 away the inequalities of rank and condition, but 
 the establishment over Germany of a new and 
 autocratic Government which will for all time 
 remove the prospect that the simple German 
 citizen will have any real share in the control of 
 the conditions of his own life. He will come
 
 138 THE ISSUE 
 
 back to a state in which the pressure of military 
 service will not be relaxed, but it will now not be 
 service in defence of the Fatherland, but of a 
 cosmopolitan state in which his own labour will 
 be exposed to the competition of Slovenians and 
 Poles. 
 
 The danger to liberty is indeed far greater 
 than we thought. Modern Germany would join 
 together in one fabric of rule the three great 
 elements which control man the military state, 
 capitalism, and the organisation of industry. 
 The army, the trade union, and the organisation 
 of finance and capital in England we have 
 them all, but they are independent of one an- 
 other, and to a large extent even hostile; each 
 therefore neutralises the other. The system 
 which Germany wishes to impose on Europe, 
 and which it will impose unless it is defeated in 
 this war, is one in which the same state which 
 men serve in the army will, in its care for the 
 well-being of the workingman, govern each de- 
 tail of his working-day, and in its support of in- 
 dustry be able to manipulate the prices of each 
 article of food and clothing; and this state will 
 be freed from all popular control it will be a 
 great syndicate of bankers, and it will have un- 
 der its orders an army twice the size of the 
 German army that we know. 
 
 The value to Germany of this scheme is that it 
 shows clearly that annexations are unnecessary 
 as a means to the establishing of German do-
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 139 
 
 minion. It gives a guide which may be of real 
 use to an adroit politician. It is on annexation 
 that the controversy with the Socialists turns, 
 and a crude policy of annexation, of the kind 
 which the noisy politicians demand, would revolt 
 the moral sense of the world. But why not get 
 the same ends without using the word? Give 
 back her independence to Belgium, set up an 
 autonomous Poland, restore perhaps even the 
 shadow of her national existence to Serbia, and 
 maintain the alliance with Bulgaria, but let the 
 independence and the autonomy be conditional 
 on the conclusion of an alliance with Germany 
 and Austria by which the armies of the subject 
 states are obedient to the orders that come from 
 Berlin, in which the ports are open to German 
 ships of war, and see to it that the next war shall 
 be fought not on the German frontier, but on 
 the frontiers of these subject principalities. 
 Circle them with a barricade of trenches, so that 
 no hostile army shall ever be able to advance 
 over their territory, and Germany will be safely 
 cushioned, and the rude shock of war would 
 fall, not on Cologne and Danzig, but on Antwerp 
 and Warsaw. 
 
 It is not merely by annexations that the great 
 empires of the world have been built up. Rome, 
 when she conquered Italy, did not annex it, nor 
 did England begin by annexing India. That is a 
 later stage; that comes when the memory and 
 desire for independence have disappeared; till
 
 i 4 o THE ISSUE 
 
 then the halfway house of a semi-federal union 
 will suffice. 
 
 A careful reading of the Chancellor's speeches 
 will show that Dr. Naumann has in him a sym- 
 pathiser. What the Chancellor has again and 
 again demanded is not annexations, but guaran- 
 tees guarantees for the security of Germany, 
 guarantees political, military, and commercial. 
 These are precisely Naumann's requirements. 
 But this way of putting the case creates an 
 impression of moderation, and might easily mis- 
 lead the inexperienced, either in England or in 
 other countries, to believe that here we really 
 had suggestions on which a permanent and just 
 peace might be made. 
 
 If this is the future which Professor Naumann 
 paints for us, that of Professor Troltsch does 
 not differ from it: 
 
 For the moment we have a pledge of these 
 hopes in the mutual relations of the Central 
 States to one another. Here we have not so 
 much an idealistic hope, as the requirements of 
 practical policy. But if we succeed in forming a 
 great Central-European block, with this there 
 arises the idea of hope that this conception of the 
 peoples based on the German idea of freedom 
 may grow beyond it, and attract other states also 
 to it. Then there would be freedom and also 
 peace at least, for as far as we can see. 
 
