uns SE WOMAN VN. vi [ene N \ ‘\ N RANAANACASNEASAANANSRCUNNANA ASEAN AAAI SN RAR ANNA CRNANSAAARA ANAS NAAN AANA RENAN NAN NI AN j Vaso ww) = | \ AN MQW Nw s 5 aE i ; 5 i BS SN. 4 4 , EAS ahs: Ww SS\ \ \ \ . - a ~ ( , \ 7. i\ « KC \ 8 nae ee « SEY SEO NE Sy ON RRS EN s Zz Les res e LIE I LE , : O en ee LLL a ee ee ssid Z 2 eee IEA LEO AAPL : Leese tela M a te cL abhi ‘ Le pps Z ie eee LBLALE ENIAC LEA A LG ll SEA IIE Lie Tf cecal eee eee aceite PE EL G4 ee 5 Zs Seta ae pe Nerees oe oe Los GE “Lo zo LE ee ALI GLE Meee ar Me plans GE a Lees Ei Ss GLEE EG Mi LE eee ie LL m Ly Gee oe oe re le sg ee, Se Z Z ees - Lp Z 4 wo Te oe LLELL Sg rs we sgt" Zs vs 53 ta Be tp GEL Z Ce EL Ze LI gs ie Ce ies LoL tj LATIIAA ese Le, Zi Yj | tj : EN AYA BREN SAN \ : a . EN \ AN RYN NN WA Aw SONNE SN SEV RRR AY \\ AW Nik KA AY AW eo SRA Ss Lo \ MQ AX ‘ . ~ \\ « XY AX AAK \ ADA MM QQ XA An | — see syosyyes yy ppp aman nnn nnn namansmmn es AY XY = jjThis Copy of Source Records io tg re The Great War eee" t= ic Pe : Ne NP is registered in the name of UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIAHt} I \\\\ | ‘ WAAAY \| | lj I j // \ ‘ \\ \\\\ VA | Hii LH, j QA A | ! Mf QQQQMB ee HY Mt Yih UY; This Certifies that Source Records of The Great War is issued strictly as a Registered Edition and that each copy issued is to be registered in the name of its owner at National Head- quarters of The American Legion, and certified in Vol- ume 1 in this form Ph N National Commander “y : eer | pat es aes, Se National AdjutantBINDING Vol. | The binding design on this volume is an authorized facsimile of the original art binding on the official French copy of the Ver- sailles Peace Treaty, which was signed by President Poincaré and Foreign Minister S. Pichon, and deposited in the Archives of the French Government.SOURCE RECORDS OF THE GREAT WAR A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE SOURCE RECORD OF THE WORLD'S GREAT WAR, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE ACTUAL WORDS OF THE CHIEF OFFICIALS AND MOST EMINENT LEADERS NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL NON-SECTARIAN PRESENTING DOCUMENTS FROM GOVERNMENT ARCHIVES AND OTHER AUTHORITATIVE SOURCES, WITH OUTLINE NARRATIVES, INDICES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING ON SOCIO. LOGICAL MOVEMENTS AND INDIVIDUAL NATIONAL ACTIVITIES EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CHARLES F. HORNE, Pu.D. DIRECTING EDITOR WALTER FE. AUSRING = lM. With a staff of specialists VOLUME I (Fas ws Rational AlumniCopyRIGHT, 1923, NATIONAL ALUMNI Printed in U.S. A.Some have keen wits to know THE TRUTH; Some have strong hearts to tell THE TRUTH; But how few know to tell it so That all men see it is THE TRUTH. —Sir THomMas Browne,TO THE READER These volumes are an earnest effort to give the reader, in practical form, such frank and full information as will enable him to comprehend clearly this greatest of all wars. To follow the vdlumes most readily and pleasantly, to gather their knowedge most surely and simply, the reader 1s urged to approach them by the method here suggested. Turn first to the Outline Narrative which opens each volume. It gives the general picture of the period covered, sketching briefly each Great Event, and showing how each crisis led onward to the next. This series of seven Outline Narratives in the seven volumes thus constitutes in itself a complete story of the War. In addition to this, as each Great Event is described in the Outline Narratives, it is further emphasized by a foot- note directing the reader to its more extended treatment in the body of the volume. For each event upon which the reader wishes fuller knowledge, he should next turn, as directed, to its specidl section. There he will find, first, a brief introduction giving the details of the event, pointing out its relation to other affairs, and explaining the real value and authoritative source of the articles which follow. These articles include government statements, individual narratives, or historic documents, covering both sides of each large issue. The articles have been carefully selected from whatever authorities seem, in each particular case, to have best understood what really happened, and to have depicted it most vividly. They are the true “sources” from which future generations will build their knowledge of each event. Only, instead of leaving these “sources” for chance to confuse or to destroy, we are presenting them now, ac- companied by the living comment of their own day as to their weight and truthfulness. From these sections the reader can now and at once form his own accurate judgments about the War and its coming 1xx TO THE READER consequences. For example, on the German Chancellor's noted phrase declaring the Belgian treaty merely a “scrap of paper,’ this first volume gives the Chancellor's own ex- planation of what he said, and meant; it supplements this with the statement of the British Ambassador to whom the words were said, and the official comments of the rival governments. The volumes thus present a succession of dramatic antitheses, conflicts of statement as sharp and strik- ing as the armed clashes on the field. That every speaker may be given absolutely “fair play,” we have even, as far as possible, had the translation of foreign documents made by writers in sympathy with the originals, pro-Germans for the German texts, pro-Russians for the Russian, and so on. Moreover the translations have been carefully followed by our editors to make sure that the atmosphere of the original is preserved. As to the originals themselves, they are of course often violently one-sided. Hence the reader 1s urged, in weighing them, to accept the help of our explanatory introductions, and also of our footnotes. The latter gwe warning against any statements which the world can now positively declare to be mistaken—or worse. Thus forewarned, one may read the words of truth’s worst enemies, may know the wiles of every foe, yet be misled by none of them. In some such fashion, surely, will all histories be one day written. Only from such will later generations consent to read. So shall clear-headed men of the Future look back upon our Present with keener vision, and gather rich wisdom from the blunders of the Past. For the scholar who seeks rather to consult our work for occasional reference, or to read fully upon some one nation or topic, we have given to the series a most thorough index. In the final volume will be found not only a complete General Index but also, as supplement to it, a Subject Index pownt- ing out every mention of the more important themes. The reader is guided to outside books by a bibliography. The editors ardently hope that the value of their work may prove equal to the earnestness of their effort. They have tried to serve you well. THE EDITORS.IT III IV CONTENTS VOLUME I—How THE GREAT WAR AROSE An Outline Narrative of the Causes of the War CHARLES F. HORNE The Opposing Forces Autocracy and Democracy HENRI BERGSON, President of the French Academy of Sciences, the world's foremost philosopher. OTFRIED NIPPOLD, German pacifist leader and authority on Inter- national Law, Professor in Berne University. KARL LAMPRECHT, Chief Court Historian of the German Empire, Professor in Leipsic University. The Kultur of Germany Worship of the Superman, as Taught by Nietzsche WILLIAM ELKIN, Professor of Philosophy in Indiana University. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Germany's renowned philosopher. HENRIQUE DE MENDONCA, of the Portuguese Academy of Sciences. The Culture of Democracy Humanity’s Long Struggle Toward Equal Rights ROBERT McELROY, U.S. Government Representative for Teaching the Causes of the War, Professor in Princeton University. THEODORE RUYSSEN, President of the French Peace Society, Professor of Philosophy at Bordeaux University. Germany's Economic Organization The Prosperity that Urged Central Europe Toward Expansion and War HENRI HAUSER, of the Institute or France, the standard authority on economics. FRIEDRICH NAUMANN, of the German Reichstag, the foremost economic writer of Germany. Xl PAGE XVil 21 53 65VI Vil VIII IX CONTENTS Germany's Dream of World Empire The Worship of the War God Thor, as Taught by Trettschke PRINCE VON BULOW, Former Chancellor of Germany. MAXIMILIEN HARDEN, German publicist and fiery patriot. DR. RICHARD GRELLING, Author of ‘I Accuse,’’ the first great German book blaming Germany for the war. The Poisons Brewed by Militarism What Military Methods Did 1n Germany GENERAL BERNHARDI, Germany's chief military writer. EUGENE ETIENNE, Former French Minister of War. CHARLES ALTSCHUL, a patriotic American of German ancestry. FREDERICK WILLIAM HOHENZOLLERN, Former Crown Prince of Germany. Woe to the Conquered! Subject Foreign Nations within the German Empire ERNEST BARKER, Standard English Historian, of Oxford Univer- sity. Alsace-Lorraine Why France and Germany Continued Irreconcilable CHARLES D. HAZEN, Professor of History in Columbia Univer- sity, foremost American authority on European history. OFFICIAL PROTEST OF ALSACE. HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKEE, Germany's chief advocate of conquest. WILLIAM DAVIS, Professor in Minnesota University, author of the most used college text-book on the war. Austria Finds Danger in the Balkans The Growth of National Spirit Among the Serbs CONSTANTIN DUMBA, Former Austrian Ambassador to the United States. G. M. TREVELYAN, British publicist in Serbia, afterward Red Cross director in Italy. The Bagdad Railway and the Lordship of the East The First Clash between British and German Im- perialism MORRIS JASTROW, JR., Head of Babylonian Explorations of Pennsylvania University, the noted American scholar. J. HOLLAND ROSE, of Cambridge University, the renowned British historian. PAGE 89 I2I 144 156 176 193XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI CONTENTS Xili PAGE The Freedom of the Seas The Mad Race for Naval Supremacy . : 204 G. GILBERT MURRAY, Distinguished British scholar and Oxford University professor. ARTHUR BALFOUR, Former Conservative Prime Minister of Britain, head of the navy in 1914. KARL KAUTSKY, Socialist leader in Germany. GERHARD VON SCHULZE-GAEVERNITZ, Rector of Freiburg University and official German representative. Germany Reaches the Breaking Point (1914) The Burdens Which Made War a Necessity . 228 DAVID STARR JORDAN, Chancellor of Leland Stanford Univer- sity, Cal. GENERAL BERNHARDI, Germany's chief military writer. JULES CAMBON, French Ambassador to Germany in 1914. FRENCH SECRET DIPLOMATIC REPORTS. The Assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince (June 28, 1914) Whose Victim and Whose Opportunity? . 245 AUSTRIAN OFFICIAL MAGISTRATE'S REPORT. CRAWFURD PRICE, British Publicist in Serbia. SIGMUND MUN7Z, Austrian diplomat. The Kaiser’s Decisive Step (July 5, 1914) The Hohenzollerns Plan to Divide the World oe Their Followers. 250 HENRY MORGENTHAU, U. S. Ambassador to Turkey in 1914. WILLIAM MUHLON, Director of Krupp’s Munition Works. AUGUST THYSSEN, the German “‘Steel King.” AUSTRIAN OFFICIAL RECORD. The First Ultimatum (July 23, 1914) Ausiria’s Impossible Demand to Serbia . 285 COUNT BERCHTOLD, Austria-Hungary’s Prime Minister in 1914. SIR MAURICE DE BUNSEN, British Ambassador in Vienna In 1914, PRINCE ALEXANDER, Regent of Serbia in 1914. Breakdown of the Ancient Diplomacy (July 23-28, 1914) Europe, Waking from Its ‘‘ Fools’ Paradise,’’ Faces the Spectre of World War 1 200 BARON BEYENS, Belgian Minister at Berlin in 1914. SIR EDWARD GREY, British Foreign Secretary in 1914. PRINCE LICHNOWSKY, German Ambassador to Britain in 1914. BARON TSCHIRSCHKY and KAISER WILLIAM II.XVII XVIII XXI CONTENTS Austria Opens the War (July 28, 1914) Serbia Becomes the Champion and Martyr for Nationality : AUSTRIA’S DECLARATION OF WAR. COUNT ALBERT APPONYI, Former Leader of the Hungarian Parliament. LAZARE MARCOVITCH, Serbian statesman, Professor in the University of Belgrade. The Second Ultimatum (July 31, 1914) Germany Declares War Against Russia (Aug. 1) GERMAN OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT STATEMENT. BRITISH OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT STATEMENT. COUNT VON REVENTLOW, Leading writer of the Pan-Germans. MAXIMILIEN HARDEN, German radical leader. ALEX MARKOFF, Russian author and scholar. France Accepts the Struggle to the Death (Aug. 3, 1914) The Climax of Forty Years of Fear . RAYMOND POINCARE, President of France. RENE VIVIANI, Prime Minister of France in 1914. BARON SCHOEN, German Ambassador to France in 1914. Belgium Resists for Honor’s Sake (Aug. 3, 1914) German Materialism Meets the Imponderable Forces of the Spirit ULTIMATUM OF THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT. OFFICIAL BELGIAN REPLY. COMMANDER DE GERLACHE DE GOMERY, Belgian soldier and statesman. KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM. Britain Enters the War (Aug. 4, 1914) The ‘‘ Scrap of Paper”’ and the ‘‘ Hymn of Hate’ HERBERT ASQUITH, Prime Minister of Britain in 1914. SIR EDWARD GOSCHEN, British Ambassador at Berlin in 1914. VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, Chancellor of Germany in 1914. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, Prime Minister of Britain in 1918. DR. ERNEST LISSAUER, Author of the ‘‘ Hymn of Hate.”’ ’ PAGE 323 338 368 382 396ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME I The Lure of Pan-Germanism After the Painting by Rudolf Henneberg. Christendom after Twenty Centuries Dutch Painting by Louis Raemaekers, 5S a The Stars German Cartoon by Theodore Heine. Unconquerable : British Cartoon by Bernard Partridge. The Fields of Flanders Canadian Painting by J. A. Shepperson. 5 2 rt The Spirit of Pan-Slavism Russian Cartoon by Leon Bakst. Cursed by his Ancestors Spanish Cartoon by Robida. What Belgium Faced . Belgian Sketch by Jean Domergue. A Better ’Ole British Cartoon by Bruce Bairnsfather. PAGE Frontispiece xl vili 16 17 240 241 256 257VOLUME I! HOW THE GREAT WAR AROSE AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF THE CAUSES OF THE WAR BY CHARLES F. HORNE EITHER you norI nor any man has the right to-day to express doubt as to the true origin of the Great War. Such doubt may once have indicated keen and cautious thought. To-day it indicates either idle ignorance or ob- stinate falsity. If you do not know the facts, which are open for all the world to know, read them here. The Great War could no more have been avoided than an earthquake or any other cataclysm of Nature’s unknown forces. On the one side loomed the German character of strength and patience, of selfish caution in adversity, and vain and reckless arrogance in power. On the other, glowed the sunlight of democratic civilization, which encourages all peoples to aspire toward equality, and to prefer death to Slavery. Given these opposing forces, and their clash was inevitable. The marvel now is only that we were all so slow to see the ominous approach of the disaster. To say that a war arises from this or that individual event is folly. Such empty phrases were part of the old blind state- craft which we have outgrown. War springs from human nature. In the old, old days of kings, it may have sprung at times from some such petty growth of human nature as the ambition or ill-temper of a single monarch: but in this broader age, only some broader passion widespread among many men, such as that eagerness for supremacy toward which the German mind continued developing during two hundred years, only some such race-wide trait of nature can produce a war.! “See § I, “The Opposing Forces,” by Bergson, Lamprecht, ete. XviiXVili AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF “The war that shall end all war!’ Has the human race really passed through that stupendous final experience of the ereat tragedy, the terror and the splendor and despair of destruction and devotion? We may all hope so, but mere hope will do little to change the future. Until the great majority of mankind have been educated into the true Democ- racy, until each one has grown to say in his heart, “I want the same rights and opportunities as my neighbor, and no more,” until that altruistic day arrives, strong and selfish men will still somewhere continue banding together in ever broader and craftier conspiracies to snatch the pleasant richness of life from those who seem too feeble or too ignorant to re- sist.? The Great War sprang directly trom such a conspiracy. Can we so educate the masses of our brothers that never again will any large portion of them be lured to be the ser- vants and victims of another war-plot? At least we can make the effort by spreading to every corner of the earth some definite understanding of the meaning and the causes of the Great War. A later section of these volumes will speak of all the War’s dreadful costs and agonies, and also of its heroes and their glorious service. Here we look only for its source. THE SERAJEVO TRAGEDY The Great War, then, began nominally because on June 28, 1914, an Austrian lordling bearing the stately title of Crown Prince, was slain at Serajevo, the chief city of Bos- nia, a Slavic province held in subjection by Austria. The prince was shot by one of his own Slavic subjects, a young student named Princip, a mere boy of eighteen. A world war because a boy’s hand on a revolver had held steady to its purpose, wherein older men had failed more than once before? Obviously not! The death of the Austrian prince was only seized as a fitting opportunity for starting projects which crafty conspirators, who called themselves diplomats, had been preparing and perfecting during many years. 1See § III, “The Culture of Democracy,” by McElroy and RuysseéTHE CAUSES OF THE WAR X1X The world does not even know—and as young Princip is since dead in prison we presumably never shall know— what really drove him to his sudden desperate deed. As for what the Austrian government afterward announced concerning his aims and course, there is not the slightest rea- son for accepting any word of it [Immediately on his arrest, Princip was turned over to police authorities of well estab- lished dishonesty and dishonor and was by them tried se- cretly. Austria might have made his trial open so that all the world could know the truth: or she might at least have entrusted it to Austrian judges of international repute whose word would have carried weight. She did neither. She left the investigation in the hands of an Under-Secretary of State already convicted of having forged documents for similar state trials and of seeking thus foully to destroy the gov- ernment’s leading Slavic subjects who were its political opponents. Under this criminal and utterly untrustworthy control, the Serajevo court took almost a month to de- liberate, and then announced that its secret trial had estab- lished that Princip’s attack was directed by Serbian gov- ernment officials, inspired by the Serbian government, In all the international negotiations that followed, both Austria and Germany proved their own essential dishonesty by haughtily assuming that Serbia’s guilt was neither to be questioned nor further investigated; it must be accepted as established on the mere word of these corrupt investi- gators in this travesty on justice. Our real knowledge of the affair, therefore, is limited to the fact that on that tragic day at Serajevo there were two attempts upon the life of the Crown Prince. The first was made in the morning by a man who had been a spy in the employ of the Austrian police; it failed. The second, made in the afternoon by the frenzied Bosnian student, succeeded. The Austrian judges grouped these two assaults together as a single plot. More probably they were separate. The first looks like a calculated deed, one instigated by the Austrian or German antagonists of the prince, and carried out by a hired assassin who thought mainly of his own safety—and *See § XIII, “Assassination of the Crown Prince,” Magistrates’ Re- port, etc,x AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF so bungled the attack. The second seems individual, the desperate recklessness of a young Slav maddened by the weight of all the oppression laid upon him and upon his race. Viewed in this way, the two deeds lead us to an examina- tion of their differing sources. The one opens the German causes of the War; the other the Austrian. Austria wanted war that she might fix more firmly her dubious power over the Slavic people around her, that she might rule them with more profit and more safety. The German leaders wanted war that they might dominate the world. Germany, the shrewder, stronger conspirator, needing aid in her vast plans, dragged her feeble partner into a war far more tremendous than Austria had ever dreamed of rousing. To accomplish this, Germany encouraged Austria who scarcely needed urging—to make the death of the Crown Prince a pretext for what Austria hoped would be a brief and successful war against two or three unready and half-hearted foes. The proofs that this was the real origin of the Great War lie all around us. To see the whole upheaval clearly, how- ever, and with broader vision, we must look beyond these immediate impulses, to examine the older, broader, race-wide causes which had lured Austrian arrogance and stupidity into this snare, and which had created in Germany the yet higher arrogance and perhaps equal though less obvious blindness that tempted her to grasp at world dominion.