 Here it is again the same idea, the Central 
 European States attracting to themselves, but,
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 141 
 
 of course, in proper subordination, the sur- 
 rounding nations. In the mind of a German 
 idealist, this takes a peaceful and generous form. 
 But it is not by men such as he that the course 
 of the world is governed, and we know that the 
 attraction of the surrounding nations will be 
 managed in the way in which it has been applied 
 to Poland, to Belgium, and to Serbia. 
 
 All this is indeed but an outward garnishing 
 and decoration. In England, which is governed 
 by Parliament, and where every turn of thought 
 and every suggestion of an idealist finds its 
 proper place in the groove of that public opinion, 
 by which the state is governed, we can always 
 look confidently to the future, certain that the 
 crude exaggerations of war time, the violences of 
 military necessity, and the crudities of bellocratic 
 organisation will be softened and ameliorated by 
 the constant stream of criticism and discussion. 
 In Germany we know that this will not be the 
 case; there we know that the great machine, 
 always growing in perfection and in weight, will 
 proceed on its way, careless of the talkers and 
 the thinkers who will run by the side and behind, 
 finding theories and ideas to justify every action 
 that it takes. This machine in the future will 
 be infinitely stronger and more self-possessed 
 than in the past. They are only children who 
 believe that success in this contest will lead to 
 any relaxation of the governmental control or 
 increase of democratic influence in the state.
 
 i 4 2 THE ISSUE 
 
 All that the Germans now demand is more and 
 more organisation, greater and greater efficiency. 
 This organisation and efficiency will not be won 
 by parliament or the people; it will be won by 
 the skilled and educated governing aristocracy of 
 the intellect. To this great machine all the 
 strength of the nation will contribute, but the 
 nation will not guide or control it, and this 
 Germany of the future will be associated in 
 intimate alliance with the revived Turkish 
 Empire. Foreign policy always reacts upon 
 internal affairs. This the Germans know well 
 from their own past; it was the alliance with 
 Russia and with Austria which crushed the free 
 development of Germany for a generation. Will 
 the Germany which is occupied with setting up a 
 military rule in Asia and transporting to another 
 continent the chosen plan of financial organisa- 
 tion and military power, which is preparing for 
 the next great struggle with the British Empire, 
 which is laying down railways in Asia Minor 
 and Mesopotamia, forcing Turks and Arabs and 
 Syrians and Bulgarians to take their place as 
 the servant of the state machine; will this Ger- 
 man Government tolerate the amateur criticism 
 of parliamentary parties and the crude individu- 
 alism of romantic seekers after freedom ? 
 
 THE END
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 MANIFESTO OF THE SIX INDUSTRIAL 
 ASSOCIATIONS 1 
 
 [Strictly confidential] 
 
 THE League of Agriculturalists (Der Bund der 
 Landwirte), The German Peasants' League (Der 
 Deutsche Bauernbund), The Committee of the 
 Christian German Peasant Union, formerly the 
 Westphalian Peasant Union (Der Vorort der Christ- 
 lichen Deutschen Bauernvereine, zurzeit West- 
 falischer Bauernverein), The Central Association 
 of German Industrialists (Der Centralverband 
 Deutscher Industrieller), The League of Indus- 
 trialists (Der Bund der Industriellen), and The Con- 
 servative Middle-class Association (Der Reichs- 
 deutsche Mittelstandsverband), on May 20, 1915, 
 addressed the following petition to the Imperial 
 Chancellor : 
 
 To His Excellency the Imperial Chancellor, 
 Dr. Bethmann von Hollweg. 
 
 BERLIN, May 20, 1915. 
 EXCELLENCY, 
 
 Together with the whole German people, those 
 occupied in business pursuits, whether in agriculture 
 
 1 This is translated from the original text published by 
 the Alliance Francaise. The italics are as in the original.
 
 144 APPENDIX 
 
 or industry, in trade or manufacture, are determined 
 to endure to the end, notwithstanding every sacri- 
 fice, in this struggle for life and death which has 
 been forced upon Germany, in order that Germany 
 may come out of this struggle stronger in its exter- 
 nal relations, with the guarantee of permanent peace, 
 and therewith also the guarantee for the security 
 of further national, industrial and intellectual de- 
 velopment, at home also. 
 
 Even if the military situation were a more un- 
 favourable one, or were doubtful, this would make 
 no difference, if the object which His Majesty the 
 Emperor has himself put before us, both externally 
 and internally, is not to be lost. This object can 
 only be attained by fighting for a peace which will 
 bring us better security for our frontiers in East and 
 West, an extension for the foundations of our sea 
 power and the possibility of an unchecked and strong 
 development of our industrial resources; in short, 
 both in politics, in the army, in the navy and in in- 
 dustry, those extensions of power which will be a 
 guarantee for our greater strength externally. 
 
 The peace which does not bring us these results 
 makes a renewal of the struggle unavoidable under 
 circumstances which would be essentially less fa- 
 vourable to Germany. Therefore no hasty peace. 
 For from a hasty peace we could not hope for a 
 sufficient prize of victory. 
 
 But also no half-hearted peace, no peace which 
 does not include complete political exploitation for 
 the military successes, for which we hope in the 
 directions indicated. 
 
 The following memorandum, which was drawn up 
 on March 10, of this year by the League of Agri- 
 culturists, The German Peasants' League, The 
 Central Association of German Industrialists, The 
 League of Industrialists and the Conservative
 
 APPENDIX 145 
 
 Middle-class Association, and addressed to Your 
 Excellency, and to which the Christian German 
 Peasants' Union, which is also a signatory to this 
 address, has been added, explains in detail the re- 
 quirements which the necessary military successes 
 being assumed must in the opinion of the under- 
 signed Associations be fulfilled in order to secure for 
 Germany that political, military and industrial posi- 
 tion which would enable her to look with satisfaction 
 to all possibilities of the future. 
 The memorandum was as follows : 
 
 " The undersigned Corporations have occupied 
 themselves with the question of how the formula, 
 which has in the last months so often been heard, 
 viz. : that this war must be followed by an honour- 
 able peace which corresponds to the sacrifices which 
 have been made and contains in itself a guarantee 
 for its continuance, can best be realised. 
 
 " In answering this question, it must never be for- 
 gotten that our enemies continuously announce that 
 Germany is to be annihilated and struck out of the 
 rank of the Great Powers. In view of these at- 
 tempts we shall find no protection in treaties, which, 
 when the fitting moment comes, would be again 
 trodden underfoot, BUT ONLY IN A WEAKENING OF 
 
 OUR ENEMIES, BOTH INDUSTRIALLY AND MILITARILY, 
 CARRIED TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT BY IT PEACE 
 WILL BE SECURED SO FAR AS CAN BE FORESEEN. 
 
 " Side by side with the demand for Colonial Em- 
 pire, which completely satisfies the many-sided in- 
 dustrial interests of Germany, side by side with the 
 security of our future in matters of customs and 
 commerce and the requirements for sufficient war in- 
 demnity to be given in a suitable form, we regard 
 the chief end of the struggle which has been forced 
 upon us as lying in the security and improvement of
 
 146 APPENDIX 
 
 the foundations for the European existence of the 
 German Empire in the following directions : 
 
 " BELGIUM 
 
 " In order to provide the necessary security for 
 our influence at sea, in order to secure our future 
 military and industrial position as against England, 
 and in order to bring about the close connexion of 
 Belgian territory, which is industrially of such im- 
 portance, with our main industrial districts, Belgium 
 must be SUBJECTED TO THE GERMAN IMPERIAL LEG- 
 ISLATION, BOTH IN MILITARY AND TARIFF MATTERS, 
 AS WELL AS IN REGARD TO CURRENCY, BANKING AND 
 
 POST. Railways and canals must be incorporated in 
 our transport system. In addition the Government 
 and Administration of the country must be so man- 
 aged that the inhabitants obtain no influence on the 
 political fortunes of the German Empire ; there must 
 be a separation of the Walloons and of the predomi- 
 nantly Flemish territory, and the industrial under- 
 takings and landed property, which are so important 
 for the Government of the country, must be trans- 
 ferred into German hands. 
 