* AUSTRIAN SOURCES OF THE WAR Let us take Austria first. For her, the Great War was born of the Dark Ages, a thousand years ago. Then she was the Oestereich or East kingdom, the frontier region of the old Teutonic empire. Her dukes were the frontier guards of western civilization, defending it valiantly against horde after horde of the wild Huns and Slavs who surged west- ward against the sturdy Oestereich barrier. In those days the duty of every Austrian stood out clear and strong, to fight these barbarians to the death in protecting his own home. So important indeed was the defense of the Oeste- See § V, “Germany’s Dream of Empire,” Von Bilow, Harden, etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR XX reich that by degrees its dukes, the Hapsburg family, became the most powerful among the Teuton lords, and then em- perors of all that was left of the old Teutonic empire. ‘‘Aus- tria over all’’ was the proud Hapsburg motto in those days; and the Hapsburg ‘“‘Archdukes” gave little heed to the younger upstart family of Hohenzollern dukes who were one day to change that motto somewhat sharply. The one unfortunate side to the Austrians’ heroic defense of civilization was that their idea that they must fight all eastern peoples, that Slavs were meant to be slaves, became so fixed in the minds of Austrians that they could neither forget this nor learn anything else. But in the course of centuries the Slavs and Hungarians settled down and in some sections, such as Bohemia, became as civilized as the Aus- trians themselves. A new barbaric race from further east, the Turks, became the menace of the frontier, and Slavs and Hungarians were in their turn its defenders. But Aus- tria did not change. The Hapsburg family had acquired a fixed creed which taught their own “Divine Right,” taught them that they were appointed by God to rule over just as many lands and peoples as they could clutch. Their Aus- trian subjects found equal profit in this faith, and trampled savagely upon any of the subject races, Slavs, Hungarians or Italians, who dared resist it. When the French Revolution opened for Europe the great new “People’s Era’ of equal rights, the ancient Austrian power was first broken by Napoleon, that strangely confusing and unwitting champion of Democracy. Then followed a bright century of Democracy’s triumphs over this oldest and most reactionary of modern autocracies. In 1848 the Hun- garians fought Austria to exhaustion, and ultimately won equal rights within her empire. In 1859 the Italians fought her, and most of them escaped her thrall. In 1866 Prussia wrenched from her the lordship over Germany. After that, of all Austria’s subject races, only the Slavs and a few kin- dred folk remained helpless in her grip. Yet despite all these disasters, the immovable Hapsburgs, incapable as ever of either learning or forgetting, continued on their ancient course. To them the ideal world would haveXXil AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF been one that never moved, that rested unchanged forever under their universal rule, a world wherein the good were rewarded by being allowed to hold a Hapsburg’s horse, or serve at his meals, or even perchance to visit in the royal bed-chamber. As for the wicked—that is, the unsubmissive —they were to be punished by open war, or judicial murder in the courts, or secret assassination. Indeed, there is much of that grimmest humor which is said to rouse the laughter of the gods, in the spectacle of a Hapsburg objecting to assassination—and even in his holy horror of it summoning the world to war. Only as a weapon in the hands of their enemies have the Hapsburgs ever protested against murder. By the beginning of this twentieth century, affairs were going badly in this medieval Austrian court. Democracy had roused from slumber even the patient and submissive Slavs. The Slavic folk of Serbia had become independent, self-governing, vigorous and happy in their freedom, and they encouraged the Austrian Slavs to seek a similar release. The great Slavic state of Russia was also feeling her “blood brotherhood” with these Austrian subjects. Even the Haps- burgs saw that the old autocratic despotism was no longer practical.1 Or at least one Hapsburg saw it; that was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the victim of Serajevo. He had already advocated, not giving the Slavs their freedom, that would have been too wholly Democratic, it would have been admitting that a Slav had as much right in the universe as a Hapsburg prince—but the Archduke had suggested giving the Slavs equal political rights with the Austrians and Hun- garians, and making a threefold instead of a dual empire. Against a man so radical as this, and one who must very soon succeed to the throne of the aged Austrian emperor, there was bitter opposition among the Austrian aristocracy and among their Teutonic relatives across the German bor- der. This may well have been the cause of the first Serajevo assault upon him. But whatever the ultimate plans of Franz Ferdinand, he had not yet relieved the subject Slavs from any of the thousand forms of oppression which made them 1See § IX, “Austria’s Danger in the Balkans,” by Ambassador Dumba, etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR Xxili hate the whole Austrian race. The frenzied lad Princip was but the voice of a million of his fellows. They saw no way to freedom from the Hapsburgs except by using the Haps- burg method of force and fraud and secrecy. Franz Ferdi- nand, who sought to be the mediator between these hostile forces, was antagonized by both, was caught between the millstones. ' In opposition to him, the entire Hapsburg family had decided on employing once more the long tried methods of despotism to suppress the Slavic dream. Serbia, the home of the independent Balkan Slavs, was to be crushed out of existence. All the “Southern Slavs” were to be made Aus- trian subjects. Russia, the great eastern Slavic state, was to be tricked or frightened into abandoning them, or if she refused to yield was to be destroyed by Germany. The righteousness of letting loose massacre and destruc- tion on such a scale, troubled the Hapsburg councils not a all. Was it not to be done for the noblest of all purposes, the extension of the Hapsburg rule! But the feasibility of their purpose was less clear. Twice at least within the half dozen years immediately before 1914, Austria tried to in- duce her allies, Germany and Italy, to support her savage plan. Occasion for a war on Serbia could always be manu- factured. But Italy refused the proposal flatly; and Ger- many held back. In 1914 Germany’s attitude changed. She was ready for war at last, ready to the last detail. So, when once more Austria urged on her the Serbian assault, with its included defiance of unready Russia, the answer was no longer “Wait!” but “Strike!” Poor, foolish, purblind Haps- burgs who could not see that they were being used as the catspaw in plans as broad and shrewd and fully up to date as their own were narrow and obstinate and medievally im- possible! So the fatal word for war sped from Berlin to Vienna early in July and the death of the unhappy anachronism Franz Ferdinand, a Hapsburg who had caught some half- glimmering of modern thought, was taken out of the dust- bin of forgotten tragedies and suddenly staged as a hideous “see § XIV, “Whose Victim and Whose Opp rtunity,” Munz, etc.XXiv AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF Serbian plot. This cold, stern duke whose plans of media- tion had made him most heartily disliked and watchfully distrusted by his whole Hapsburg circle, was now proclaimed its gallant martyr and pathetic hero. In the first days after Serajevo the aged Emperor Franz Josef had said publicly that the murder must not be used to incite racial antagonisms, must not be treated as a national event but as a personal Hapsburg sorrow. Now, no words of execration and incite- ment could be found too strong against the whole Serbian race. Austrian public resentment was to be fully roused. Western Europe was to be horrified by the outrage and pre- vented from coming to Serbia’s aid. GERMAN SOURCES OF THE WAR Turn now to the German purpose in the War, a project so much vaster, so much deeper of origin and broader of meaning, that it seems scarce to belong in the same universe with the Austrian futile obstinacy. The one was the last relic of an outworn medieval system of despotism which could not possibly have lasted many generations longer. The other was a new and vigorous outgrowth from despotism, an autocracy revised, modernized, made practical and terri- ble almost beyond belief. Moreover, this German autocracy had gradually built up such a system of militarism as no earlier tyrant had conceived, a foul and hideous Minotaur— a Minotaur no longer a mere fantasy of ancient legend but an actual living horror, a monster devouring all the virtue and all the young manhood of its own land.* To understand the German autocracy and this monster it had created, we need not go back to very ancient days, but only to that King Frederick II. of Prussia commonly called “the Great.” He closed his long and triumphant reign in 1786, just before the French Revolution struck the first great blow against the ancient régime of kingship by divine au- thority—of which Frederick was perhaps the most grotesque illustration. We often say, and justly, of some great man that he lived a century ahead of his times, because though we find him at odds with the common thought of his day, 14See § VI, “Militarism,” by Bernhardi, Prince Frederick, etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR XXV later generations accept his doctrines and learn to treasure his every word. In that sense, Frederick IT. surely deserved his otherwise dubious title of “the Great”: for we might al- most call the Germany of 1914 the mirror of his mind. It quoted his maxims constantly, worshiped his deeds devoutly, and studied his military campaigns as models of perfection. This chief national hero of Prussia had plunged his peo- ple into war solely because he possessed a larger, better- trained army than his neighbors and had found his soldiers too expensive to support in peace. Battle was to him an exact matter of business, though in his earlier days he was much impelled also by vanity and the desire for “glory.” The cost of his campaigns in human life and human misery scarce touched him, so long as it was to be paid by other folk. His callousness and craft were not, however, the traits that made him great; in these he differed little from many another despot both before and since. There is, for example, no such wholesale murder to be charged against Frederick as the ravaging of the Rhine lands by Louis XIV. of France, half a century before. The soldiers of Louis by his orders laid these populous lands utterly waste, slaying or driving out all the inhabitants, so that the land should lie as a desert be- tween him and his German foes. No, we can by no means rank Frederick first among the wholesale butchers of human kind. His claim to an evil preéminence is intellectual. Frederick was absolutely indifferent to the mighty spirit- ual forces sometimes called the “Imponderables,”’ self-sacri- fice, equal justice, and eternal verity. He denied their ex- istence; he challenged them to prove themselves against him. He saw exactly his own selfish motives of action, and he stated them with dogmatic frankness. There was for him none of that hiding behind veils of stately words and muddled thought wherewith other despots, like the Hapsburgs and later Hohenzollerns, have obscured their own intellects and salved their consciences. ‘Necessities of State,” “Inherited obligations,” “Evil done that good may come,” “The uphold- ing of a coronation oath to extend the realm”! All of these ancient shibboleths with which weak tyrants have hidden from themselves the horrors of their savagery, FrederickXXVI AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF tossed aside. He had reached that scientific clearness of vision which has become the idol of our own age, wherein every thinker strives to dissociate himself from all inherited prejudice and to examine facts exactly as they are. Therein lay Frederick’s greatness. His range of vision was of the very smallest and meanest. He denied religion and denied morality; that is, he believed neither in human virtue nor in superhuman guidance, recognized the value of nothing but strength, wit, and earthly beauty. But such as his vision was, he had the courage to abide by it. Amid a whole world of pose and pretense, he was so cynically frank that his foes never quite believed him. His truth proved a deeper mask than falsehood. Few Prussians of Frederick’s day were so clear-minded as their master; but they gloried in his success. As for later generations, the more the Prussian aristocrats grasped the teaching of his strong, hard character, the more they wor- shiped him. His doctrines were so logical, so consistent, so satisfying to those who lived in wealth and high position, that many grew to be like him—in all but his frankness of self-revelation. Thus the soil was fully ready for the fierce pagan doctrine of Nietzsche, widely adopted by the German aristocracy about 1890. Nietzsche and the modern German “Kultur” could have taught nothing to Frederick the Great except some semi-scientific jargon of words for his ideas.* Meanwhile side by side with the hard materialism of Frederick, there were being molded amid the masses of Germans other character elements of a different kind. For centuries Germany had been divided into hundreds of little semi-independent states, seldom united in actions either ot peace or war. In consequence, the land had been repeatedly ravaged by victorious foreign armies; the people had learned their helplessness, and had learned, alas, to cringe and bend before the storm. Then under Prussian leadership, quite suddenly after 1866, they became strong in a military sense, the strongest nation in the world. Had such strength come to them slowly, with the training in pity and in kindly toler- ance that should go with strength, the German people might 1See § II, “The Kultur of Germany,” by Elkin, Nietzsche, etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR XXVli have grown worthy of their high position. But alas, power had come too swiftly to allow of that gradual development of racial character which requires many generations. The Germans had not forgotten how to cringe. Now, the man who will not stand up for his own human rights in defiance of superior force, cannot understand and will not anticipate such an attitude in others. The coward knows no law save that of brute force. Give him the upper hand and he will surely use it like a brute. There was no more illuminating incident through the whole war than the reproachful meeting between the Belgian and German so- cialists in 1915. Why, demanded the Belgians, did you not prevent your government from attacking us? But, pro- tested the Germans, if we had interfered we would have been shot! And then they asked in rebuttal, But why did you resist our soldiers? ‘We had to,” said the Belgians, “in defense of our independence and honor.” “That,” said the Germans, “is simply not sense.” The whole essence of the Great War lies in that brief dialogue. Germany really be- lieved that every man of sense, every human being not ac- tually insane, would and should cling to the bare husk of living, at any sacrifice of principle. Hence the Germans, having acquired the power to take away life from the other nations, expected the nations to worship their strength, as Germans had once worshiped it in others. When mankind refused to bow before them, they felt that mankind was not “playing the game,” their game; and they went to war to make us do it. The Teutons of the past had been truly a great race, great in brute strength even in the far off Roman days, great also in their patience, their earnestness and their cleanliness. But when, because of centuries of misery, they extended their patience into passivity and their endurance into submissive- ness, they lost their birthright. A person who merely fol- lows orders, who obeys passively, submissively, loses his power to think. He ceases to be a reasoning creature. His life is guided not by intelligence but by blind emotion. That is what happened to the mass of the Germans. Their new government had given them union and the world power inXXVIll AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF which they so delighted. Hence they were ready to follow that government anywhere, believe anything it told them. And it deceived them to the height of their folly. The world has never before seen such astounding exam- ples of mass-hypnosis, the instant uprising on command of a fervid and genuine emotion in an entire people. The Ger- man government had only to give its order, “Hate the Bel- gians, they have wickedly tortured our holy and pure-hearted soldiers!” ‘‘Hate the Russians, they have wantonly attacked our gentle peace-loving people!” “Hate the Britons, they have suddenly snared our straightforward government in a trap long prepared!” and the German people swung to the new emotion with the smoothness of a pendulum and the regularity of a military platoon.* Intellectually of course they knew that their soldiers were not holy and pure hearted, that they themselves were not gentle and peace-loving, that their government was not straightforward. But the intellect of the mass of Germans had long ceased to function. Its last remnants had been submerged in the passion of self- worship, ecstatic worship of their power as world-rulers. The German of 1914, in the few moments when he sank to cold thought, was still a cringing, logically calculating, life-clutch- ing creature; but in his hours of excitement he became again the ferocious barbarian of ancient ages, often recklessly heroic and wholly unintelligent. Now, consider this huge, unreasoning child of the world, with his strength and vanity, his cringing and cruelty, his intellectual submissiveness and emotional hysteria, this monstrous yet splendid beast which the blunders and oppres- sions of Europe had created. Consider that he was ruled by an ambitious, military aristocracy of Prussian junkers and Rhineland financiers,2 shrewd soulless materialists bred up by Frederick the Great and the mad philosopher Nietzsche. Under such leaders was not the beast’s sometime rush of destruction a thing inevitable? If it had not been already so, the one other necessary element was the German lack of humor. 1See Lissauer’s “Hymn of Hate,’ page 403. 2See § XIV, “The Kaiser’s Decisive Step,” by Thyssen, etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR XxXiX Perhaps the importance of this final factor in the disas- ter has not been fully recognized. The lack of an eye for in- congruities and a pleasure in them will not, let us hope, be among the failings of future “great peoples.” Tell an Ameri- can that he is a fine individual specimen of the finest race of the world, and he will laugh with you good-naturedly. Tell the same to an Englishman, and he may at heart think you are right, but outwardly he knows you are “spoofing” him. Tell it even to an Arab or a Turk, and his eyes close with suspicion of so crude a snare. Tell it toa German, and he will swell with satisfaction, and begin angry question as to why you have delayed your salaam so long. The Germans for a generation before 1914 had been bowing in ecstatic admiration before themselves. Treitschke, the great Berlin lecturer, started them on this course as early as 1878, and they proved eager pupils. One marvels in reading through their pre-War literature at the universal easy assump- tion of Germany’s right to world rule. The only trouble from the German viewpoint was that the other, lesser races of mankind were so stupidly slow in joining the delightful chorus. Energy in authority, obedience in submission, these com- bining with patient toil in every rank, built up in Germany an effectiveness of organization such as the world had never before known. It was a new form of codperation, dependent on the subordination, more or less willing, of the individual to the good of the community—as interpreted by the aris- tocracy. The German really believed that he had evolved a higher order of society, and that it was his mission to enforce his culture on the outside world of selfish individual- ism.* When once we have recognized the Great War as being based thus upon the German character too hastily developed since 1866, we shalJ question less anxiously the extent of influence of any particular incident in leading toward the explosion. A volcano must erupt somewhere, and there is ‘ec *See § IV, “Germany’s Economic Organization,’ by Hauser and Naumann.XXX AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF small use in clapping a lid over some one of its more obvious ventholes and then sitting firmly on that special lid. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF OTHER NATIONS On the other hand, no one would represent as persecuted angels the nations which opposed Germany in the War Per- haps the only European government which will ultimately be adjudged wholly guiltless of contributing to the antago- nisms of 1914 will be poor martyred Belgium. In the East, Russia, while she had no insuperable quarrel with Ger- many, had often deliberately made trouble for Austria. The Austrian subject Slavs were encouraged in resistance by se- cret Russian agents; and though Russia may have acted in this partly because she loved the Slavs, yet many of her military chiefs were eager for a war in which to prove their power. In Turkey, the whole brutish misrule was un- speakable. In each of the Balkan states there was constant selfish scheming to extend boundaries at the expense of one another, constant intrigue, Russian, German, Austrian and Italian, and constant warfare. As for Serbia, against which the Great War nominally began, and which was to suffer worst of all Europe from its devastation, Serbia could not possibly have wanted war in 1914, she was too wholly exhausted by her recent and re- peated fighting. Presumably, therefore, she had no direct part in either of the Serajevo assaults. Yet Serbia had for years and years encouraged the spirit of revolt among the Austrian Slavs, her brothers; and in this she had not always confined herself to methods strictly polite and legal. When a huge and wholly inconsiderate neighbor persists in trampling upon you with hobnailed boots, it is not easy to restrict your resistance to legal methods or the formal punctilio of the duel. Moreover, Serbian propaganda could not have roused the Austrian Slavs to revolt had they not been already embittered by such genuine cause for discon- tent as made war seem better to them than peace. In the essence of her Austrian quarrel, Serbia was right and would always be so, as long as a single Serbian peasant was held in unwilling subjection by the Hapsburg autocrats.* +See § IX, “National Spirit Among the Serbs,” by Trevelyan. etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR XXXi So also in the West. It was Frenchmen’s own arrogance and recklessness which had enabled Prussia to entrap them into the disastrous war of 1870. Afterward, it was their own constant talking of ‘“‘Revenge’—a revenge which most of them had long abandoned except as an emotional phrase —that made Germany eternally suspicious of them. This was at least in part what led the German people to bow their necks so meekly beneath the heavy yoke of Prussian militarism. ! As for Britain, her “imperialism’’ made Germans envi- ous. Britain’s mastery of the seas caused Germany, believ- ing only in force, to fear that her sea-trade might any day be stripped from her. Britain’s treatment of Ireland led Germany to justify her own tyranny over subject peoples. And lastly Britain’s blocking of Germany’s colonial expan- sion in Africa and commercial aggrandizement in the Orient, made Germany sullenly resolute to win by force what she had failed to accomplish by diplomacy. No one can deny that there had been something of the dog-in-the-manger attitude in Britain’s outlook on “world politics.” Germany had long secured her own safety by the “Triple Alliance,” in which Austria was her willing and Italy her unwilling ally. France and Russia, driven by fear of Ger- many, formed an opposition alliance. To this Britain, also fearful of Germany, linked herself in 1907 though only in such loose fashion that their agreement was not called an alliance, but the “Triple Entente.” The strength thus banded against Central Europe startled the Germans in their turn. Their leaders talked angrily of the “encirclement’’ of their land by these strong enemies, as though the encircle- ment had been an original threat against Germany, instead of a necessary counter-defense. German statesmen con- stantly emphasized to their people the country’s so-called “isolation,” which they vehemently insisted was due to Brit- ish “scheming” rather than to Europe’s well-founded dread of German militarism.? ‘See § VIII, “Alsace-Lorraine,” by Hazen Davis, etc. *See § XI, “Freedom of the Seas,” by Balfour, Gaevernitz, ete.XXXil AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF GERMAN EXPANSION AND AMBITION UNDER WILLIAM II. With our minds thus cleared as to the degree of responsi- bility of other nations in the Great War, and as to its real sources in Austrian and German autocracy and in the un- balanced development of the German character, let us trace now the more obvious and immediate steps which led to its outbreak. When William II. ascended the imperial throne of Ger- many in 1888, he found his country already well-advanced upon that road of marvelous commercial prosperity which was to make her the most successful business corporation the world has ever known. He found his people already pos- sessed of that idealizing elevation of the State above the in- dividual which led so many of them to ignore self for ‘“Ger- many.” He found his own hand and brain in a position to control all the stupendous machinery of diplomatic and mili- tary absolutism which Bismarck had built up. Ina word the new Kaiser was possessed of such power as might well have overthrown the humility and self-balance of a far greater soul than his. If ever man had an excuse for thinking himself God-chosen to direct the universe, William Hohen- zollern was that man. He soon proved himself unequal to his wondrous oppor- tunity. He failed to direct the mighty German forces toward the benefit of the universe. He did not even marshal them successfully toward that narrower ambition, the benefit of Germany. He dismissed Bismarck, rather than endure a divided authority; and under William’s personal rule, Ger- many no longer won such diplomatic triumphs as Bismarck frequently had gained for her. The new emperor next sought socialistic approval and passed socialistic laws, only to find the socialists grimly ungrateful and so increasing in num- bers they seemed like to crowd him from his throne. He then encouraged his military associates to build up the army’s power over civilians, only to find at last that the army had grown stronger than he. In brief, he thrust himself into every field, encouraged many a mighty growth, but kept a wise control over none.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR XXxiii GROWTH OF THE PLOT FOR WORLD RULE Just when William definitely accepted the idea of world rule as necessary to reéstablish his vanishing ascendancy, it must always be impossible to say. The vision of world rule was already bright in Germany when the Kaiser began founding the new German navy in 1898, and when in that same year he visited Turkey and the Holy Land and spoke there of his will to be the great protector of all Moslems— including those under French or British rule. But it is doubtful if William then had either the callous soul or the stubborn will for deliberate world war. There has been much denial of responsibility in Germany since the war, much pointing the finger at some one else as the real world villain, But the general judgment in other lands has been that William began in 1898 a mere playing with the idea of world rule—and found it a delightful plaything—without deep serious intent. His admiring subjects encouraged his high juggling with the sword. The German war machine was kept always ahead of every neighbor in numbers and efficiency. Any increase in military expenditure anywhere in the world was made the excuse for a still larger expenditure in Germany. Money taxes mounted toward the breaking point. So also did the “man tax,” that is, the ever lengthening years of compulsory military service, the increasing severity of discipline, the in- creasing submission exacted from the civilian.! The mili- tary autocracy which William so pompously encouraged soon strode on beyond him. It began seriously to will and plan the foul thing, a world-wide murder out of which the German Army should arise in glory. Up to 1907 the German merchant classes, the great money princes, still held out against this costly military madness. They hoped to win the world through trade. But then came the diplomatic struggle with Britain over the building of the Bagdad railway. That giant enterprise, dear to every Ger- man heart, was to insure German ascendancy through all the "Near East” from Vienna to Constantinople, and from Bag- *See § VII, “Woe to the Conquered,” by Barker.x \ XXXIV AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF dad to the very edge of India. It was the first great move in the plans for a mighty “Middle Europe” empire. And when British diplomacy blocked the Bagdad railway, the German merchant classes took a long step towards entering the conspiracy for war." By 1911 Kaiser William, who had once been the most outspoken of the advocates of force, found himself at heart perhaps the least eager for it among all his associates. The more enthusiastic military leaders began sarcastically criti- cizing his weakness, turning from him to his youthfully im- pulsive son, the Crown Prince Frederick William. The lat- ter pushed himself somewhat ostentatiously forward as the champion of military arrogance. Wild rumors flew about that William might be forced to abdicate in favor of his more “resolute” son. There are many evidences that under this pressure William took the final step in 1912, committing him- self and his nation definitely to “war for world conquest.” After that there were only the details to be arranged— preparations to be made, a date set, and fitting occasion found. The Germans hoped to accomplish much against Brit- ain with their newly constructed navy. As early as 1898 their naval officers began drinking as a toast, “The Day” when they should meet the Britons upon equal terms. The Kiel Canal, which almost doubled the value of a German war- ship by enabling it to shift at will between the North and Baltic seas, was too shallow for the huge “dreadnoughts, ’ having been built before their invention. So the enlarge- ment of the canal was pushed forward with all possible haste. It reached completion in the early summer of 1914. Mean- time taxes were still further enlarged, until they pressed so heavily upon the upper classes as to rouse bitter protest. There was also possible one further extension of the de- mand on German youth for military service. That extension was made in 1913, though it almost stung the poorer classes and the socialists to revolt. Outside observers began to say that the weight of Ger- man militarism was surely on the point of breaking the back of the German empire. The enormously costly mili- -Sce § X, “The Bagdad Railway,” by Jastrow and Rose.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR XXXV tary machine must very shortly justify its existence by suc- cessful war or must disappear. The new troops gained in 1913 were ready trained in 1914. The new sums raised by taxation had been converted into war munitions. Never had Germany been so ready for stupendous war, war upon the moment, before the threatening breakdown came, and before France and Russia could again match her latest mili- tary enlargement.? Why did we not all see that the hour of German war was about to strike? Many people did rouse to apprehen- sion when Franz Ferdinand was slain at Serajevo. But Austria deceived the world by at first treating the affair with such sad and simple dignity as a private Hapsburg sorrow. Then came the conferences at the Kaiser’s Potsdam palace on July 5th. The German leaders had resolved to use the tragic circumstances of the Serajevo murder as the occasion for assuming world mastery. Either by ter- rorizing other nations, or preferably by fighting them, Ger- many was to take the decisive step in establishing that mighty “Middle Europe Empire” which she had long planned. Her leaders did not intend, however, to appear as the aggressors. They had well learned the subtle Bis- marckian teaching that to win the full support of their own people they must appear to be defending themselves against an unjust attack, but that to win battles they must really begin the attack thmeselves, and must even select the moment for launching it unexpectedly. So they welcomed this fortunate opportunity to put Austria forward as the disturber of the peace. The Kaiser, on July 5th, gave secret assurance to the envoys of Austria that at last they might work their wicked will upon Serbia, that if they would seize the present occa- sion for crushing their little foe, he would support them to the uttermost, lend them all the strength of his armies, sup- port them, no matter how impossible their demands. In fact, the more abrupt, severe and even ferocious an ulti- *See § XII, “Germany at the Breaking Point,” by Jordan, Bern- hardi, etc.7 & » XXXVI AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF matum the Austrians could devise, the better. On that same day the chief German officials were also called to Potsdam and were warned that this pledge to Austria made war almost certain, and that every preliminary step must be made so as to insure instant readiness. Rumor says that at this point the financial leaders demanded two weeks’ delay, so that they might sell such foreign securi- ties as they must lose in war. Another reason for delay was found in the fact that President Poincaré of France was at the moment visiting Russia, a fact that might make French and Russian co-operation uncomfortably swift. So the conspirators waited until Poincaré had left Russia; and meanwhile the Kaiser went on a yachting trip so that all the world might be assured he had not a single war-like thought.? Next in importance to uniting the German people for a supposedly defensive war, the great conspirators con- sidered it essential to keep the other nations disunited and unsuspicious of the German aim. Austria, by accepting Germany’s aid, would become definitely bound to her, and in case of widespread war must soon become subordinate to her. The conspirators sought to draw Turkey also to their chariot wheels, and Italy if they could, and Rumania and Bulgaria and Greece. With all of these they started secret negotiations; since all might be considered as in some sort rivals of Serbia. As to supporters of the Serbs, Russia was well known to be pledged to their defense. Yet the Russian Czar might well hesitate to defend the accused assassins of another monarch. If on the other hand Russia aban- doned Serbia to the spoilers, Russian influence in the Balkan States was gone forever; German supremacy was established without a blow, and presently German generals would be commanding every Balkan army as they already did in Turkey. On the whole then, Russia would almost surely fight. And if she did, France, her ally, was pledged to join her. Here were two powerful foes well-nigh assured; but both 1See § XIV, “The Kaiser’s Decisive Step,” by Morgenthau, Muhlon, etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR XXXVIi hesitant to fight for so poor a cause, and likely therefore to be slow of action and half-hearted. As for Great Britain, she was to some slight extent bound to these two, but would be interested in the Serbian cause even less than they; so the conspirators were very confident that Britain and all the more distant nations could be cajoled or con- fused and misled at least for the moment. Before any of them awoke to the real meaning of Germany’s great stroke, Russia’s awkward strength could be broken and France crushed forever. For more than two weeks the dread ultimatum to Serbia was thus held back. It was only vaguely whis- pered of in highest German circles, or guessed at in Eastern European chancelleries. It was the great diplomatic secret of the century. Then, when all was ready, on July 2rd, the ultimatum was suddenly hurled at Serbia with the abruptness of a thunderbolt. THE “THIRTEEN DAYS” Not for generations had there been such a tumult among high state officials in Europe as that ultimatum created. Its demands had been purposely made so extrava- gant as to render Serbia’s submission impossible. The German Government had purposely remained unaware of the exact terms prescribed, as the German conspirators aimed to make Austria feel herself the leading spirit in the attack. Yet even this suddenly extravagant trust from a usually cautious ally did not wake Austria’s suspicions. She pressed blindly ahead, confident that her chance for crushing Serbia had come. As for Germany, had she not sold her foreign securities at a loss, and sent secret orders to her military officers! For her the Great Adventure was already begun; and if Austria could not strike the open- ing spark, the German government knew of those who would. It is now an open fact that Europe’s diplomatic efforts did almost check Austria’s savage rush upon her victim. The British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, was most earnestly determined to keep the peace. France was mostXXXVIli AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF unwilling to fight in what seemed so poor a cause. Of the strictly correct forbearance of Russia’s diplomatic attitude, we have not sufficient evidence to make us equally sure. The Russian people as a whole were pacifically inclined; but they felt in honor bound to protect Serbia. The weak, unhappy Czar certainly did his best to preserve “peace with honor.” On the other hand, the Russian bureaucracy was already so honeycombed with treachery, there were so many high officials taking Germany’s pay and doing her bidding hat if she desired a flow of offensive incidents to emanate from Russian government offices, she had only to command her troop of trained and hungry hyenas. Moreover, there was a Russian “war party,” headed by the Czar’s uncle and chief general, the Grandduke Nicholas, which openly preferred almost any war to any peace. As a whole, however, the British, French and Russian influence for peace was so strongly exerted upon Serbia that she sent Austria an extremely submissive response, such as would have ended any real quarrel where the real erounds for quarrel had been stated. But since Serbia’s submission was not, as it could not possibly have been, absolute, Austria found excuse for declaring the response treacherous, elusive and several other adjectives; and she declared war on Serbia on July 28th.* Even then the Great War was not fully inaugurated ; for while Russian began gathering her forces to protect Serbia, Sir Edward Grey with true British obstinacy con- tinued to insist that a way of pacific settlement could and must be found. He assailed every foreign office with ever new suggestions for peace. The whole world owes Sir Ed- ward a debt of gratitude for his conduct through all those trying “Thirteen Days” of negotiation—not that he could in any way have prevented war. We now know that was impossible. But his persistency made so crystal clear the fact that every Power was honestly eager to check the war, except Austria and Germany. Briefly outlined, this is what occurred. All the Powers except Germany had already appealed to Austria not to de- See § XVII, “Austria Opens the War,” by Count Apponyi, etc.THE GAUSES OF THE WAR XXXi1X clare war on Serbia so abruptly, but to give them time to join with her, judge the case against Serbia, and make the latter’s punishment, if guilty, an international affair. Rus- sia now went further, declaring that if her brother Slavs in Serbia were attacked without further preliminaries, she must and would defend them with her arms. Every one then appealed to Germany to restrain her Austrian ally. Germany refused, on the plea that Austria’s honor was at stake—a strange survival of that medieval madness which declared a man once started on a reckless deed must carry it to the end no matter how disastrous to himself and others, and that all his friends must support him in his reckless wickedness! A nation was to be destroyed, or a world plunged into war, rather than that the “honor” of an s\ustrian autocrat might be dimmed by holding back his hand from the massacre! Is it any wonder the world has swept away forever the old “diplomacy” which in- trenched itself behind such debasing and unhuman falsities!2 To this first betrayal of the “Imponderables,” the Ger- man government added a second, by announcing that the only way to escape world war was to “localize the conflict” and that for this reason no other Power must interfere in “the war between Austria and Serbia,” as Austria’s sudden pounce upon her helpless victim was now blandly termed. In other words, if Russia persisted in saving the Serbs from destruction, Germany would attack her. For Russia such a surrender of her brethren to massacre was impossible; and even western Europe could scarce in righteousness abandon Serbia. Yet Germany would do no more than keep repeating, parrot-like, her speciously phrased demand. It is an all-sufficient comment upon the state of the men- tality of the German people in 1914 that they listened seri- ously to such a shallow subterfuge, and still prated of their government as seeking peace. Austria now began, from her side of the Danube River, to bombard the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Russia reso- lutely gathered her armies for Serbia’s defense; and France “See § XVI, “Breakdown of Diplomacy,” by Sir Edward Grey, Prince Lichnowsky, etc.again en xl AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF announced herself as pledged to support Russia. Britain, as we have seen, continued protests equally insistent though less warlike. Austria seems suddenly to have be- come alarmed at this weight of opposition; and on July 30th she sent word to Russia that she would step back and submit the whole dispute to arbitration. Was Austria in earnest? Had there flashed upon her startled vision some realization of the awful destruction into which the vaster German plot had lured her? Or was this a mere pretense by which Austrian subjects were to be convinced, like the Germans, of their government’s peace- fulness of purpose? In either case, the offer to arbitrate was useless; for Germany herself now took the decisive step. On July 31st, she precipitated world war by dis- patching to Russia an ultimatum, as extravagantly impossi- ble as that which had been hurled at Serbia.’ How far this ultimatum had, like Austria’s, been in- tended from the start we cannot say. Affairs had not gone exactly as the Potsdam conspirators had planned. The Kaiser was distinctly less eager for war on July 31st than he had been on July 23rd. The world was not being wholly deceived as to Germany’s underlying agegressive- ness. Italy, which had been counted on to join her allies, Germany and Austria, in a “defensive” war, was evidenc- ing quite clearly that she regarded Austria’s savage Swoop as an “offensive” and would have no part in it. Britain also was less patient and less blind than had been expected ; and since the conspirators already knew of their own in- tent to invade neutral Belgium, they had an increasing fear that this would be the final straw to bring Britain into arms against them. Thus the unfolding situation for their war was by no means so favorable as they had counted on. On the other hand, they were being driven to a state of nervous fear lest their other great advantage, that of being the first to strike, might also be snatched from them. Negotiations were dragging along; both Russia and France were perforce arming. Suppose these two dangerous foes 4See § XVIII, “Germany Declares War Against Russia,” by Von Reventlow, Markoff, etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR xli should suddenly snatch the initiative and attack Germany! The German “High Staff” insisted on instant action, be- fore its military plan of campaign could be forestalled. The startled Kaiser, forced at last to face reality instead of speech-making, wavered. In his notes he jotted down frantic curses against Britain; he would destroy her and himself and the world together. Then he let the High Staff have its way. Thus the ultimatum to Russia was dispatched. It de- clared that Germany regarded the Russian mobilization of troops against Austria as being directed also against her- self, and hence if Russia did not completely demobilize within twelve hours, Germany would attack her. Such a sudden abandonment of Russian preparations would have been impossible. Even the attempt at it would, in face of Germany’s own gathering of troops, have been suicidal. The ultimatum was delivered in the Russian capital at midnight; twelve hours later, at noon of August Ist, it was followed by the German declaration of war against Russia. The final step had been taken. The Great War was no longer the mere dream of the Nietzschian devotees of “hardness” and the “superman.” It was the grimmest and most awful fact in human history. THE CAMPAIGN OF FALSEHOOD The German assault was thus suddenly launched upon a civilization which had been so befogged and misled by the craft of the German leaders that men everywhere stood uncertain, not seeing what the struggle really meant. German craft could hope but one point further in its favor. If France, which was pledged to aid Russia, would start to invade German territory, the Kaiser could again cry, “Protect the Fatherland”; and every German would rush eagerly to arms. France, however, did not repeat her vainglorious blunder of 1870. She was very careful to avoid the faintest appearance of being the aggressor. So Germany took the next step in her long calculated cam- paign. She declared war on France, asserting, in abso- lutely obvious falsehood, that France had attacked her.pre ~ xlii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF So far as the great majority of half-hypnotized German subjects were concerned, the effect of this accusation was the same as if it had been true. In a furor of patriotism they rushed to sacrifice themselves for the punishment of France. Germany next announced, equally without one shadow of knowledge or of truth, that Belgium was aiding France; and on this pretext Germany assumed the right to invade Belgium, as the easiest road for assailing France. Another ultimatum was dispatched. Belgium must welcome the German soldiers as masters, or suffer the consequences of battle. Surrender without resistance or be destroyed! To the eternal honor of Belgium’s king, Albert, he chose the latter alternative! And to the eternal honor of all Belgians, his people upheld his choice." Therein lay Germany’s first colossal blunder. She thought that all people, like her own in colder moods, would bow to fear. Had she been willing to accept International Law and common obvious justice as her guide, had she spared Belgium and attacked France along the more diffi- cult Rhine border, the war might indeed have been what Germany had so craftily intended, a contest in which she and Austria were allied against France and Russia, and almost sure of victory. Germany overreached herself. She revealed too soon the Nietzschian beast of prey behind the mask of the disinterested ally of an injured Austria. May the world never again behold a sight so terrifying and so shameless as when the German beast sprang, raven- ing and rending, upon helpless Belgium! Falsehood was now the German government’s weapon and defense upon every side. The German Chancellor made his notorious statement, that he admitted his country’s guilt towards Bel- gium but was driven to it by necessity—the necessity of punishing the single murder at Serajevo by perpetrating thousands of far more hideous murders upon the wholly guiltless Belgians! Surely here was a world of unreason gone hopelessly absurd. *See § XX, “Belgium Resists for Honor,” by De Gerlache, King Albert, etc.THE CAUSES OF THE WAR xliii In the very moment of pledging himself to protect the Belgians, the Chancellor abandoned them to plunder and massacre. Germany vowed to restore Belgium after the war, and at the same time made obvious preparations for the land’s permanent annexation. The Kaiser himself sent to the United States government an official statement as- serting the impossible and oft disproven charges that France and Belgium had begun the war. And when in later years the United States government referred to this “imperial” statement, German officials flatly denied its existence. When it was then officially made public, Ger- man writers for America insisted that it must have been forged, ignoring the fact that it was but an echo of Ger- many’s own solemnly proclaimed grievances upon which she based her Declaration of War. THE GERMAN EXPLANATION OF THE WAR’S BEGINNING While many intellectual Germans today agree frankly with almost every point of this exposition of the origin of the War, there are still many official or unofficial “ex- plainers” who noisily deny the guilt of the German gov- ernment. Their lines of argument are twofold. Either they quote extracts from Teuton officials, written in 1914, to show that these individuals were not expecting war, or they point to the warlike words and deeds of officials of other nations to show that others were equally at fault. No one of the arguments thus patiently woven together has ever for one moment shaken the essential facts. Dozens of letters from individual Germans declaring they knew nothing of any mobilization have no weight as against one from the German government commanding secret preparation. Even the Kaiser’s weeping over a flower on the battlefield and poetically vowing that he “had not willed this,’ have no weight as against the same Kaiser’s official orders to have Serbia forced into fighting.? Of German charges against other nations, the vehement- ly advanced have been three. The first was that made officially by the German government against poor little "See § XVI, “Breakdown of Diplomacy,” by the Kaiser, etc,eee xliv THE CAUSES OF THE WAR Belgium, of having secretly formed with Britain an offen- sive alliance against Germany. The charge was based on two worthless documents found by the Germans during their occupation of Belgium. It was obviously untrue, con- cocted carelessly in a hurried moment to divert pity from Belgium (see Volume II, page 52). The second charge was made against Russia, by German apologists in gen- eral, when the Russian Republic in 1917 brought the for- mer Russian general, Sukhomlinoff, to trial for treason. All that the evidence at this trial really established was what has been already stated above, that some Russians in high places acted as German agents and that not the Rus- sian government but some Russian military officials desired war. The third charge was that made by French Socialists after the War, that the French president, Poincaré, had desired and encouraged its outbreak. President Poincare overthrew this attack by showing that his attitude had been that shared by all Frenchmen; he feared that war would come, and he made every preparation to meet it, but he did not start 1t. There, of course, lies the logical weakness of all the German efforts to shift responsibility. Everybody feared and to some extent prepared against the coming of a world- wide war; but Germany deliberately incited it. She used the threat of it to establish her empire over Middle Europe and the Near East, and was fully resolved to enforce the threat if her domination was not submissively accepted. The difference is obvious, even when partisan spirit at- tempts to gloss it over. So long as armies exist there will always exist in any large country some men of military type who seek war—or the spoils of war—rather than peace. But only in Germany and Austria were such war- seekers in control of the government. HOW DEMOCRACY AWOKE TO ITS DEATH-MENACE Pause now to see in its full terror the awful menace which suddenly confronted the world in those midsummer days of 1914. By such ways of craft and open menace, a greedy monster of autocracy had been enabled to pounceTHE CAUSES OF THE WAR xlv suddenly upon its unready victim, the slowly built up civili- zation which had been developing through all the ages, ad- vancing confusedly, doubtfully, but ever groping onward towards universal knowledge, peace and brotherhood. This