 " FRANCE 
 
 " SO FAR AS REGARDS FRANCE FROM THE SAME 
 POINT OF VIEW AS OUR POSITION TOWARDS ENGLAND, 
 THE POSSESSION OF THE COASTAL DISTRICTS BORDER- 
 ING ON BELGIUM, AS FAR AS THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF 
 
 THE SOMME, AND WITH THEM ACCESS TO THE AT- 
 LANTIC OCEAN, MUST BE REGARDED AS A VITAL 
 
 MATTER FOR OUR FUTURE POSITION AT SEA. The 
 
 ' Hinterland,' which must be acquired with them, 
 must be so delimited that the complete use of the 
 canal-ports which we gain, both for industrial and 
 strategic purposes, must be secured. All further ac-
 
 APPENDIX 147 
 
 quisitions of French Territory, apart from the neces- 
 sary annexation of the mining district of Briey, must 
 be determined purely according to military and stra- 
 tegical considerations. After the experiences of this 
 war, it must be regarded as a matter of course that 
 we must not in the future leave our frontiers open 
 to hostile invasion, as we should do if we left to our 
 opponents those fortified positions which threaten 
 us, and in particular Verdun and Belfort and the 
 part of the Western slopes of the Vosges which lies 
 between them. With the acquisition of the line of 
 the Meuse and the French coast to which the canals 
 lead, and the mining districts of Briey, which have 
 been mentioned, the possession of the canal districts 
 in the department of the Nord and the Pas de Calais 
 is necessarily included. It is a matter of course, 
 after our experiences in Alsace-Lorraine, that these 
 annexations be based on the condition that the 
 population of the annexed districts shall not be 
 placed in the position to exercise political influence 
 on the fortunes of the German Empire, and THAT 
 
 INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENTS, INCLUDING BOTH 
 LARGE AND MODERATE-SIZED PROPERTIES, SHOULD BE 
 TRANSFERRED TO GERMAN HANDS, WHILE FRANCE 
 SHOULD COMPENSATE AND TAKE OVER THEIR OWNERS. 
 
 " RUSSIA 
 
 " For the East the determining consideration must 
 be that the great addition to our industry in the 
 West must be counterbalanced by an equivalent 
 annexation of agricultural territory in the East. 
 The present industrial structure of Germany has 
 shown itself so fortunate in the present war, that 
 the necessity for maintaining it for as long a time as 
 we can foresee may well be termed the general con- 
 viction of our people.
 
 148 APPENDIX 
 
 " The necessity of strengthening also the sound 
 agricultural basis of our nation, of making possible 
 a German agricultural colonisation on a large scale, 
 as well as the restoration to the territory of the 
 Empire, and to our industrial system, of the German 
 peasants who are living abroad, especially those 
 settled in Russia and at present deprived of their 
 rights, and of strengthening and raising the numbers 
 of our population capable of bearing arms, REQUIRES 
 A CONSIDERABLE EXTENSION OF THE IMPERIAL AND 
 PRUSSIAN FRONTIERS IN THE EAST BY ANNEXATION 
 OF AT LEAST PARTS OF THE BALTIC PROVINCES AND 
 OF THOSE TERRITORIES WHICH LIE TO THE SOUTH OF 
 IT, while keeping in mind the object of making our 
 Eastern German frontier one capable of military 
 defence. 
 
 " The reconstruction of East Prussia requires a 
 better security of its frontiers by placing in front of 
 them considerable districts, and also West Prussia, 
 Posen and Silicia must not remain frontier marches 
 exposed to danger as they now are. 
 
 " With regard to the granting of political rights 
 to the inhabitants of the new districts and the 
 securing of German industrial influence, that applies 
 which has already been said about France. The war 
 indemnity to be paid by Russia will have to consist 
 to a large extent in change in the proprietorship of 
 the soil. 
 