civilization of light, such light as man has managed to attain, was to be devoured by this monster wolf of old Teutonic legend, Fenris, the world-destroying wolf of evil, born of the darkness of the Teuton gods. And this mon- ster was now no hollow painted demon of a stage spectacle. It was the mightiest autocracy the world had ever seen, splendidly armed, elaborately organized, scientifically pre- pared, and relieved from every scruple of conscience by the long taught doctrine that any crime was right and noble if it served that glorious idol of a glorified selfishness, “Deutschland over all.” To this stupendous outburst of armed materialism, the only sufficient source of resistance in all the human uni- verse lay in that other and yet mightier force, “Democracy.” But Democracy, for all its strength, is blind, and easily con- fused, and must move openly. It is many-headed and therefore many-counseled. Autocracy is single-headed, and can move in secret. Hence, the outcome of the struggle be- tween them is, even at Democracy’s best, most dangerously insecure, more so than Democracy’s leaders have been quite willing to admit. Moreover, when the great Demos wins a victory, he sleeps again. His soldiers scatter joyously, each to resume his own home work and play. Then the foes of Demos recommence their crafty brewing of con- fusion. Only in some God-given hour of human clarity of vision does the whole world realize, as it did in IQI7, that Demos must awake and strike. France, indeed, recognized at once the nature of the opposing forces in the Great War. She had ever been a leader in Democracy, and she knew well that by Democ- racy she must stand or fall. From her the main and most immediate resistance to the great war-plot came. But for safety’s sake France had previously bound herself to the *See § XIX, “France Accepts the Struggle to the Death,” by Poin- caré and Viviani.js See xivi THE CAUSES OF THE WAR autocratic Russian government, and she had taken on with Russia an autocratic tinge. Thus even she at first was no clear champion of human brotherhood, a leader around whom all earnest men might rally. Britain also knew herself to be Democratic at heart. But her outward appearance of world empire made her seem even more the autocrat. Her navy gave her at least the garb and voice of despotism. Germany honestly be- lieved that in Britain she had a rival more hypocritical, though less strong and crafty, than herself. In truth, how- ever, Britain’s essential Democracy was clearly visible through those last days of diplomatic effort to avoid the struggle. Sir Edward Grey had repeatedly to say to friend and foe, “I am not sure Britain will fight for thats, te could not shake an armed fist and announce his ultimatum as could the autocrats of Russia, Austria and Germany. He knew that he must first have the support of the British populace. The first moment when he could speak posi- tively, sure that all the weight of Britain’s Democracy stood behind him, was when Belgium was invaded. For the first time, then, his voice rang sure and stern as ever Germany’s had been. “If you touch Belgium, it means war with Britain.” Autocracy had roused Democracy to the full; yet the haughty, blinded Prussian lordlings did not even recognize the meaning of the new and mightier contest that confronted them. Had Germany been more dangerously wise, she would have made any and every concession to Britain and to Bel- gium, and to world-sentiment generally, so as to have kept her war of conquest on its first deceptive basis of moral in- dignation against Serbia. But again, as always, autocracy failed to measure truly the weight of the “Imponderables.” Germany had aimed her plans of invasion and conquest first at Belgium; the machine had started and must not be stopped. What matter if it overrode mere righteousness, a useful diplomatic word indeed, kindly of sound, but with- out one cannon at command, without a single new device of war concealed in secret armories. Perhaps even after that first Belgian blunder, GermanyTHE CAUSES OF THE WAR xlvii might have accomplished her purpose, might in her terrible strength have triumphed over Britain also, if she could have sufficiently changed her fierce wolf nature, and so avoided rousing the United States. In the great western Democ- racy, many thinkers long remained in doubt as to the real causes of the War. Had not the new Germany finally con- vinced Americans of her essential paganism, had she not by her own brute ravages shown beyond question that this War was indeed “Armageddon,” the decisive clash between tyranny and brotherhood, America might still have held her strength apart. In that event the Great War would have reached a different and perhaps cataclysmic end. Germany’s disaster lay in that her government could not believe that other States were not as she in at least secret rejection of the Imponderables, that other people were not like her own in the practice and acceptance of de- ception. Hence we have the amazement of the German authorities over Britain’s sudden defiance, the frenzied and now historic appeal of their Chancellor, “Would you go to war Over a scrap of paper,” a mere British promise to pro- tect Belgium!! No wonder that Chancellor was in despair! He had thought himself dealing with another autocracy; and he had cajoled and deceived and offered it bribes such as should have rendered it wholly subservient. He was flatly incapable of understanding that Britain, being a Democracy, simply must in the long, long run be truthful —must stand by her plighted word. For Democracy is not a word but a reality. It is the voice of those Imponderables, which are the Inevitables. It is the expression of man’s faith in man. *See § XXI, “Britain Enters the War,” by Asquith, Bethmann- Hollweg, etc.CHRISTENDOM AFTER TWENTY CENTURIES 3y far the most famous artist and cartoonist created by the War was Louis Raemaekers. Being a citizen of Holland, he was nominally a neutral, though his mother was of German birth. His earlier war-car- toons contained criticism of England as well as of Germany; but intense sympathy for Belgium gradually made him an impassioned supporter of the Allies’ cause. Germany made every possible effort to suppress the Raemaekers cartoons, realizing with what mighty force they were blaz- oning her shame before the world.THE SPARS _ “Those are the Orders of Honor that have been awarded to the dear God for his services to the House of Hohengzollern.’ This cartoon depicts a baby Hohenzollern prince explaining the heavens to his brothers and sisters. It is by Theodore Heine, and appeared in the great German comic paper, Simplicissimus, as far back as 1903. Many Germans of that day recognized the enormous arrogance of their Emperor and his sons. But, apparently not realizing to what disaster this vanity tended, they made it the subject of light jest rather than serious reprobation. Simplicissimus, being not a Prussian but a Bavarian paper, ventured further than any other in cartooning royalty.THE OPPOSING FORCES AUTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY HENRI BERGSON OTFRIED NIPPOLD KARL LAMPRECHT Our review of the causes of the Great War may best begin with its ultimate or philosophic cause. In the deceptively quiet days before the War, Henri Bergson had been widely hailed as the world’s greatest philosopher. His native France had conferred upon him her highest literary and scientific honors. He was President of her Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. In Britain, Germany and America he had been equally welcomed, equally admired as the teacher of a new spiritual faith, at once poetic and scientific, a new and universal tol- erance, Tolerance is of course the traditional attitude of the philosopher. Watching all things, searching back to their origins, he comes to regard them all as natural growths, steady of approach and perhaps inevitable, horrible sometimes and sternly to be suppressed, but never beyond the pity and the helpfulness of the Highest God. From the philosopher Bergson, therefore—and especially as he speaks for France, which among the larger nations has suffered most—let us gather our first broad view of the meaning of the War. Was it inevitable? What were the vast and eternal forces which clashed? I believe the whole world will ultimately accept, perhaps it has already accepted, M. Bergson’s in- terpretation as to the elemental antagonisms which precipitated the struggle. It was a giant phase of the war forever being waged between Life and Death. To balance this French thinker’s view of the world movement of 1914 with an equally honest, comprehensive and philosophic study from the German standpoint, has not been easy. The broadest view yet taken by a German is perhaps the one here given by Professor Otfried Nippold. It also explains why his countrymen have not been able to view the conflict broadly. Of course, Professor Nippold’s view is not the official one of Germany. Indeed, his frankness and independence of officialdom in the days before the War resulted ultimately in his leaving Prussia, of which he was a native, and settling in Switzerland. There he became Professor of International Law at the University of Berne, a world-recognized authority on his subject, and a leader in the peace movements before the War. In 1913 he wrote a book of warning against the rising war spirit in Germany, a caution directed to his own beloved German people. That book stirred the lazy world to its first faint tremors of anxiety as to the approaching crisis. In 1918 Professor Nip- pold, in continuation of his earlier work, wrote “The Awakening of the German People,” the essence of which is given here. W., VOL. I.—1, x —= aren Pa pa eibieiieitltit aan 2 THE OPPOSING FORCES In contrast to this independent German attitude we give also the official viewpoint of the German Government as repeatedly expressed throughout the War. It is voiced here by Dr. Karl Lamprecht, who before the War was the most widely known and justly celebrated among German historians, Professor of History at the University of Leipzig. Dr. Lamprecht wrote this appeal especially for the American public in the first heat of the War. Whether we regard the German attitude of those days as one of blindness or as one of deliberate misrepresenta- tion, the article certainly distorts plain facts. To an ignorant and trust- ful person, it would be dangerous reading. Hence, while Dr. Lam- precht’s words are here given exactly as written, footnotes have been added to supply the reader with the established facts when these seem most perverted or not widely known. The glaring inconsistencies and ‘naccuracies of the article may do more than could either Bergson or Nippold to convince the reader that Dr. Lamprecht’s scholarship be- longs to a different “culture” from our own. Cc. F. H. BY HENRI BERGSON ‘<-TO understand and not to be enraged”; this has been said to be the last word in philosophy. I believe none of it; and, had I to choose, J should much prefer, when in presence of crime, to give my indignation rein and not to un- derstand. Happily, the choice has not to be made. On the contrary, there are forms of anger which, from a thorough comprehension of their objects, derive the force to sustain and renew their vigor. Our anger is of that kind. We have only to detach the inner meaning of this war, and our horror for those who made it will be increased. Moreover, nothing is easier. A little history, and a little philosophy, will suffice. For a long period Germany devoted herself to poetry, to art, to metaphysic. She was made, so she said, for thought and imagination; “she had no feeling for the reality of things.” It is true that her administration had defects, that she was divided into rival states, that anarchy at certain times seemed beyond remedy. Nevertheless, an attentive study would have revealed, beneath this disorder, the normal process of life, which is always too rank at the first and later on prunes away its excess, makes its choice and adopts a lasting form. From her municipal activity there would have issued at length a good administration, which would have assured order without suppressing liberty. From the closer union of the confederated states would have arisenTHE OPPOSING FORCES 3 that unity in diversity which is the distinguishing mark of organized beings. But time was needed for that, as it al- ways is needed by life, in order that its possibilities may be realized. Now, while Germany was thus working out the task of her organic self-development, there was within her, or rather by her side, a people with whom every process tended to take a mechanical form. Artificiality marked the creation of Prussia; for she was formed by clumsily sewing together, edge to edge, provinces either acquired or conquered. Her administration was mechanical, it did its work with the regu- larity of a well-appointed machine. Not less mechanical —extreme both in precision and in power—was the army, on which the attention of the Hohenzollerns was concen- trated. Whether it was that the people had been drilled for centuries to mechanical obedience; or that an elemental instinct for conquest and plunder, absorbing to itself the life of the nation, had simplified its aims and reduced them to materialism ; or that the Prussian character was originally so made—it is certain that the idea of Prussia always invoked a vision of rudeness, of rigidity, of automatism, as if every- thing within her went by clockwork, from the gesture of her kings to the step of her soldiers. A day came when Germany had to choose between a rigid and ready-made system of unification, mechanically superposed from without, and the unity which comes from within by a natural effort of life. At the same time the choice was offered her between an administrative mechanism, into which she would merely have to fit herselfi—a com- plete order, doubtless, but poverty-stricken, like everything else that is artificial—and that richer and more flexible order which the wills of men, when freely associated, evolve of themselves. How would she choose? There was a man on the spot in whom the methods of Prussia were incarnate—a genius, I admit, but an evil genius, for he was devoid of scruple, devoid of faith, devoid of pity, and devoid of soul. He had just removed the only obstacle which could spoil his plan; he had got rid of Austria. He said to himself: ‘We are going to make Germany take4 THE OPPOSING FORCES over, along with Prussian centralization and discipline, all our ambitions and all our appetites. If she hesitates, if the confederate peoples do not arrive of their own accord at this common resolution, I know how to compel them; I will cause a breath of hatred to pass over them, all alike. I will launch them against a common enemy, an enemy we have hoodwinked and waylaid, and whom we shall try to catch unarmed. Then when the hour of triumph shall sound, I will rise up; from Germany, in her intoxication, I will snatch a covenant, which, like that of Faust with Mephis- topheles, she has signed with her blood, and by which she also, like Faust, has traded her soul away for the good things of earth.” He did as he had said. The covenant was made. But, to insure that it would never be broken, Germany must be made to feel, for ever and ever, the necessity of the armor in which she was imprisoned, Bismarck took his measures accord- ingly. Among the confidences which fell from his lips and were gathered up by his intimates is this revealing word: “We took nothing from Austria after Sadowa because we wanted to be able one day to be reconciled with her.” So, then, in taking Alsace and a part of Lorraine, his idea was that no reconciliation with the French would be possible. He intended that the German people should believe itself in permanent danger of war, that the new Empire should re- main armed to the teeth, and that Germany, instead of dis- solving Prussian militarism into her own life, should reen- force it by militarizing herself. She reénforced it; and day by day the machine grew in complexity and power. But in the process it yielded auto- matically a result very different from that which its construc- tors had foreseen. It is the story of the witch who, by a magic incantation, had won the consent of her broomstick to go to the river and fill her buckets; having no formula ready to check the work, she watched her cave fill with water until she was drowned. The Prussian army had been organized, brought to per- fection, tended with love by the Kings of Prussia, in order that it might serve their lust of conquest. To take posses-THE OPPOSING FORCES 5 sion of neighbors’ territory was then the sole aim, territory was almost the whole of the national wealth. But with the nineteenth century there was a new departure. The idea peculiar to that century of diverting science to the satisfac- tion of men’s material wants evoked a development of in- dustry, and consequently of commerce, so extraordinary that the old conception of wealth was completely overthrown. Not more than fifty years were needed to bring about this transformation. On the morrow of the war of 1870 a na- tion expressly made for appropriating the good things of this world had no alternative but to become industrial and commercial. Not on that account, however, would she change the essential principle of her action. On the contrary, she had but to utilize her habits of discipline, method, tenac- ity, minute care, precise information—and, we may add, of impertinence and spying—to which she owed the growth of her military power. She would thus equip herself with in- dustry and commerce not less formidable than her army, and able to march, on their part also, in military order. From that time onwards these two were seen going for- ward together, advancing at an even pace and reciprocally supporting each other—industry, which had answered the appeal of the spirit of conquest, on one side; on the other, the army, in which that spirit was incarnate, with the navy, which had just been added to the forces of the army. In- dustry was free to develop in all directions; but, from the first, war was the end in view. In enormous factories, such as the world had never seen, tens of thousands of workmen toiled in casting great guns, while by their side, in workshops and laboratories, every invention which the disinterested genius of neighboring peoples had been able to achieve was immediately captured, bent from its intended use, and con- verted into an engine of war. Reciprocally, the army and navy, which owed their growth to the increasing wealth of the nation, repaid the debt by placing their services at the disposal of this wealth: they undertook to open roads for commerce and outlets for industry. But through this very combination the movement imposed on Prussia by her kings, and on Germany by Prussia, was bound to swerve from its6 THE OPPOSING FORCES course, whilst gathering speed and flinging itself forward. Sooner or later it was bound to escape from all control and become a plunge into the abyss. For, even though the spirit of conquest knows no limit in itself, it must limit its ambitions as long as the question is simply that of seizing a neighbor’s territory. To constitute their kingdom, kings of Prussia had been obliged to under- take a long series of wars. Whether the name of the spoiler be Frederick or William, not more than one or two provinces can be annexed at a time: to take more is to weaken oneself. But suppose that the same insatiable thirst for conquest en- ters into the new form of wealth—what follows? Bound- less ambition, which till then had spread out the coming of its gains over indefinite time, since each one of them would be worthy only a definite portion of space, will now leap all at once to an object boundless as itself. Rights will be set up on every portion of the globe where raw material for in- dustry, refitting stations for ships, concessions for capital- ists, gr outlets for production are seen to exist. In fact, the policy which had served Prussia so well passed at a bound from the most calculating prudence to the wildest temerity. Bismarck, whose common sense put some restraint on the logic of his principles, was still averse to colonial enterprises ; he said that all the affairs of the East were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. But Germany, retain- ing Bismarck’s former impulse, went straight on and rushed forward along the lines of least resistance to east and west; on the one side lay the route to the Orient, on the other the empire of the sea. But in so doing she virtually declared war on the nations which Bismarck had managed to keep allied or friendly. Her ambition looked forward to the domination of the world. Moreover, there was no moral restraint which could keep this ambition under control. Intoxicated by victory, by the prestige which victory had given her, and of which her com- merce, her industry, her science even, had reaped the benefit, Germany plunged into a material prosperity such as she had never known, such as she would never have dared to dream of. She told herself that if force had wrought this miracle,THE OPPOSING FORCES 7 if force had given her riches and honor, it was because force had within it a hidden virtue, mysterious—nay, divine. Yes, brute force with its train of trickery and lies, when it comes with powers of attack sufficient for the conquest of the world, must needs be in direct line from heaven and a revelation of the will of God on earth. The people to whom this power of attack had come were the elect, a chosen race by whose side the others are races of bondmen. To such a race noth- ing is forbidden that may help in establishing its dominion. Let none speak to it of inviolable right! Right is what is written in a treaty; a treaty is what registers the will of a conqueror—that is, the direction of his force for the time being. Force, then, and right are the same thing; and if force is pleased to take a new direction, the old right becomes ancient history, and the treaty which backed it with a sol- emn undertaking, no more than a scrap of paper. Thus Ger- many, struck with wonder in presence of her victories, of the brute force which had been their means, of the material prosperity which was the outcome, translated her amazement into an idea. And see how, at the call of this idea, a thou- sand thoughts, as if awaked from slumber, and shaking off the dust of libraries, came rushing in from every side— thoughts which Germany had suffered to sleep among her poets and philosophers, every one which could lend a seduc- tive or striking form to a conviction already made! Hence- forth German imperialism had a theory of itsown. Taught in schools and universities, it easily molded to itself a nation already broken in to passive obedience and having no loftier ideal wherewith to oppose the official doctrine. Many per- sons have explained the aberrations of German policy as due to that theory. For my part, I see in it nothing more than a philosophy doomed to translate into ideas what was, in its essence, insatiable ambition and will perverted by pride. The doctrine is an effect rather than a cause; and should the day come when Germany, conscious of her moral humiliation, shall say, to excuse herself, that she had trusted herself too much to certain theories, that an error of judgment is not a crime, it will be necessary to remind her that her philosophy was simply a translation into intellectual terms of her bru-8 THE OPPOSING FORCES tality, her appetites and her vices. So, too, in most cases, doctrines are the means by which nations and individuals seek to explain what they are and what they do. Germany, having finally become a predatory nation, invokes Hegel as witness; just asa Germany enamored of moral beauty would have declared herself faithful to Kant, just as a sentimental Germany would have found her tutelary genius in Jacobi or Schopenhauer. Had she leaned in any other direction and been unable to find at home the philosophy she needed, she would have procured it from abroad. Thus when she wished to convince herself that predestined nations exist, she took from France, that she might hoist him into celebrity, a writer whom we have not read—Gobineau. None the less it is true that perverse ambition, once erected into theory, feels more at ease in working itself out to the end; a part of the responsibility will then be thrown upon logic. If the German race is the elect, it will be the only race which has an unconditional right to live; the others will be tolerated races, and this toleration will be precisely what is termed the “state of peace.” Let war come; the annihilation of the enemy will be the end Germany has to pursue. She will not strike at combatants only; she will massacre women and children and old men; she will pillage and burn; the ideal will be to destroy towns, villages, the