 " THE GROUNDS FOR ANNEXATION 
 
 " Of course these demands depend on the hypothe- 
 sis that military results will enable them to be carried 
 out. In accordance with what we have already 
 achieved, we have firm confidence in our army and 
 its leaders that a victory will be secured which will 
 guarantee the attainment of these ends. These ends 
 are to be put before us, not from a policy of con-
 
 APPENDIX 149 
 
 quest, but because it is only the attainment of these 
 ends which will secure the permanent peace, which, 
 after the great sacrifices which have been made, the 
 German people in all its branches expects, quite 
 apart from the fact that, according to our view, a 
 voluntary surrender of the hostile territories which 
 have been watered with so much German blood, and 
 in which are found innumerable graves of the very 
 best of our people, would not correspond to the feel- 
 ing of the people and their conception of an hon- 
 ourable peace. 
 
 " In the future as in the past, the want of harbours 
 directly on the Channel would strangle our activity 
 beyond the seas. An independent Belgium would 
 continue to be a tete du pont to England, a point 
 from which to attack us. The natural line of forti- 
 fications of France in the hands of the French im- 
 plies a permanent menace to our frontiers ; and Rus- 
 sia, if she emerged from the war without loss of 
 territory, would despise our capacity for action and 
 the power which might check her in disturbing our 
 interests, while on the other side the failure to attain 
 agricultural territories on our Eastern frontier would 
 diminish the possibility of strengthening the defen- 
 sive power of Germany against Russia by a sufficient 
 increase of the German population." 
 
 As a supplement to this manifesto, we must here 
 lay special stress on the fact that the political, mili- 
 tary and industrial objects which the German people 
 must strive after in the interests of the security of 
 their future, stand in the closest connexion with and 
 cannot be separated from one another. It is clear, 
 to start with, that the attainment of our great politi- 
 cal objects depends on the offensive power and the 
 successes of our army. There can, however, be no 
 doubt, particularly after the experiences of this war,
 
 i 5 o APPENDIX 
 
 that our military successes and their exploitation in 
 a wide field is conditioned by the industrial strength 
 and active power of our people, and this especially if 
 we take a long view. If German agriculture had not 
 been in a position to secure the food of the people 
 despite all the efforts of our enemies, and if German 
 industry, German inventing spirit and German tech- 
 nical skill had not been in the condition to make us 
 independent of foreign countries in the most dif- 
 ferent spheres, then, notwithstanding the brilliant 
 successes of our victorious troops, we should have 
 eventually had to give way in the struggle which 
 had been forced upon us, if indeed we should not 
 have already been defeated. 
 
 In a very special manner this applies to the re- 
 quirements put forward in the Memorandum, on 
 the one side for the acquisition of territory suitable 
 to agricultural settlers, and on the other side for 
 seizing the mining district of the Meurthe and 
 Moselle as well as of the French coaling districts in 
 the Departments of the Nord and the Pas de Calais 
 and also the Belgian. 
 
 We cannot do without the acquisition of sufficient 
 territory suitable for agricultural settlement, both 
 in the interests of the extension of the agricultural 
 foundations of our national industry, and included 
 in this, the maintenance of that happy balance in 
 our whole industrial system which has been recog- 
 nised as so necessary in the present war, and also 
 for the security of the source of the national strength 
 of our people, and especially the increase in the 
 numbers of the population which flows from a vigor- 
 ous agriculture and which strengthens our military 
 power. 
 
 In the same way, acquisitions such as that of the 
 mining and coal districts which have been spoken 
 of, are not only in the interests of the development
 
 APPENDIX 151 
 
 of our industrial forces, but also represent the mili- 
 tary interests. 
 
 The security of the German Empire in a future 
 war also imperatively requires the possession of the 
 whole adjoining territory of Luxemburg and Lor- 
 raine, including the fortifications of Longwy and 
 Verdun, without which this territory cannot be held. 
 
 The possession of larger supplies of coal and, in 
 particular, of coal rich in bitumen, which is found in 
 great quantities in the basin of Northern France, is 
 decisive for the result of the war, at least to as great 
 an extent as is iron ore. 
 
 Belgium and North France together produce over 
 forty million tons. 1 
 
 In conclusion, it may be said that the objects 
 which we have in view for the permanent security 
 of our industry, are also the objects which guarantee 
 us our military strength, and thereby our political 
 independence and power, quite apart from the fact 
 that, by the extension of our capacity for industrial 
 activity, they increase and secure opportunities for 
 work, and thereby serve to the advantage of the 
 whole of the working classes. 
 