whole population. Such is the conclusion of the theory. Now we come to its aim and true principle. As long as war was no more than a means to the settle- ment of a dispute between two nations, the conflict was lo- calized to the two armies involved. More and more of use- less violence was eliminated ; innocent populations were kept outside the quarrel. Thus little by little a code of war was drawn up. From the first, however, the Prussian army, or- ganized as it was for conquest, did not take kindly to this law. But from the time when Prussian militarism, now turned into German militarism, had become one with indus- trialism, it was the enemy’s industry, his commerce, the sources of his wealth itself, as well as his military power, which war must now make the end in view. His factories must be destroyed that his competition may be suppressed.THE OPPOSING FORCES 9 Moreover, that he may be impoverished once and for all and the aggressor enriched, his towns must be put to ran- som, pillaged and burned. Above all must the war be short, not only in order that the economic life of Germany might not suffer too much, but further, and chiefly, because her military power lacked that consciousness of a right superior to force by which she could sustain and recuperate her en- ergies. Her moral force, being only the pride which comes from the material force, would be exposed to the same vicis- situdes as this latter: in proportion as the one was being ex- pended the other would be used up. Time for moral force to be used up must not be given. The machine must deliver its blow all at once. And this it could do by terrorizing the population, and so paralyzing the nation. To achieve that end, no scruple must be suffered to embarrass the play of its wheels. Hence a system of atrocities prepared in advance— a system as sagaciously put together as the machine itself. Such is the explanation of the spectacle before us. “Sci- entific barbarism,” “systematic barbarism,’ are phrases we have heard. Yes, barbarism reénforced by the capture of civilization. Throughout the course of the history we have been following there is, as it were, the continuous clang of militarism and industrialism, of machinery and mechanism, of debased moral materialism. Many years hence when the reaction of the past shall have left only the grand outline in view, this perhaps is how a philosopher will speak of it. He will say that the idea, peculiar to the nineteenth century, of employing science in the satisfaction of our material wants had given a wholly un- foreseen extension to the mechanical arts and had equipped man in less than fifty years with more tools than he had made during the thousands of years he had lived on the earth. Each new machine being for man a new organ—an artificial organ which merely prolongs the natural organs—his body became suddenly and prodigiously increased in size, without his soul being able at the same time to dilate to the dimensions of his new body. From this disproportion there issued the problems, moral, social, international, which most of the na- tions endeavored to solve by filling up the soulless void in the: 10 THE OPPOSING FORCES body politic by creating more liberty, more fraternity, more justice than the world had ever seen. Now, while mankind labored at this task of spiritualiza- tion, inferior powers—I was going to say infernal powers— plotted an inverse experience for mankind. What would happen if the mechanical forces, which science had brought to a state of readiness for the service of man, should them- selves take possession of man in order to make his nature as material as their own? What kind of a world would it be if this mechanism should seize the human race entire, and if the peoples, instead of raising themselves to a richer and more harmonious diversity, as persons may do, were to fall into the uniformity of things? What kind of a society would that be which should mechanically obey a word of command me- chanically transmitted; which should rule its science and its conscience in accordance therewith; and which should lose, along with the sense of justice, the power to discern between truth and falsehood? What would mankind be when brute force should hold the place of moral force? What new bar- barism, this time final, would arise from these conditions to stifle feeling, ideas, and the whole civilization of which the old barbarism contained the germ? What would happen, in short, if the moral effort of humanity should turn in its tracks at the moment of attaining its goal, and if some dia- bolical contrivance should cause it to produce the mechaniza- tion of spirit instead of the spiritualization of matter? There was a people predestined to try the experiment. Prussia had been militarized by her kings; Germany had been militarized by Prussia; a powerful nation was on the spot marching forward in mechanical order. Administration and military mechanism were only waiting to make alliance with industrial mechanism. The combination once made, a for- midable machine would come into existence. A touch upon the starting gear and the other nations would be dragged into the wake of Germany, subjects to the same movement, pris- oners of the same mechanism. Such would be the meaning of the war on the day when Germany should decide upon its declaration. She decided, he will continue, but the result was very dif-THE OPPOSING FORCES “on ferent from what had been predicted. For the moral forces, which were to submit to the forces of matter by their side, suddenly revealed themselves as creators of material force. A simple idea, the heroic conception which a small people had formed of its honor, enabled it to make head against a power- ful empire. At the cry of outraged justice we saw, more- over, in a nation which till then had trusted to its fleet, one million, two millions of soldiers suddenly rise from the earth. A yet greater miracle: in a nation thought to be mortally divided against itself all became brothers in the space of a day. From that moment the issue of the conflict was not open to doubt. On the one side, there was force spread out on the surface; on the other there was force in the depths. On one side, mechanism, the manufactured article which cannot repair its own injuries; on the other, life, the power of creation, which makes and remakes itself at every instant. On one side, that which uses itself up; on the other, that which does not use itself up. Indeed, our philosopher will conclude, the machine did use itself up. For a long time it resisted; then it bent; then it broke. Alas! it had crushed under it a multitude of our children; and over the fate of this young life, which was so naturally and purely heroic, our tears will continue to fall. An implacable law decrees that spirit must encounter the re- sistance of matter, that life cannot advance without bruising that which lives, and that great moral results are purchased by much blood and many tears. But this time the sacrifice was to be rich in fruit as it had been rich in beauty. That the powers of death might be matched against life in one su- preme combat, destiny had gathered them all at a single point. And behold how death was conquered; how humanity was saved by material suffering from the moral downfall which would have been its end; while the peoples, joyful in their desolation, raised on high the song of deliverance from the depths of ruin and of grief! BY OTFRIED NIPPOLD Before the outbreak of the Great War it can scarcely be said that any real attempt had been made to give an account| 2h THE OPPOSING FORCES of the powerful force which suggestions are capable of exercising even in the life of nations, and particularly in our German nation. At that time only a few writers had devoted their attention to ““Mass-suggestions.”” Thus it hap- pened that people had not become aware, or at any rate wide circles of them were still ignorant, of the way in which the war-makers in Germany had systematically been at work in recent years to influence the soul of the German people by the instrumentality of certain catchwords. In my book on “German Chauvinism,” which appeared in 1913, I undertook the task of producing documentary evidence of this system- atic activity on the part of those forces which in Germany were exerting themselves in the direction of a war. I used the term “Chauvinists” comprehensively to include all these classes, not merely the military party who longed for war in itself, but also the Pan-German politicians and imperialists who for political or other reasons chose to represent it as desirable and inevitable. I further showed the catch-words of which use was made in these circles to make the German people, in itself peace-loving, “mellow” for war. In this un- dertaking the “encirclement” inevitably played a part from the outset, as did also the “French thirst for revenge,’ the “envy of the English” and the alleged danger of “Panslav- ism.” All these had to do their part in the task of represent- ing to the German people that war was in the first place in- evitable. The war-intriguers, however, did not stop at this stage. In recent years they advanced to the theory of the preventive war and advocated quite openly a war of aggres- sion. In justification of such a war they in no way restricted themselves, however, to pointing out the necessity of choos- ing the right moment for a war, but they represented even an aggressive war as being simply in the interests of an “active” German policy and of an extension of German power. Thus these war-intriguers had in the end really arrived at the point of recommending to the German people a predatory war, without the public opinion of Germany revolting against the suggestion ; indeed, they were able to put forward these views amid the general approval of the multitude and more particu- larly of the Press.THE OPPOSING FORCES 13 The German people, unfortunately, was not aware of the growing danger that menaced its soul. The number of those who fell within the spell of these suggestions was constantly increasing. In 1913, in my “German Chauvinism,”’ I was obliged to confirm the fact that even then very extensive classes of the German people believed in these catch-words. Even if before the war the number of the real and conscious Imperialists in Germany was limited, scarcely extending to the circle of those imbued with Pan-German sentiments, it still remains a fact that the great majority of the German people had nevertheless fallen under the spell of the catch- words that were scattered abroad, in this sense that they be- gan to desire that “the bomb might at last explode if, as they say, war is inevitable.” Asa result of the year-long incite- ment to war, the German people had in fact been made “‘mel- low,’ so mellow that in the end even men who were in them- selves peace-loving directly longed for the dreaded war. Be- fore the war it was only a relatively small section of the population, drawn from eminent men of intellect, from dem- ocrats belonging to the civil parties and social democrats, who had remained deaf to the suggestions of the war-in- triguers. It was under these circumstances that the year 1914 ap- proached. Here I pass over all the portents which some months beforehand could not have failed to intimate to the careful observer the approach of the catastrophe. These in- dications would in themselves form an interesting chapter. In consequence of the machinations of the war-intriguers the German people’s nervousness, sensitiveness and responsive- ness to suggestion had gradually reached an abnormal de- velopment. Asa result the circle of these intriguers felt that they were near their goal. Writing in Marz of July 18th, 1914, I believed that I might still warn the German Govern- ment against these intrigues:—“How is it possible in au- thoritative circles to hope, when the decisive hour arrives, to be able to master the evil, when it is continually being allowed to grow greater, and nothing is done at the right time to seize the appropriate counter-measures? What may not be an im- mediate danger to-day may become so overnight.” A few14 THE OPPOSING FORCES days later the decisive hour had arrived. The German Gov- ernment not only failed to master the evil, but capitulated to it. Nevertheless the Government did not venture to tell the truth to the German people, no matter how “mellow” it had gradually been made. The truth would not have seized the people in the way considered necessary ina war. Thus anew catch-word was added to those used in pursuing mass-sug- gestions before the war, that, namely, of the “ruthless attack” and of the ‘‘war of defense forced upon us.” For the un- prejudiced, objective onlooker it cannot be said to be very ingeniously devised; for, indeed, this catch-word, when the whole situation is considered, was in reality only devised for political babes. Only the poor German people had already in fact been brought so far that it blindly believed everything, and thus it even believed in a “ruthless attack.’ The Ger- man people, down to the last man, believed it as gospel truth. If before the outbreak of war a section of the population had not yet fallen within the spell of these catch-words, the posi- tion in this respect was now at once altered. And thus Mili- tarism and Pan-Germanism had gained the upper hand in Germany, not merely over the people but over the Govern- ment as well. Militarism now held unrestricted sway, and beside it a Nationalism in which imperialistic tendencies now mani- fested themselves in a more unveiled form than heretofore. In its issue of September 19, 1916, the Berlin Conservative paper, Die Post, could quite correctly write with reference to my controversy with Von Sybel in the Neue Ziiricher Zeitung that imperialistic efforts in Germany were before the war restricted to a narrow circle, and were indeed from time to time officially repudiated. An Imperialism could, how- ever, only operate in a really expansive manner when it pene- trated into the great mass of the people and had permanently established itself there; every individual must have accepted imperialistic ideas in such a strong measure in his own circle of thoughts, that the imperialistic direction of his actions was in fact no longer present to his consciousness. It was only during the war, Die Post continued, that the German peopleTHE OPPOSING FORCES 15 had found the soil on which the imperialistic idea could take root and bring forth fruit. This was indeed the case. On the outbreak of war the whole German people did in fact fall under the spell of the suggestions of the war-makers. And since then the German people has slumbered and dreamed a fair dream. It dreams of victories and of glory and of the respect which it has instilled into the wholeworld by its deeds of heroism and by its spirit of sacrifice ;it dreams of the position of power which the future Germany will enjoy in the circle of the nations, and it dreams of peace. It continues to dream and it does not see and cannot see the crude reality. For the war-makers carefully seek to guard it against an awakening from its fair dream. Every day the newspapers tell the German people of new victories. The peace that is to come will thus be based on a German victory; not in vain will the sacrifices have been made. The truth is jealously kept from them, lest they awake. Nothing is allowed to pass the German frontier that could disturb the fair dream. And within Germany nothing is written or spoken that could rob the population of this illusion. Thus to-day the German people has no longer any knowledge of how it was incited into this war. Everything that took place before the war is forgotten. The German people is innocent of this war. It did not want it; it did not provoke it; it is merely defending itself and safeguarding its national existence. And as it is innocent of the outbreak of war, so also it is innocent of the continuation of the war. It has conquered and is ready for peace. What more can one ask? It cannot realize that there can be people who attribute to Germany itself the guilt of the war, and who also despite everything hold it respon- sible for the continuance of the war. That can only be done by the enemies of the German people, that is to say, the wicked Englishmen and Frenchmen, Russians and Japanese, and, unfortunately, many neutrals as well. Yes, indeed, the whole world seems to-day to have risen against Germany. They are surrounded by enemies. The enemies are every- where—but not in their own land, not there where the dream- ing German people continues to be carefully guarded against awakening.16 THE OPPOSING FORCES What will this awakening reveal to the German people? What will the crude reality look like, when the dream is at an end? The thought is a bitter one. Every dream must come to an end some day; from every sleep there must be an awakening. And then the reality is seen. Then the Ger- man people will see that the rest of the world passes a dif- ferent judgment on the question of the responsibility for the war from that current in Germany on the basis of the Ger- man official accounts. It will then recognize that while, no doubt, the German armies have often been victorious, they have not always been so, that the other side also has gained many a victory, that there was a battle on the Marne which completely frustrated the German plan of campaign, and that while it is certainly possible to dream of a German vic- tory, such a victory cannot be experienced. It will recognize that even if Germany may perhaps be unconquerable it never- theless cannot conquer, a fact which for an aggressor is necessarily a sorry business and cannot but destroy all dreams of victory. And further, what on awakening will be the outlook as regards their other dreams of glory and respect and honor? Has the German conduct of the war in fact been such as to increase the glory of the German name? Has it not rather been placed in the service of terror, branding the German name for centuries to come, for the sake of momentary petty advantages? Have not the German army leaders, in agreement with the German Government, vio- lated Belgian neutrality and often enough ridden roughshod over international law on many other occasions as well? And is it not the fact that German scholarship has declared its solidarity with all these actions, and has thus robbed itself of the glory which it enjoyed throughout the whole world? And has not the German Press done its utmost to feed the flame of universal hatred enkindled by these things—hatred, of course, against other nations who are innocent of all these matters, not hatred against the enemy who sits in their own land, working on the soul of their own people? Thus, on awakening, the German people will really see itself confronted by a world of enemies, and it will be con- strained to recognize that for many years to come it hasUNCONQUERABLE | Tne Kaiser. “SO, YOU SEE—YOU’VE LOST EVERYTHING.” | Tne Kino or tHe Betorans. “NOT MY SOUL.” | October 21, 1914. | Most widely known and noted among British War-cartoons is the above. It appeared originally in Punch from the hand of the renowned cartoonist, Bernard Partridge. It echoes most emphatically the conflict of German materialism with the spiritual forces of the universe.BE WS me re Sta THE FIELDS OF FLANDERS “Where are the Dead? ae here are no Dead.” MAETERLINCK (“The Blue Bird’). This is a Canadian sketch by J. A. Shepperson, emphasizing that high hope on which the true Culture of the world has been building for twenty centuries. Mankind, outside of Germany, believed that all the doctrines of materialism break down just because they reckon the dead as dead, and take no heed as to what a man’s labors here shall make him fitted for when he passes beyond earth's Death. Hence when_the Britons and Canadians sacrificed their lives by thousands on the “Flan- ders Fields” through all the years of the War, their faith was symbolized by Maeterlinck’s allegory in “The Blue Bird.’ He makes the trembling searchers for the terrible field of death find it beautiful instead; for it blossoms into a field of lilies.THE OPPOSING FORCES 17 gained, not glory and honor, but hatred and contempt. Yes, the thought of this awakening of the German people is bitter in the extreme! It cannot but wring one’s very heart to think of this brave people and of the millions it has sacrificed in life and wealth, and then to picture the awakening of this people from its dream! BY KARL LAMPRECHT Written in February, 1915 The gravest and perhaps most widely spread misconcep- tion about us Germans is that we are the serfs of our Princes, servile and dependent in political thought.1. That false no- tion has probably been dispelled during the initial weeks of the present war. With absolute certainty the German Nation, with one voice * and correctly, diagnosed the political situation with- out respect to party or creed and unanimously and of its own free will acted. But this misconception is so deep rooted that more ex- tended discussion is needed. I pass on to other matters. The essential point is that public opinion have free scope of development. Every American will admit that. Now, public opinion finds its expression in the principles that gov- ern the use of the suffrage. The German voting system is the freest in the world, much freer than the French, English, or American system, because not only does it operate in ac- cordance with the principle that every one shall have a direct *All university professors in Prussia were appointed by the Govern- ment, and a similar situation existed in Saxony, the home of Prof. Lamprecht. He himself was commonly accused of seeking court favor by flattery. He wrote of William II, “Listening to his ministers, we are again and again amazed at the extent to which they merely repeat the Emperor’s ideas. Even opponents when coming from an interview are dominated by the charm of his personality.” Any teacher or professor who expressed views not approved by the Imperial Government ruined his career. Tragic cases of this kind have been frequent. A similar system of official interference with opinion extended to almost every rank in society, operating through permits, pensions, rewards, or public condemnation. *The German Socialists repeatedly objected to the threatened war. Even after it had begun and protests were treated as treason, the So- cialists in the parliament only voted the money for war most unwillingly. W., VOL. I.—2, Se a18 THE OPPOSING FORCES and secret vote, but the powers of the State are exercised faithfully and conscientiously to carry out that principle in practice. The constitutional life of the German Nation is of a thoroughly democratic character.? Those who know that were not surprised that our Social Democrats marched to war with such enthusiasm. Already among their ranks many have fallen as heroes, never to be forgotten by any German when his thoughts turn to the noble blood which has saturated foreign soil—thank God, foreign soil! Many of the Socialist leaders and adherents are wear- ing the Iron Cross, that simple token that seems to tell you when you speak of its bearer, ‘“Now, this is a fearless and faithful soul.” Let it be said once and for all: He who wants to under- stand us must accept our conception that constitutionally we enjoy so great a political freedom that we would not change with any country in the world. Everybody in America knows that our manners and customs have been democratic *Except for the fact that the German “voting system” was in some but not all elections free and secret, there is not one true statement in this paragraph. The German parliament was wholly undemocratic; be- cause its upper and more powerful house was not elected at all but filled by the German princes. The lower or elected house was so powerless as to be ridiculed everywhere. Germans themselves nicknamed it the “debating society” and the “hall of echoes.’ The chief elective body having any real power was the lower house of the legislature of Prussia. Elections to this were notoriously arranged so as to favor overwhelm- ingly the upper classes, and to expose to their resentment any one who ventured to vote against them. “This view was honestly held by many Germans. Commenting on it in an article in the N. Y. Sun, the present editor said: “What makes the German so ready to assert ‘I am freer than you, for all your boasted democracy?’ In the first place, he is an orderly soul who loves to have his paths marked out for him. When a German sees a road labeled Verboten he never dreams of using it. He welcomes laws, even in their most restrictive form. “In the second place, the German Government has really made excel- lent laws for the advantage of its working classes, old age pensions and the like. And it has very carefully refrained from restricting its voters on the subjects where they find their real enjoyment. A German can act toward his wife and children or in a dozen other every day affairs as an American could not—and would not wish to. So the German naturally says, ‘I am freer than you. Of the larger freedom by which a people controls its own destiny, he has so little knowledge that he does not even know he lacks it.”THE OPPOSING FORCES 19 for centuries, while in France and England they have been ever aristocratic. Americans, we know, always feel at home on German soil. But the Kaiser, you will say, speaks of “his monarchy,” therefore must the Germans be Fuerstenknechte (servants of Princes). First of all, as to the phrase ‘‘Fuerstenknechte.” Does not the King of England speak of his “subjects”? That word irritates a German, because he is conscious that he is not a subject, but a citizen of the empire. Yet he will not infer from the English King’s use of the term in formal utterances that an Englishman is a churl, a “servant of his King.’ That would be a superficial political conception. As to our Princes, most of us, including the Social Demo- crats, are glad in our heart of hearts that we have them. As far back as our history runs, and that is more than 2,000 years, we have had Princes. They have never been more than their name, “Fuerst,” implies, the first and foremost of German freemen, “primi inter pares.” Therefore they have never acted independently, never without taking the people into counsel. That would have been contrary to the most important fundamental principles of German law; hence our people have never been “de jure” without their representa- tives. Even in the times of absolute monarchy the old “es- tates of the realm” had their being as a representative body,® and wherever and whenever these privileges were suppressed it was regarded as a violation of our fundamental rights and is so still regarded. We glory in our Princes. They link our existence with the earliest centuries of our history. They preserve for us the priceless independence of our small home States. We are accused of militarism. What is this new and terrible crime? Since the years of the wars of liberation against France and Napoleon we have had what amounts practically to universal conscription. Only two generations later universal suffrage was introduced. The nation has been sternly trained by its history in the ways of discipline and * These “estates” represented only the higher classes—at first only the warriors—never the masses of the poor,20 THE OPPOSING FORCES self-restraint. Germans are very far from mistaking free- dom for license and independence for licentiousness. Germany has a long past. She enjoys the inheritance of an original and priceless civilization. She holds clearly for- mulated ideals. To the future she has all this to bequeath and, in addition, the intellectual wealth of her present stage of development. Consider Germany’s contributions to the arts, the poetical achievements of the period of Schiller and Goethe, the music of Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Bee- thoven; the thought systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel! The last decade has reawakened these great men in the consciousness of the German Nation. Enriched by the con- sciousness and message of an intellectual past, our people were moving forward to new horizons. At that moment the war hit us. If you could only have lived these weeks in Germany I do not doubt that what you would have seen would have led your ripe experience to a fervent faith in a Divinely guided future of mankind. The great spiritual movement of 1870, when I was a boy grow- ing up, was but a phantom compared to July and August of 1914. Germany was a nation stirred by the most sacred emo- tions, humble and strong, filled with just wrath and a firm determination to conquer—a nation disciplined, faithful, and loving. In that disposition we have gone to war and still fight. As for the slanders of which we have been the victims, ask the thousands of Frenchmen who housed German soldiers in 1870 and 1871, or ask the Belgians of Ghent and Bruges Ue They will give you a different picture of the “Furor Teutoni- cus.” They will tell you that the “raging German” generally is a good-natured fellow, ever ready for service and sym- pathy, who, like Parsifal, gazes forth eagerly into a strange world which the war has opened to his loyal’and patriotic vision. ° When this phrase of astounding insolence or obtuseness was writ- ten, the Belgians of Ghent and Bruges could not speak; they were mur- derously strangled. Since then they have managed to find voice with which to repudiate Germany in utmost loathing.THE KULTUR OF GERMANY THE WORSHIP OF THE “SUPERMAN” AS TAUGHT BY NIETZSCHE WILLIAM ELKIN introducing FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE HENRIQUE DE MENDONCA The “Kultur” on which Germany prided herself was certainly a large factor in bringing on the Great War. This new Kultur was itself war- like in essence; and, moreover, the Germans believed themselves divinely commissioned to extend it over other lands. In a way, theirs was a missionary spirit such as had started the wild followers of Mahomet to ravaging and conquering the world some thirteen hundred years before —though we must admit that the German soldier as a missionary was the strangest proselyter yet conceived in all the mad vagaries of the human mind. William Baird Elkin, Professor of Philosophy in Indiana University, is an excellent American authority to give us an unprejudiced view of the German “Kultur” as expounded by Nietzsche and other leaders. Friedrich Nietzsche, upon whom is usually laid the main responsibility for the whole modern German system of thought, was as much Polish as German; and he gathered the roots of his doctrine from an earlier French writer, Gobineau. In education, however, as in outlook, Nietzsche was wholly German; and from about 1878 onward his vigor- ous books, especially his “Thus Spake Zarathustra,’ an imaginary expo- sition of the religion of Zoroaster, profoundly swayed German phi- losophy. Briefly summarized, Nietzsche’s teaching was that Christianity is a weakness; might is the only right; the man of Aryan race (or rhetorically “the blond beast”) is the mightiest among men, and should develop himself into the “superman,” despise all lesser forms of human beings, and wipe out all other races except as he needs slaves. Nietzsche died in an insane asylum in 1900, That the German “Kultur” shall not be seen only from Nietzsche’s own view or from that of an American, committed to the antagonistic worship of Democracy, we include a résumé of Kultur’s influence by a scholar from one of the “smaller nations.’ Senhor Henrique Lopes de Mendonga is a Portuguese statesman, Associate of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, and author of many scientific works. C.F. oe BY WILLIAM BAIRD ELKIN ERMAN philosophy of war, one might almost say Ger- man civilization, is based essentially on four ideas. These are in four books, two ancient, and two comparatively ZI22 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY modern. The first is Plato’s “Republic.” In Plato’s phi- losophy of the state, the state begins small, and the people are poor. It increases in wealth and in population. Then it ex- pands. Expansion leadsto war. For war an army is needed. If the army is to be successful, it must be well trained. Hence, the state is organized for the sake of the army; and the army is organized for the sake of the ruling class. This is an aristocracy. It is government by the few. But the few are the intelligent, the wealthy, and the efficient. Con- sequently, they are the best. And government by the best is thought to be the best government. The great representatives, in Germany, of this idea were Bismarck and Treitschke. Treitschke held that England was a decadent nation. She began to decline about 1832, with the enactment of the first reform bill, when Great Britain began to become truly democratic. She became more demo- cratic, and therefore more degenerate. Hence it was only a question of time when the British Empire would break up, and most of the fragments would pass to the country in best condition to acquire them. That country would be Ger- many, with her superior form of government. The process of British disintegration and German expansion might be facilitated by war. ‘We have already made our reckoning with Austria,” said Treitschke, “with France, and with Rus- sia; our last reckoning, that with England, will probably be the most tedious and the most difficult.” The second idea is in the Old Testament, the Hebrew conception of a chosen people, whose national mission was to take possession of the Promised Land, and then to in- crease and multiply until they should become like the stars of heaven, or the sand on the seashore in multitude. The great representative of this idea is the Kaiser, as when he said, “Remember that the German people are the chosen of God.” “It is, as it is written in the Bible, my duty to increase this heritage, for which one day I shall be called upon to give an account.” On January 18, 1896, the writer joined in the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the German Empire. That evening the Em- peror in his famous palace speech declared: “The GermanTHE KULTUR OF GERMANY 23 Empire has become a world-empire. Thousands of our coun- trymen live abroad in the most distant parts of the world. . . . It is your duty, gentlemen, to see that you help me to incorporate this Greater Germany permanently into the old Fatherland. . . . You will loyally and devotedly assist me to discharge my duty, not only to our countrymen at home but to those thousands of our countrymen who dwell afar, so that when they need my protection, I may have the power to extend it to them.” And, in a confidential memorandum, issued March, 1913, he said that their aim was “‘to fortify and to extend German power throughout the whole world.” If one inquires how this extension of power is to be ef- fected, one comes to the third idea. It is in Machiavelli’s “Prince,” as expounded by Frederick the Great. “No treaty,” said Treitschke, ‘‘and no alliance could ever make him [Frederick] renounce the right of free self-determina- tion,’ consequently, “all his life through he was exposed to the accusation of faithless cunning.’”’ German power is to be extended partly by alliances, when Germany would have the better of the alliance, and would observe the alliance only so long as it was thought to be advantageous; and partly by war, brought on at the opportune moment. The chief representatives of this idea are Bernhardi and the General Staff. “Let it be the task of our diplomacy,” wrote Bernhardi, “so to shuffle the cards that we may be at- tacked by France, for then there would be reasonable pros- pect that Russia for a time would remain neutral. . . . But we must not hope to bring about this attack by waiting pas- sively. “We must initiate an active policy which, without at- tacking France, will so prejudice her interests or those of England, that both these states would feel themselves com- pelled to attack us. Opportunities for such procedure are offered both in Africa and in Europe, and any one who has attentively studied prominent political utterances can easily satisfy himself on that point.” The fourth idea is in Comte’s positive philosophy, “the law of the three stages.” According to Comte, civilization passes through three stages: the theological, the metaphysi-24 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY cal, and the positive. The first stage is called the theological, because then people explained natural phenomena by means of personal agents, as when they thought that the sun was carried around the earth in the chariot of Apollo, and eclipses of the sun and moon were caused by gods or demons eating them up. After a time civilization advanced to the second stage. Then theology was relegated to a subordinate posi- tion, and people explained things by means of metaphysical principles, such as substances, essences, energies, etc. Finally, civilization advanced to the third stage. Then there is no more use for either theology, or metaphysics, since people ex- plain phenomena in terms of antecedent and consequent, in accordance with natural law. In the third stage, science usurps the place formerly held by theoiogy and metaphysics, and rules alone supreme. In the latter half of the last century the Germans almost universally adopted Comte’s idea. They said that theology and metaphysics were outgrown and outworn. Science alone was sufficient for the needs of modern civilization. And they applied science to agriculture, to industry, to commerce, to education, to war, to government, and to everything me- chanical. This application of utilitarian scientific principles to modern life, without due regard to other equally important factors of civilization—religious, ethical, esthetic—is the peculiar and striking characteristic of German “Kultur.” The Germans claim to be much farther advanced in this re- spect than any other people in the world. Hence they have a divine mission to civilize, to lead, and to rule all other peo- ples. Of course, they profess to act for the good of man- kind. Thus Ostwald, the noted chemist, says: “Germany, thanks to her genius for organization or social efficiency, has attained a stage of civilization far higher than that of all other peoples. . . . Among our enemies the Russians, in brief, are still in the period of the undisciplined tribe [theo- logical stage, perhaps], while the French and the English have only attained the degree of cultural development which we ourselves left behind fifty years ago [metaphysical stage, probably]. Do you ask me what it is that Germany wants? Well, Germany wants to organize Europe, for up to nowTHE KULTUR OF GERMANY 25 Europe has never been organized. The moment has come, I believe, for remodeling the map of Europe.” Summarizing what has been said: The Germans, accord- ing to their own view, have the best form of government ; they are an elect people with a divine mission, which they seek to carry out in a strictly scientific way, in accordance with natural law, and, consequently, the will of God. We come now to a discussion of the German ethics of war. Ethics may be defined as the science of right and wrong. Here two questions arise: (1) What is right? and (2) How do we know it? These constitute the two funda- mental problems in ethical theory: the highest good, and conscience. The next question is, What is the highest good? Two general answers are given. Some people say the highest good is happiness. Others say, not happiness, but perfection, or some form of development. If we say the highest good is happiness, then another question arises: Whose happiness? mine, or others? the happiness of the individual, or the happiness of all people? If we say that the happiness of the individual is the highest good, the ethical theory is called Egoistic Hedonism. If we say the happiness of mankind, the theory is called Altruistic Hedonism, or Utilitarianism. If we say the highest good is perfection, a similar question arises as before, Whose perfection? the perfection of the in- dividual, or the perfection of all people? If we say the per- fection of the individual is the highest good, the theory is that of self-realization. If we say the perfection of mankind, the theory is that of social welfare, closely akin to social service. Our next inquiry is, What is the German highest good? For the common people the highest good is the Fatherland, a modification of the fourth ideal. But the common people are not Germany. The common people exist for the sake of the Fatherland. “In the German view,” said Miinster- berg, “the state is not for the individuals, but the individuals for the state.” And the Fatherland exists for the sake of the ruling class. The ruling class of Germany molds and makes both the Fatherland and the common people. The= 26 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY ruling class is the real Germany. And the highest good of the ruling class is self-realization. If space permitted, it might be interesting to trace the de- velopment of the German highest good from the time of Luther, through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then through the Romantic movement in the eighteenth cen- tury, and the Prussian school system in the nineteenth cen- tury, until the rise of Nietzscheism in recent times. Nietzsche did not make the theory, he found it. And it is his distinctive merit, or demerit, that he took up this theory of the highest good and developed it to its ultimate logical con- clusion, in his doctrine of the superman. Nietzsche’s greatest book is his “Zarathustra.” Of it he said: “I have given to mankind the profoundest book it possesses, my ‘Zarathustra.’ This profoundest book in the world, according to the author, proclaims that God is dead! But if God is dead, what are men to do? How get along without God? All that is necessary is for men to be- come gods themselves, and thus take God’s place; or if they cannot do that, then they ought to do the next best thing, viz., become supermen. To become a superman means to be, to do, to get, and to hold, all raised to the mth power. But every one cannot become a superman. Hence there are two classes of people: supermen, and back-worldsmen; or, briefly, masters and slaves. Accordingly, there are two systems of morality: the morality of the masters and the morality of the slaves. But as it is better to be a master than a slave, the master morality is the good morality, the slave morality is the bad morality. The slave morality is essentially the same as Christian mo- rality. It is fit only for ‘“‘shopkeepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen, and other democrats.” Nietzsche thinks it is impossible to say anything too severe against Christianity. It is the greatest evil that ever appeared in the world, because it tends to prevent the realization of the high- est good, and the development of the superman. In the “Antichrist” he says: “The Christian concept of God—God as God of the sick, God as cobweb-spinner, God as spirit—THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 27 is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever arrived at on earth.” “Every expression in the mouth of a ‘first Christian’ is a lie, every action he does is an instinctive falsehood—all his values, all his aims are injurious, but he whom he hates, that which he hates, has value. . . . Have I yet to say that in the whole New Testament, only a single figure appears which one is obliged to honor—Pilate, the Roman governor? To take a Jewish affair seriously,—he will not be persuaded to do so. A Jew more or less—what does that matter?” Finally: “With this I am at the conclusion and pro- nounce my sentence. I condemn Christianity. I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all accusa- tions that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions. . . . The Christian church has left nothing untouched with its de- pravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight- forwardness. Let aman still dare to speak to me of its ‘hu- manitarian’ blessings! . . . The ‘equality of souls before God,’ this falsehood, . . . this explosive material of a con- cept which has finally become revolution,—is Christian dyna- mite. . . . This eternal accusation of Christianity I shal} write on all walls, wherever there are walls, . . .—I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic de- pravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no ex- pedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, mean, —I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. . . .” Contrasted with Christian or slave morality is the moral- ity of the superman, the morality of the masters. Thus Zarathustra spake unto the people: “I teach you the higher man. Man is something that must be overcome. What have ye done to surmount him? “All beings hitherto created something greater than them- selves; and would ye be the ebb of this great flood, and rather go back to the beast than surmount the human? “What is the ape for men? A laughing-stock or a pain- ful disgrace. The same shall man be for the higher man—a28 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY laughing-stock or a painful disgrace. . . . See, [ teach you the higher man.”’ “Ve have heard it said of old, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; but I say unto you, blessed are the valiant, for they shall make the earth their throne; and ye have heard men say, blessed are the poor in spirit; but I say to you, blessed are the mighty and free in spirit, for they shall enter Valhalla. And ye have heard men say, blessed are the peacemakers, but I say unto you, blessed are they who make war, for they shall be called not the children of Jahve, but the children of Odin, which is greater than Jahve.” From the German theory of the highest good a few prac- tical conclusions follow: First, justification of war. Nietzsche did not invent this doctrine. He found it already prominent in German thought, and emphasized it. Frederick the Great said, “War opens the most fruitful field of all virtues.” Hegel: “Just as the movement of the ocean prevents the corruption which would result from perpetual calm, so by war people escape the corruption which would be occasioned by a continuous peace.” Moltke: “Perpetual peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream. But war is a link in the divine system of the universe.” Treitschke: ‘War is a biological necessity of the first importance,” and “efforts directed toward the abolition of war are not only foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must be stigmatized as unworthy of the human race.” Nietzsche: “Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace better than the long.” And “I do not advise you to work, but to fight. I do not advise you to conclude peace, but to conquer. Let your work be a fight, your peace a victory! . . . Ye say, a good cause will hallow even war? I say unto you: a good war halloweth every cause.” And again, “Oh, blessed remote time, when a peo- ple said unto itself: ‘I will be—saster over peoples! .. . For, my brethren, what is best, shall rule; what is best, will rule! And where the teaching soundeth different, the best is—lacking.”THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 29 A second conclusion is the justification of Germany’s claim to a place in the sun, the acquisition of more colonies and the extension of commerce. In 1912 Delbrtick, Treitsch- ke’s successor in the chair of history in Berlin Univer- sity, dealt with this subject in his own periodical, the Preus- sische Jahrbiicher. He thought the time had come to remodel the map of Africa, so that Germany might have a colonial empire in that continent. Not that Germany had colonists to send there. Germany was not an emigrant country, but an immigrant country. She employed annually upwards of one million foreign workmen. But the situation was this: Suit- able positions were not available at home for the many young men of birth and wealth highly educated by the German school system. In other words, there were so many high offi- cers in the army and navy, so many high officials in the gov- ernment, and so many nobles and wealthy men throughout the country, that suitable positions for their sons could not be obtained in the Fatherland. Hence Germany needed a colonial empire which these young men could organize and develop. Germany, in short, needed colonies where her am- bitious youths might have an opportunity to exploit the na- tive inhabitants, and thus to become supermen. How officials in the German colonies succeeded in carry- ing out this policy of exploitation a writer in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1915, informs us. In German Southwest Africa the native population decreased from nearly 1,000,- 000 to less than 100,000 during the thirty years in which the Germans administered the affairs of the colony, and in 1913 the Colonial Secretary admitted that 105,000 natives in To- goland had been killed, during the preceding ten years, by German expeditions sent against them. The Germans could not make their colonies pay. And in order to make them pay, they wanted the natives to work almost without pay, hence insurrection and war. This policy of annihilation had the approval, not only of Germans at home, but of some Ger- mans abroad. A writer in a German-American paper ex- pressed himself as follows: ‘“‘When we have humbled our enemies and confiscated their lands, let but any one of the former natives of the soil, be he English, French, Italian,30 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY American, or a man of any other lower race, lift up his voice louder than a sigh, and we will dash him to pieces against the earth. “And after we have demolished their worm-eaten cathe- drals and the rest of their hideous structures, together with the temples of India and the other countries of heathendom, we will build much bigger cathedrals and more splendid tem- ples in which to honor our noble Kaiser and the great deeds of his people, who are the destroyers of the decadent races of the world. “Oh! how we thank God for having chosen our great and incomparable Kaiser and his people to accomplish this mighty mission, for has Darwin not said (and no doubt he borrowed this idea from some of our great German profes- sors) that only the fittest shall survive? And are the Ger- mans not the fittest in all things? Therefore let all us Ger- mans say: Perish the carrion! Only the Germans are noble men.”’ Another conclusion from the German theory of the high- est good is Pan-Germanism, that is, the world for Germany. For if the native races of the colonies were exterminated what would the administrators do? As supermen they could not live on one another. Then they would need other countries to govern, and other peoples to consume. The following are a few of the many statements that might be cited from German Molochs in support of their cherished Juggernaut: Major General von Roehl: ‘Only one people has the right to play a leading rdle in the political world, and that people is the German people.” The Kaiser: ‘The ocean reminds us . . . that on it and beyond it no great decision may henceforth be made with- out Germany and the German Emperor.” V ossische Zeitung: “As we are the supreme people, our duty, henceforth, is to lead the march of humanity CONIA A so It would be a sin against our mission to spare the people who are inferior to us.” Rommel: ‘The time is at hand when the five poor sons of the German family, allured by the resources and the fer-THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 31 tility of France, will easily make an end of the solitary son of the French family. The land between the Vosges and the Pyrenees was not made by the Almighty just in order that 38,000,000 Frenchmen should vegetate there without grow- ing, when 100,000,000 Germans could live and flourish there as well, according to the divine law.” Treitschke: ‘Then when the German flag flies over and protects this vast empire, to whom will belong the scepter of the universe? What nation will impose its wishes on the other enfeebled and decadent peoples? Will it not be Ger- many that will have the mission to ensure the peace of the world?” Evangelical League: “The King at the head of Prus- sia, Prussia at the head of Germany, Germany at the head of the world.” Still another conclusion which follows from the Ger- man theory of the highest good may be mentioned, viz., the German language ought to become the language of the world. The argument on this subject is clear and brief: All other European languages are based on the roots of dead lan- guages. The roots of dead languages are dead. Therefore, all languages based on these roots are decadent. Q.E.D. The position of English is peculiarly unfortunate, for English is based on the roots of two dead languages, Greek and Latin; therefore it is doubly decadent. On the other hand, the German language came straight from God, and is thus, in every respect, preéminently fitted to be divinely in- strumental in spreading the culture of mankind. Says a prominent writer in the Deutsche Tageszeitung: “It isa crying necessity that German should replace English as the world language. Should the English language be victori- ous and become the world language the culture of mankind will stand before a closed door, and the deata knell will sound for civilization. Here we have the reason why it is necessary for the German, and with him the German lan- guage, to conquer. And the victory once won, be it now or be it one hundred years hence, there remains a task for the German, than which none is more important, that of forcing the German tongue on the world. On all men, on men of aie eh32 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY all colors and nationalities, the German language acts as a blessing which, coming direct from the hand of God [or from his mouth?], sinks into the heart like a precious balm and ennobles it. English, the bastard tongue of the canting island pirates, must be swept from the place it has usurped, and forced back into the remotest corners of Britain, until it has returned to its original elements of an insignificant pirate dialect.” We come next to the treatment of conscience or the moral faculty. Conscience was formerly defined as the voice of God in the soul of man. That definition may have done very well in the theological stage of civilization, but it is not satisfactory in the scientific. Conscience must now be explained in terms of antecedent and consequent like any other natural phenomenon. The usual account of the moral faculty, in the first three stages of its development, is some- what as follows: At first the child has no conscience, just as it has no lan- guage. But it has the capacity of acquiring both. As it grows it gradually acquires a conscience and a language, and it acquires the one in much the same manner as the other. Brought up in one country, it acquires one language; brought up in another country, it acquires another language. Simi- larly, the child brought up in one country develops one kind of conscience; brought up in a different country, it develops a different kind of conscience. The first form of conscience which the child acquires may be called the conscience of the home, and is derived largely from its mother. This is conscience on the first level, to speak in the language of psychology. But the child goes to school, to church and Sunday School, meets and plays and works with other children and with other people. Thus its conscience grows, as its lan- guage grows. And after a time the youth acquires the con~ science of the community. This is conscience on the second level. It is the conscience of custom. Whatever is in ac- cordance with custom is right, and whatever is contrary to sustom is wrong. This conscience can scarcely be regarded as an individual faculty; rather it is social faculty, a collec-THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 33 tive faculty; the common conscience of the people. And this is as far as the development of conscience often goes. For some persons, however, there is a third stage in the development of conscience. This is the result of a process called individualization. People who are accustomed to do their own thinking, or who read some of the masterpieces of literature, or who study science, philosophy, ethics, or re- ligion gradually advance from the second level to the third level, from the collective conscience to the individual con- science. Then they may criticize the customs of the com- munity, which they formerly accepted without question. Some customs they approve, others they disapprove. Some modes of conduct they commend, others they would change or abolish. They have acquired a higher conscience than that of custom. This is properly an individual con- science, in contrast with the collective. It has been acquired through contact with the thought of other minds, and ex- ists in the higher ideals of one’s community, of one’s coun- try, or of the race. It should be observed further, that in this process of in- dividualization there are two paths or directions, either of which conscience may take: the upward path, and the down- ward path. A person may acquire a higher conscience than that of custom, or a lower one. Not only may a person ac- quire a perverted conscience, or a seared conscience, but may lose the conscience one formerly had, and proclaim com- plete emancipation from all moral restraints whatever. This experience may be illustrated in the sphere of knowledge. A thinker examines many different theories,—scientific, philo- sophical, or religious,—and as a result of his examination he may arrive at the correct view. He has then a higher idea of truth than before. He is in a position to criticize other theories, and say this one is true, or that one is false, as the case may be. But he may also arrive at a degree of bewilderment, or dissatisfaction, such that he may say this theory is false, and that theory is false—they all are false; truth is not to be discovered anywhere; there is no such thing as truth. The case is precisely similar in the sphere of ethics, during the process of individualization. Some W., VOL. I.—8.34 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY persons rise to a higher level of conscience, others sink to a lower. Of the two paths in the moral life, one leads up the front stairs to the treasure-house of virtue; the other leads down the back stairs to the charnel house of vice. There is a fourth stage in the development of conscience, that which implies the existence of a transcendental factor; but it does not call for treatment here, as very few Ger- mans now advance to this stage. Naturally the next question is, To what stage of develop- ment does the German conscience attain? The conscience of the common people is on the second level. —The common peo- ple have a collective conscience, that of custom. The ruling classes, on the other hand, have advanced to the third level. But in the process of individualization most members of the ruling classes seem to have gone on the downward path, in- stead of on the upward, and have acquired a perverted con- science, or a seared conscience, or have lost their conscience altogether. This seems to be particularly true of the officers of the army and navy, of the members of the diplomatic corps, and of government officials generally. Thus much as to the theoretical treatment of the German conscience. It only remains now to show how the peculiar brand of conscience, universally known as “Teutonic,” has been developed in the German people through the influence of their chief institutions as directed and controlled by the Kaiser and his government. Many years ago when the writer was in Germany, he was interested in education, and visited Jena University, then the Mecca of American educators. In conversation with an American fellow-student one day, I asked him what he thought of the German schools. He replied: “Not very much. They scarcely teach) anything but God and the Kaiser.” He ought to have said “the Kaiser and God,” for that is the way in which instruction in a German elementary school impresses an American. One fine morning a normal school man from West Virginia proposed to me that we take a day off and visit a village school. And we did. We went out some twenty miles on the train, reached our destined village, and obtained admittance to the school. German vil-THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 35 lage schools are much alike. I had already visited several, but my friend saw this world-renowned phenomenon then for the first time. In this school there were some seventy or eighty pupils. There were two teachers, an old man and a young man, but only one schoolroom. In the afternoon the old man took charge, with all the children in one class. He taught a great lesson in history, on the German Kaisers. Long, lank, and earnest he stood before the class, and delivered his message with animation and with power. In all serious- ness and with glowing fervor, he told the pupils what grand and glorious deeds the wonderful and incomparable Kaisers had done for the German people and their beloved Father- land. God did not have even second place; the Kaisers were the whole thing. The schoolroom was decorated with many pictures of the Emperor and other Hohenzollerns, as indeed are the walls of all German schools. The teacher may have taught many other subjects that afternoon. I remember only the history lesson. It is as vivid now, after a lapse of twenty years, as is any experience of yesterday. And I believe the impression made on the children was no less strong than that on me. In this manner the German school develops what may well be called a “Kaiser” conscience. Dr. Busch, in his secret “Life of Bismarck,” has told us how the German government controls and directs the press. Busch was Bismarck’s right-hand man in this field for three years. And Bismarck kept him busy, Sunday and Monday, sometimes day and night, sending at any hour a messenger to call him, if a press communication demanded dispatch. “I sometimes saw him,” says Busch, “as often as five or even eight times in one day.” At their first interview Bismarck said: “I intend to get you to write notes and articles for the papers from such particulars and instructions as I may give you. You will also arrange for others doing so.” “At these interviews,” wrote Busch, “I had to take good care to keep my ears well open, and to note everything with the closest attention. Through practice, I gradually suc- ceeded in retaining long sentences and even whole speeches, practically without omissions, until I had an opportunity of36 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY committing them to paper.” Busch gives a list of newspapers to which “articles thus prepared were supplied,” and men- tioned several writers to whom he himself gave “instructions and material for publication,” among them “Herr Heide, who had previously been a missionary in Australia and was at that time working for the ‘North German Correspond- ence,’ which had been founded with a view to influencing the English press.” As an illustration of the character of Bismarck’s instruc- tions we may take a brief item of March 11, 1870: “Atten- tion is to be directed, at first in a paper which has no con- nection with the Government, to the prolonged sojourn of Archduke Albrecht in Paris as a suspicious symptom. In connection with it rumors have been circulated in London of an understanding between France and Austria. Our papers will afterwards reproduce these hints.” In this way Bismarck and Busch helped to develop in the German people a “Kaiser” conscience. And their policy still continues. On July 27, 1914, Austria was “wild with joy at the prospect of war with Serbia.” A few days later Ger. many was wild with joy at the prospect of war with Russia. The German press had made thorough and effective prepara- tion for the Great War, as later it made thorough and effec~ tive preparation for the destruction of merchant ships by submarines. The result for the government in both cases was similar. To the editor of the New York Natton Darmstaedter of Gottingen University wrote: “TI find the sinking of the Lusitania was just, necessary, and useful, and I may add that the whole German nation has the same opinion.” The Church also helped to develop a “Kaiser” conscience. Every clergyman when taking his oath of office swore: “I will be submissive, faithful, and obedient to his Royal Maj- esty. .. . In particular, I vow that I will not support any society or association, . . . which might endanger the public security. I will inform his Majesty of any proposals made, either in my diocese, or elsewhere, which might prove injuri- ous to the state. I will preach the word as his Gracious Majesty dictates.”THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 37 It is not surprising that an observant publicist like Rohr- bach bewailed the slight influence of religion on the German conscience. Writing a few years before the war he acknowl- edged that the problem of religion was one of the most diffi- cult that the German people had to face. “Are the churches,” he asked, “capable of dealing with the demoralization of our national conscience owing to the idolatry of class distinc- tions, by awakening a strong Christian religious conscious- ness?’ He admitted that the outlook was not encouraging, because the Lutheran church, as he asserted, “appears from the first to be the church of princes and classes, and has remained so faithful to itself that the principle of worldly authority and class superiority has been better developed within its walls than anywhere else.” The theater, similarly, is an important factor in molding the German conscience. “When I succeeded to the throne,” said the Kaiser, “I was convinced and had firmly determined that the Royal Theater, like the schools and the universities, must be an instrument of the monarch. . . . The theater 1s also one of my weapons.” The university is one of the most effective weapons of the Kaiser in the development of the German conscience. The University is a state institution. The government con- trols and may prescribe the subjects of instruction. The present Emperor, soon after his accession, ordered the Min- ister of Education “to discourage as far as possible the study of the French Revolution in German schools and universi- ties.’ Later he changed his mind and recommended it, with the direction that “we should learn from it to know the powers of darkness and of destruction and attach ourselves by so much the more closely to monarchy and authority.” The government appoints the professors, promotes those who please it, and dismisses or disciplines those who do not. Dr. Arons, a teacher of physics in the University of Berlin, was dismissed, not because of his teaching, but because he was a Social Democrat. Hueffer relates “the case of the brothers X,”—a burgomaster, a professor, and an assistant professor. The burgomaster wrote for a Liberal paper an article which displeased the government. He was tried in38 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY camera for this offense and deprived of his office. Then the Minister of Education presented to the other two brothers for signature a paper disavowing the liberal opinions of the burgomaster. They refused to sign. The assistant profes- sor was not only dismissed, but the Prussian government en- deavored to prevent his appointment at any other university in Germany. And the professor was boycotted in the fol- lowing manner: He was deprived of his seat in the univer- sity senate; he was prohibited from examining students ; the students were warned that if they attended his lectures their subsequent careers would be prejudiced ; and another profes- sor was appointed to offer his courses. And yet, so peculiar is the German mental constitution, that soon after the out- break of the present war one of these professors wrote Hueffer making a spirited defense of Germany, “as the true land of culture and of democratic progress.” Of course it will be asserted that all the factors named thus far are not sufficient to explain the real character of the (erman conscience, as it has been revealed in this world war. They explain it in part. But they do not explain the fiendish cruelty of German soldiers as manifested in the most horri- ble atrocities committed on a stupendous scale. And they do not explain the general acquiescence of the German people in the wholesale massacres of noncombatants, and in the in- credibly inhuman methods of warfare carried on in Belgium, in Poland, in Armenia, and on the high seas. Two additional considerations, however, will serve to indicate how the Ger- man conscience has been molded along these lines. First, as to the soldiers. Most Americans have no idea of the methods of training and discipline which prevail in the German army.’ If American officers treated their men as German officers treat theirs, the American army would soon be without officers. German soldiers are brutalized in a man- ner wholly unknown to soldiers serving under a democratic régime. They tend to lose all the little element of conscience that they ever had, except obedience to their officers. And their officers, as already stated, usually have little or no con- science or else a perverted one. When passing from the sec- * See the later article on German Militarism,THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 39 ond level of conscience to the third, they go down the back stairs instead of up the front. Enough, perhaps, has now been said to indicate how the German army became an immense breeding-place for un- natural, as well as natural, vices. Hence the abominable and diabolical acts of barbarity and bestiality, countless and in- excusable, committed in France and Belgium, by privates and officers alike, against innocent and defenseless women and children, acts that are now heralded throughout the world, and the record of which will ever remain to the everlasting shame of the German aristocracy and of the German army. As Morgan says, to the end of time they will be remembered, “and from one generation to another, on the plains of Flan- ders, in the valleys of the Vosges, and on the rolling fields of the Marne, oral tradition will perpetuate this story of infamy and wrong.” Secondly, the people. It is necessary to bear in mind that at the beginning of the war, and during the first few weeks of the conflict, the German people passed through an experi- ence such as no people ever passed through before, on such an extensive scale. Their press, their preachers, teachers,and leaders made them believe that they were attacked by their enemies, who wished to destroy them. The common people were made to believe that they would easily and quickly vanquish all their enemies, and, further, they were led to be- lieve that the war would result in great material and spiritual advantages to themselves. The events of the first month seemed to confirm all their expectations. They read of noth- ing but victories, day after day, on all the battle fronts. In a few weeks they would be in Paris, in a few months in London, and then the whole world would lie at their feet. For the first time in their history the entire population be- came supermen. Nietzsche’s doctrine reached its culmina- tion. The following quotation from the press campaign of that time may serve to portray the national feeling: “There are two kinds of races, master races and inferior races. Political rights belong to the master race alone, and can only be won by war. This is a scientific law, a law of biology. It is unjust that a rapidly-increasing master race~ - eRe ee SR ee 4 40 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY should be struggling for room behind its own frontier, while a declining, inferior race can stretch its limbs at ease on the other side of that frontier. The inferior race will not be educated in the schools of the master race, nor will any school be established for it, nor will its language be employed in public. Should it rebel, it is necessary to use the most violent means to crush such insurrection, and not to encumber the prisons afterwards. Thus the conquerors can best work for the annihilation of the conquered, and break forever with the prejudice which would claim for a beaten race any right to maintain its nationality or its native tongue.” We come now to an examination of the few fundamental principles of German philosophy of war. Plato’s principle of aristocracy, government by the best is the best government, is a sophism. The practical justifi- cation of democracy, in a few propositions,—as there is not space for discussion,—is as follows: In general, people attend to their own business better than other people would attend to it for them. In general, people govern themselves better than another people would govern them. All the people are more likely to govern themselves better than any one party, class, or sect would govern them, for this reason: Government is an exceedingly difficult and com- plicated matter, and mistakes are continually occurring. But when all the people have a voice in the government, if a mis- take is made, those on whom the evil of the mistake falls are in a position to help correct the mistake, and thus remove the evil; and they havea tendency so todo. That is, in a democ- racy the corrective force lies within the government. Hence the natural tendency of democracy is progress and improve- ment. In an aristocracy, on the other hand, when a mistake is made the resulting evil usually falls on those without the gov- ernment. And these persons have little or no power to re- move the evil by correcting the mistake. Hence the natural tendency of an aristocracy, no matter how good the govern- ment was originally, is to grow gradually worse. After education becomes universal, aristocracy is an anachronism.THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 4I The Hebrew idea of a single chosen people is one-sided. Later writers in the Old Testament arrived at a truer and juster conception. Thus Isaiah and Jeremiah regarded God as the God of all peoples, of the Egyptians and Babylonians as well as of the Hebrews. Of course it is eminently becom- ing for every one to think that one’s own country is the best, just as it is meet and right for every man who is mar- ried to think that his wife is the best woman in the world. But such thought seems to be a process of the