 1 The German ton is slightly smaller than the English ton; 
 the German ton contains 1000 kgs., the English ton 1016 
 
 kgs.
 
 APPENDIX H 
 
 GERMANY'S PEACE TERMS 
 MANIFESTO OF THE GERMAN PROFESSORS l 
 
 A REMARKABLE programme adopted by a number of 
 German professors and other intellectuals, at a 
 meeting held on June 20, in the Berlin Kiinstlerhaus, 
 for the purpose of its being presented in petition 
 form to the German Imperial Chancellor, was pub- 
 lished in Berne, Switzerland, on August 10. The 
 document is printed off in characters to resemble 
 manuscript. Among the signatories are Friedrich 
 Meinecke, Professor of History, Berlin; Hermann 
 Oncken, Professor of History, Heidelberg; Herr 
 von Reichenau, retired diplomat; Herr von 
 Schwerin, Regierungs-president, of Frankfurt-am- 
 Main, and Dietrich Schafer, Professor of History, 
 Berlin. 
 
 "The German people and their Emperor have 
 preserved peace for forty-four years, preserved it 
 until its further maintenance was incompatible with 
 national honour and our continued existence. De- 
 spite her increase in strength and population, never 
 has Germany thought of transgressing the narrow 
 bounds of her possessions on the European Conti- 
 nent with a view to conquest. Upon the world's 
 
 1 This is taken from a version published in America: 
 Current History (October, 1915).
 
 APPENDIX 153 
 
 markets alone was she forced to make an entry, so as 
 to insure her economic existence by peacefully com- 
 peting with other nations. 
 
 " To our enemies, however, even these narrow 
 limits and a share of the world's trade necessary to 
 our existence seemed too much, and they formed 
 plans which aimed at the very annihilation of the 
 German Empire. Then we Germans rose as one 
 man, from the highest to the meanest, realising that 
 we must defend not only our external life but also 
 our inner, spiritual and moral life in short, de- 
 fend German and European civilisation (Kultur) 
 against barbarian hordes from the east, and desire 
 for vengeance and domination from the west. With 
 God's help, hand in hand with our trusty ally, we 
 have been able victoriously to assert ourselves 
 against half a world of enemies. 
 
 " Now, however, another foe has arisen, in Italy. 
 It is no longer sufficient for us merely to defend 
 ourselves. Sword in hand, our foes have compelled 
 us to make enormous sacrifices of blood and treas- 
 ure. Now we want to defend ourselves with all our 
 might against a repetition of such an attack from 
 every side, against a whole succession of wars, and 
 against the possibility of our enemies again becoming 
 strong. Moreover, we are determined to establish 
 ourselves so firmly on such a broad expanse of se- 
 curely won homeland that our independent existence 
 is guaranteed for generations to come. 
 
 " As to these main objects the nation is unanimous 
 in its determination. The plain truth, for which 
 there is the most absolute foundation, is this. Only 
 one fear exists in all classes of our people, and espe- 
 cially is there a deep-seated fear prevailing among 
 the most simple-minded sections that mistaken ideas 
 of atonement (Versohnungsillusionen'} or 'even nerv- 
 ous impatience might lead to the conclusion of a pre-
 
 154 APPENDIX 
 
 mature and consequently patched-up peace, which 
 could never be lasting; and that, as happened a 
 hundred years ago, the pen of the diplomats might 
 ruin what the sword has successfully conquered, and 
 this perhaps in the most fateful hour of German 
 history, when popular feeling has attained an inten- 
 sity and unanimity which was never known in the 
 past and which will not so easily recur in the future. 
 
 " Let there be no mistake. We do not wish to 
 dominate the world, but to have a standing in it 
 fully corresponding to the greatness of our position 
 as a civilised power and our economic and military 
 strength. It may be that owing to the numerical 
 superiority of our enemies we cannot obtain every- 
 thing we wish in order to insure our position as a 
 nation ; but the military results of this war, obtained 
 by such great sacrifices, must be utilised to the very 
 utmost possible extent. This, we repeat, is the firm 
 determination of the German people. 
 
 " To give clear expression to this fixed popular 
 determination, and to convey such expression to the 
 Government, to afford it strong support in its diffi- 
 cult task of enforcing Germany's necessary claims 
 against a few faint-hearted individuals at home as 
 well as bitter enemies abroad, is the duty and right 
 of those whose education and position raise them 
 to the level of intellectual leaders and protagonists of 
 public opinion, and we make appeal to them to 
 fulfil this duty. 
 
 " Being well aware that a distinction must be 
 drawn between the objects of the war and the final 
 conditions of peace, that everything of necessity 
 depends on the final success of our arms, and that 
 it cannot be our business to discuss Austria-Hun- 
 gary's and Turkey's military objects, we have drawn 
 up the following brief statement of what, according 
 to our conviction, constitutes for Germany the guar-
 
 APPENDIX 155 
 
 antees of a lasting- peace and the goals to which the 
 blood-stained roads of this war must lead. 
 
 " i. FRANCE 
 
 " After being threatened by France for centuries, 
 and after hearing the cry of vengeance from 1815 
 till 1870 and from 1871 till 1915, we wish to have 
 done with the French menace once for all. All 
 classes of our people are imbued with this desire. 
 There must, however, be no misplaced attempts at 
 expiation (Versohnungsbemuhungen}, which have 
 always been opposed by France with the utmost 
 fanaticism ; and as regards this we would utter a 
 most urgent warning to Germans not to deceive 
 themselves. Even after the terrible lesson of this 
 unsuccessful war of vengeance, France will still 
 thirst for revenge, in so far as her strength permits. 
 For the sake of our own existence we must ruthlessly 
 weaken her both politically and economically, and 
 must improve our military and strategical position 
 with regard to her. For this purpose in our opinion 
 it is necessary radically to improve our whole west- 
 ern front from Belfort to the coast. Part of the 
 North French Channel coast we must acquire, if 
 possible, in order to be strategically safer as re- 
 gards England and to secure better access to the 
 ocean. 
 
 " Special measures must be taken to avoid the 
 German Empire in any way suffering internally 
 owing to this enlargement of its frontier and addi- 
 tion to its territory. In order not to have conditions 
 such as those in Alsace-Lorraine the most important 
 business undertakings and estates must be trans- 
 ferred from anti-German ownership to German 
 hands, France taking over and compensating the 
 former owners. Such portion of the population as
 
 i 5 6 APPENDIX 
 
 is taken over by us must be allowed absolutely no 
 influence in the Empire. 
 
 " Furthermore, it is necessary to impose a merci- 
 lessly high war indemnity (of which more hereafter) 
 upon France, and probably on her rather than on 
 any other of our enemies, however terrible the 
 financial losses she may have already suffered owing 
 to her own folly and British self-seeking. We must 
 also not forget that she has comparatively large 
 colonial possessions, and that, should circumstances 
 arise, England could hold on to these with impunity 
 if we do not help ourselves to them. 
 
 " 2. BELGIUM 
 
 " On Belgium, on the acquisition of which so much 
 of the best German blood has been shed, we must 
 keep firm hold, from the political, military, and 
 economic standpoints, despite any arguments which 
 may be urged to the contrary. On no point are the 
 masses more united, for without the slightest possible 
 doubt they consider it a matter of honour to hold 
 on to Belgium. 
 
 " From the political and military standpoints it 
 is obvious that, were this not done, Belgium would 
 be neither more nor less than a basis from which 
 England could attack and most dangerously menace 
 Germany, in short, a shield behind which our foes 
 would again assemble against us. Economically 
 Belgium means a prodigious increase of power 
 to us. 
 
 " In time also she may entail a considerable addi- 
 tion to our nation, if in course of time the Flemish 
 element, which is so closely allied to us, becomes 
 emancipated from the artificial grip of French cul- 
 ture and remembers its Teutonic affinities. 
 
 " As to the problems which we shall have to solve
 
 APPENDIX 157 
 
 once we possess Belgium, we would lay special stress 
 on the inhabitants being- allowed no political influence 
 in the Empire, and on the necessity for transferring 
 from anti-German to German hands the leading 
 business enterprises and properties in the districts 
 to be ceded by France." 
 
 The manifesto speaks of the growing Russian 
 peril, and says that the occupied part of Russia 
 should become a rich agricultural country, where 
 the surplus German population and the refugees who 
 have found an asylum in Germany will be settled. 
 It proceeds: 
 
 " Russia is so rich in territory that she will be 
 able to pay an indemnity in kind by giving lands, but 
 lands without landlords. Peace with Russia, which 
 would not diminish Russian power and increase 
 German territory, would surely lead to a renewal of 
 the war. Once the Russians are driven back beyond 
 their new frontier we shall not forget the war which 
 England has made on the maritime and colonial 
 commerce of Germany. That must be the guide of 
 our action. We must supplant the world trade of 
 Great Britain. By her blockade of Germany, Eng- 
 land has instructed us in the art of being a European 
 power militarily and industrially independent of 
 others. We must immediately seek to create for 
 ourselves, apart from the empire of the seas, a Con- 
 tinental commercial enceinte as extensive as possible. 
 Our friends Austria-Hungary and Turkey will open 
 to us the Balkans and Asia Minor, and thus we shall 
 assure ourselves of the Persian Gulf against the pre- 
 tensions of Russia and Great Britain. We must also 
 sign as speedily as possible commercial treaties with 
 our close political friends. Then we shall devote 
 our attention to recovering our overseas commerce.
 
 158 APPENDIX 
 
 Our old commercial and maritime treaties must be 
 renewed, and everywhere we must obtain the same 
 treatment as Great Britain. In Africa we must 
 reconstitute our colonial empire. Central Africa is 
 only a huge desert, which does not offer enough 
 colonial wealth. We therefore require other pro- 
 ductive lands, and herein is to be found the impor- 
 tance of our alliance with Islam and the utility of 
 our maritime outlet. Those who want to exchange 
 Belgium for our colonies forget that not only are 
 colonies the foundation of all European power, but 
 that colonies without an opening to the sea would 
 always be the slaves of the good or ill will of Eng- 
 land. We need liberty of the seas, which was the 
 real cause of war between England and Germany. 
 To obtain it we must have Egypt, the connecting- 
 link between British Africa and British Asia 
 Egypt, which with Australia makes the Indian 
 Ocean an English sea, which joins up all the British 
 colonies with the mother country, which, as Bismarck 
 said, is the neck of the British Empire. That is 
 where England must be shaken. The Suez Canal 
 route will then be free, and Turkey will regain her 
 ancient right. 
 
 "THE PRESS 
 
 " But England also invades the universal press ; 
 we must take this monopoly away. Our best arm 
 against English permeation is the liberty which, as 
 leaders of Europe, we shall bring to the whole 
 world. With regard to war indemnities, we shall de- 
 mand an indemnity which, as much as possible, shall 
 cover war expenditure, the repair of damage, and 
 pensions for disabled men, widows, and orphans. 
 We know that the question has been examined by 
 the Government according to the financial capacities 
 of our enemies. From England, which has been so
 
 APPENDIX 159 
 
 niggardly in men, we can never demand enough 
 money, because England raised the world against us 
 with gold. It is our duty to crush the insatiable 
 cupidity of this nation. However, we shall probably 
 have to apply for a war indemnity to France in the 
 first place, if not exclusively. We ought not to hesi- 
 tate to impose upon France as much as possible out 
 of false sentimentalism. As mitigation she might be 
 offered one of the sides of the Suez Canal, while we 
 occupy the other. Should France refuse that, as 
 well as the financial obligation that we should ask 
 her, we should have to impose on her a policy which 
 would satisfy us. We do not want a policy of cul- 
 ture without a policy of action. Germany must in- 
 sure her political and commercial life before trying 
 to propagate her spirit. Let us at first give a healthy 
 body to our German soul." 
 
 The manifesto concludes with this saying of 
 Bismarck: 
 
 " ' Whenever, in any sphere of politics or else- 
 where, one thinks one has touched an obstacle with 
 one's finger, courage and victory no longer stand in 
 the relation of cause to effect, but are identical.' "
 
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