idealizing imagination, rather than a judgment of the understanding. Machiavelli was a keen observer, and a versatile writer; but he was not a profound thinker. He failed to perceive that the moral order lies at the basis, as the very essence of human affairs. As Morley said, in his Romanes lecture: “The modern conception of a state has long made it a moral person, capable of right and wrong, just as are the individuals composing it.” Comte’s law of the three stages is a superficial generaliza- tion, and is consequently inaccurate. He did not distinguish between the terms “theology” and “mythology.” If he had said that civilization passes through two stages, the mytho- logical and the scientific, he would have been correct; or he might have said that it passes through three stages, the mythological, the transitional, and the scientific. For this is the order in which civilization always has advanced. As theology and metaphysics arose out of mythology, likewise did ancient science. Mythology was the great mother sci- ence. And as the special sciences gradually freed themselves from mythology and became more strictly scientific, so did theology and metaphysics also. Hence, instead of Comte’s statement being true, that theology and metaphysics have be- come outgrown and useless, precisely the contrary is the case. With the methodical and logical advance of the special sci- ences, theology and metaphysics have advanced in like man- ner. Theology, metaphysics, and science have all advanced in concert, or in close relation to one another, sometimes one, sometimes another being in the lead. And there is not any rational ground for inferring that the course of civilization, in this respect, will be different in the future from that inSar renner erent -— no 42 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY the past. As long as human nature endures, theology, meta- physics, and science will stand or fall together. Regarding lonely and unhappy Nietzsche two brief re- marks must here suffice: (1) Nietzsche was a specialist. He may have been a great scholar in philology,—though even in this field his unfortunate prejudices sometimes lured him aside from the straight and narrow path of scientific pro- cedure. But he wrote on anthropology, psychology, sociol- ogy, philosophy, ethics, and religion, subjects about which he knew comparatively little. Hence his religious and philo- sophical opinions are largely of the nature of personal guesses, not logical or valid conclusions. Frau Wagner’s criticism on “Human, All-too Human” applies to many of his books; superficial in matter and pretentious in manner. And although the pretentiousness increased until he boasted that he had attained to ‘‘an elevation” where he spoke “no longer with words, but with flashes of lightning,” the superficiality alas! remained. (2) The last eleven years of his life Nietzsche was hopelessly insane; and for the ten years pre- ceding this period he was a confirmed invalid, suffering part of the time, if not all, from a lesion of the brain. Conse- quently his writings, particularly the later ones, are not to be taken as the expression of a normal or rational mind. They are of practically no value, except from the subjective point of view. They are of interest to the psychologist, or to the pathologist as they serve to throw light on the gradual prog- ress of nervous disease in this remarkable, but erratic and unbalanced man. For nearly a generation Germany has been intoxicated with Kaiserism and Nietzscheism. Recently the Deutsche Zeitung proclaimed: ‘Down with the world-conscience! Away with the spirit of world-brotherhood! Let the Ger- man spirit of power alone be our commander and leader! Its cry is more power! More German power! That is the legacy bequeathed to us by our dead heroes, and written in the flame-red letters of their blood. May those who trifle with this legacy be struck by the curse which will rise from their graves to God’s heaven! He whose ‘world-conscience’ or sense of ‘responsibility toward humanity’ causes him toTHE KULTUR OF GERMANY 43 say or write anything less than that which the power of the German sword commands is, and always will be, a feeble political dreamer, a gloomy wanderer in the clouds.” The social tissue of the German nation has become diseased. The public mind is delirious. National responsibility is paralyzed. A surgical operation is required. After the diseased por- tions of the body politic shall have been removed, the nation will doubtless return to its right mind, and recognize that world-empire, at the present stage of political evolution, is but an atavistic phantom of a deranged imagination. BY HENRIQUE LOPES DE MENDONCA The great majority of crushed, impoverished, bereaved mortals, cast into grief and misery by the most tremendous war that history has ever witnessed, these are the men who interest me, who interest usall. It is their voice which speaks through the lips of the great statesmen of the belligerents, proclaiming their desire for peace, but an honorable peace, a lasting peace, a peace which shall free future generations from the anguish and tortures assigned by destiny to ours. This brings me to the point of my thought; but let us turn back a little. For sacred discourses I find myself lack- ing in the one essential thing, and perhaps the greater por- tion of my audience may be in like case—we have not the gift of faith! For want of it, the heart of many of us has for long been desolate and shrouded in gloom. This I deplore for my hearers as I do for myself. To live in a dream is still the most blissful, perhaps the only really happy form of existence on earth. And the dream of the supernatural is the supreme hope, for without hope the soul of man sinks into darkness. This it was which inspired Dante to record, over the gateway to his Inferno, the fateful legend: Las- ciate ogni speranza, 6 voi che entrate.” And indeed, with an eternity of despair, no other tor- ment was required to make a hell of Hell. But let us desist from vain regrets. It is possible that the philosophic mission of Christianity may be on the point of vanishing from the world. Sincerely I hope not. But its * All hope abandon, ye who enter here,44 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY social mission still survives, despite revolutions and cata- clysms, as the source of all morality among the civilized na- tions of Europe and America. Be we devout, skeptical, or atheistic, we still remain saturated with its doctrine, and thus fail to conceive, outside the domain of savagery, any society which does not revere its precepts. The ideals of justice on which all democratic legislation is based spring from the blood so unjustly shed on Calvary. The ideals of love, which kindle our hearts, take their rise from the sacred lips which proclaimed: “Love one another.” ‘The ideals of equality and fraternity, never yet attained, were from the same sublime source. Yet it is remarkable that those very revolutionaries who are the fiercest in their zeal for stripping Christ of His divine attributes should inscribe on their ban- ner of social regeneration, in the name of Humanity, the identical words which epitomize the doctrine preached in the name of God. Hence my conclusion is this: be our sentiments as re- gards religion what they may; be we believers or skeptics, mystics or atheists, in the depths of our souls we are all Chris- tians—Christians from the moral standpoint, Christians in our mutual relations with the Godhead. Twenty centuries of Christianity have accumulated in our consciences a store of ethical sentiments which no storm will ever sweep out, unless we are prepared to revert to primitive savagery. Con- ceptions of honor, of duty, of respect for the rights of others, of charity towards the unfortunate, of pity for the oppressed, of horror for unjust violence, of hatred for tyranny, of ex- ecration for perfidy and crime: all these have become en- grafted into our very being as essential principles, incon- testable and indispensable to our social life. Without them we should lapse into the cavern-life of troglodytes, seizing with tooth and claw, with the knife and other weapons of death, the bread we require to keep us from starvation. True, the good seed of the Gospel has not yet expelled evil from the world. But in the human animal it has at least softened those instincts of rapine, the proximate or remoter source of all social conflagrations. War itself, the organic fatality of societies, from the time when Christ’s word pouredTHE KULTUR OF GERMANY 45 balm upon the soul of the warrior, has become less atrocious in its methods. In that long period of ten centuries known as the Middle Ages, when a northern barbarian came on the scene, flooding the lands of the sun in the hope of restraining the advance of the Greco-Roman civilization, a gleam of hope filtered into the dungeons of the captives, a ray of pity flashed against the swords of the invaders. Faith, honor, adherence to the plighted word, respect for innocent and de- fenseless life, protection for the unjustly persecuted : all these notions of justice and dignity, which Roman law had formu- lated and Christ’s apostles had acclaimed, found their way into a code tacitly accepted by all civilized peoples, even by those who, like the Mussulman, were themselves outside the pale of the Church. Such was the code of chivalry, which for centuries stood as the safeguard of millions of oppressed, the refuge of the weak, a shield against the tyranny of the strong, and a mitigation of the violence of armed savagery in war. By this I do not mean, and it would be senseless to affirm, that, times without number, brute force did not gain the mastery over law and reason; that might was not the supreme arbiter of unbridled ambition. But it is certain that brute force itself paid homage to justice by cloaking its misdeeds under moral pretexts more or less specious. It was in the name of Catholic faith that the Spanish conqueror slew the Indian, that his kings bathed Flanders in blood. It was un- der color of a resistance to despotism that Napoleon I. under- took by force of arms to forge his own despotism upon Europe. And in the various wars of succession, the ambi- tions which crossed swords always invoked the protection of divine right, universally acknowledged as the source of mon- archical power. What I mean to say is that greed or wickedness invari- ably clothed itself in the guise of some sacred ideal, and at least in modern times—never till now—has it dared to af- front the conscience of mankind by a cynical parade of its true intentions. Never till now, I have said; never till yesterday, I ought to have said. For it was but yesterday, in the full daylighta eee eens — = SS 46 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY of civilization, that a European nation struck the cultured world full in the face, proclaiming over all the globe the supremacy of might as the dogma of her moral culture. It was but yesterday, to the shame of civilization, that the most admirable conquests of modern science, carefully turned to account during forty years of painstaking preparation, were brought into play to crush the weak, to surprise the unsuspecting, to trample under the brutal weight of her armies the most generous aspirations of the human soul—all this, according to the impenitent confession of her warriors and philosophers, with the sole object of riveting upon the world at large the iron bondage of German rule. History repeats itself. Some fifteen centuries before, Attila, king of the Huns, devastated all Europe, proclaiming that never again would grass grow where the hoofs of his steed had trod. Just in the same spirit German arrogance boasted itself that never again, in the regions swept by Ger- man cannon, would popular liberty be reborn. Over the whole world of old, with Attila, dark night came on. But mark the fateful coincidence: it was on the banks of the Marne, in the Catalaunian plains, that the defeat of the Hun- nish hosts dispelled the fearsome gloom; and it was in the battle of the Marne that the first dawn of victory gleamed in our eyes. Let us be of good cheer: the same fate is in store for the modern Hun. The modern Hun has to go under, if we so will it. Let us strengthen our will, not only against the transitory vicissi- tudes of war, but—note this well—against the persistent in- sinuations of peace. Yes! For almost half a century these influences, slowly infiltrating, have threatened to pervert our thought and deprave our conscience, just as they have suc- ceeded in doing within the borders of Germany herself. For the present war is the explosion of deleterious forces which, sapping Germany, have brought her back to the first stage of normal civilization. In attempting to establish the Teu- tonic hegemony of the world, those forces have shaken the foundations upon which human society rests; they have con-THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 47 verted social life into a fierce struggle of individual egoisms in perpetual revolt against the preponderant egoism. The Germany of which I speak, please remember, is not the Germany which captured the admiration of thinkers, philosophers and artists. It is not the Germany which under the hand of Luther broke the fetters of religious intolerance, which illuminated human thought by the brilliant beacon of Kant, which through the sublime genius of Goethe shed its renovating rays over universal literature, which with Bee- thoven and Wagner brought fresh charm into the Divine Art. No! From the day when the most unprogressive of Ger- many’s races, that race which to-day stands for the truculent energies of barbarism, hurled over her the chariots of its steel colossus, that Germany, great and mighty, sank into ob- livion. The German nation (though blindly and uncon- sciously so) is to-day the victim of Prussian militarism. Aided by a tenaciously malevolent intelligence, the germs of that poison, spread ever since the eighteenth century at the instance of Frederick the Great, have been filtering into the organism of Germany, there to develop with intensity, above all since the war of 1871 placed the Imperial crown on the head of the King of Prussia. From that time onward the pest overflowed the frontiers and began to contaminate the whole world. To-day, and only to-day, has the conscious- ness of this infernal perversion of men’s minds begun to be perceived, up to now accepted as it has been by the snobbism of the world at large as if it were a salutary transformation. Yes! Many of our contemporaries, and among them some of the best informed, have been reading eagerly and assimilating with delight the Nietzschian doctrine that for those organisms endowed with an excess of energy, the so- called supermen, all mankind should make way. And this abominable doctrine, based on a sophistication of scientific principles, the negation of all morals and all justice, the con- secration of violence and rapine, has been received without protest, nay even with sympathy, by minds rooted in Chris- tianity, by social workers whose activities had for their mo- tive force the deepest respect for the dignity of man. But if the tares spread beyond the German borders, what48 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY wonder that they should have flourished within them, where an environment had been so assiduously prepared for their reception! The State, with singular astuteness, turned to its own ends, if it did not actively promote, the vagaries of genius sO as to mold the German mentality. Nietzsche’s monstrous theory was practically given a collective interpre- tation. The superman was expanded into the super-national- ity. The professor and the soldier effectively collaborated with the philosopher in the work of moral perversion. Into the Germanic conscience was infused the mystic conviction that the German people was that chosen by the Deity to shep- herd the human flock. The pride of moral and intellectual supremacy became ingrained in the soul of the people, in- spiring her claim to an indisputable dominion over all the races of the earth. She presented an amazing crisis of gen- eral megalomania, which the imminence of defeat has not yet cured. Of this fact there are abundant proofs, but want of time and the character of this discourse forbid my enlarging upon them. Suffice it to mention, as the latest instance of this form of arrogance, the expression used in 1916 by Professor von Stengel, of the University of Munich. “The whole war up to now,” his iron pen wrote, “has shown that Germany has been selected by Providence to guide all other nations. Let us march at the head of them, and we shall lead them to a permanent peace. For this mission we have the strength, and likewise the spiritual gifts, as we are the crown of all civilization. The whole world, and especially the neutral nations, have only one means of profitable existence, and that is to submit themselves to our direction, which is superior to all others from every point of view. No nation surpasses us in the widest and highest ideals and sentiments, and under our dominion none need concern himself as to the defense of his rights.” Be it specially noted: the words I have just recited were penned in cold blood, inside the walls of a German Uni- versity, by a man whose brain was saturated with science, at the very period when two years of war-pressure at the hands of the Allies had begun to make itself cruelly felt within theTHE KULTUR OF GERMANY 49 borders of Germany. Yet this document unmistakably mani- fests the ambition of universal dominion, its threats not even sparing the neutral Powers. It portrays in gloomy per- spective a future for humanity under the iron-shod jack-boot of the Teuton. Should not the universal conscience, that of the whole civilized world, be it inspired by Christ or Muhammad, by Buddha or by the goddess of Reason, combine in revolt against this formidable hypertrophy of national egoism? With all sincerity I confess it: in the midst of this tre- mendous conflagration, what most alarms one, the epidemic of war-madness in Germany synchronizing with a world- wide blindness elsewhere, is that Germany should have allies at all, and that a single neutral should continue to exist in the world. When, with an effrontery such as this, a whole people forsakes its rudimentary moral sense, boasting its own brute force as the sole sanction of its boundless pride, we feel we are confronted with a pack of ravening wolves. These it behooves us to hunt down with all our available en- ergies, unless we all, every man among us, mankind in the mass, are willing to be torn to pieces by their death-dealing fangs. To hunt them down, yes! To destroy them utterly, no! This would neither be practicable, nor humane, nor yet bene- ficial. Our vision is one of a reconstituted Germany, relieved of Prussian militarism, dedicated to her own prolific task of peace and science, unoppressed by the horrid nightmare of which her only record is a universal hatred. Freed from the illusive fumes of vainglory, her eyes fixed on the supreme ideal of liberty, her robust hands wielding the instruments of honest toil, her powerful brain applied to invention, a Ger- many such as we portray would be a potent lever of incal- culable value towards human progress. During long years of apparent prosperity, though the latent virus was mining her organism, she showed the world the greatness of her genius, the pertinacity of her toil, the excellence of her manu- factures. She contributed largely to the material comfort of mankind, rendering life easier and more joyous, and giv- ing the poor a share in that luxury which used to be the W.. VOL. I—4.50 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY monopoly of the rich. It may have been that to this end this unfortunate people was ignorantly sacrificing its old ideals of dignity, burning on the altars of despotism the last remnants of its democratic pride. But however great her services to us may have been, the price she demanded from us in return was out of all proportion. It was an ignoble serfdom, this transformation of free men into a gang of convicts, toiling on the endless task of filling their coffers. The first on- slaughts of hunger should have led them to see the senseless- ness of such an aspiration. What a pity that to this distracted people, the progenitor of heroes and geniuses, so cruel a disillusionment as this should alone have remained! But, should it open her eyes to her true position, she may be able later on to say, having re- gained full possession of her senses, that it was not she who was defeated, but the ancestral forces which overwhelmed her from within, the atavic eruption of barbarism bursting through the noble sentiments acquired by her as the work of many centuries of civilization. That formidable outburst over, she will have been released by the hands which, when fighting her, were purifying her from the malign ferment which has poisoned her culture—a culture of which she was so proud, yet one which only attains its true fecundity when the rays of the Latin sun are allowed free play upon it. For half a century the Germanic genius, shrouded in a mantle of pride, has sought to withdraw itself from those vivifying rays. The result is what we are now witnessing. Given up entirely to herself, Germany has by insensible transitions been sliding down the declivity into barbarism. Kept going by her undeniable internal energy, her products have been colossal, but monstrous; flourishing, but aberrant. A depraved philosophy: a brutalized art. In applied science alone, served by an admirably methodical mind, and on the utilitarian side of civilization alone, thanks to an astounding tenacity, has German genius during that period earned an in- disputable title to the gratitude of mankind. But it is equally certain that this very savagery of great- ness in her conceptions has blinded her. I have already re- ferred in passing to the fatal influence of German philosophy.THE KULTUR OF GERMANY 51 That influence has not restricted itself to the limited orbit of those thinkers who alone possess the brains capable of the laborious assimilation of such metaphysical dainties. LLam- entable though it may be, it would not be altogether an evil had they, sequestered in their own lazarettos, refrained from contaminating society at large. But around the thinkers there hover the restless, petulant multitude, the chattering, pervading army of snobs, and it is they who are the trans- mitters and the propagators of the virus. Filtered through this layer, those philosophical principles change their form, either crystallizing into dogmatic aphorisms or diffusing themselves in subtle emanations which spread throughout the whole body social. Often even the most beneficent of them, by excessive concentration, assume deleterious properties: what, then, of those which, as in the present instance, are by their nature dissolvent ? In this way the pernicious principle of the supremacy of force over right, elevated into a body of moral doctrine, the inspiring idea of the Nietzschian philosophy, has been worked to its full extent so as to arouse into mischievous activity the savage instincts slumbering in the minds of the many. Recourse to violence, intolerance of control, the re- bellion of the ruled, exacerbations of the egoistic passions, refusal to yield where interests conflict, all emerge as the fatal and ultimate consequences towards which we have long been ignorantly drifting. And indeed many minds at present hostile to Germanism have nevertheless become tainted by it. Everywhere idealistic tendencies are carped at, humane precepts ridiculed, disinterestedness scorned, the struggle for life accentuated. Our old romantic ideals are tied up into bundles and slightingly labeled “sentimentalism.” A curious thing! The Germanic spirit, prone to expan- siveness like all its earlier contemporaries, used to indulge from the first in the most exaggerated flights of romantic idealism. We have a familiar instance of the kind in the youthful creation of Goethe—Werther. Remember how he could find no other means of ridding his brain of a criminal passion than by shattering it with a pistol-shot. The vogue created by this romance became so extraordinary throughout52 THE KULTUR OF GERMANY Germany that imitators arose on all sides. An epidemic of passional suicide ran through the nation. Goethe had to hasten to check it, and succeeded in doing so by cauterizing the evil he himself had created, in his later work, “The Basis of Sentimentalism.” And now, a century and a half later, the torrent of Ger- man materialism and overweening self-adulation has not merely subverted the exaggerated sentimentalism of the ultra-romantic school, but has stripped off the foliage and withered the flower of romance which gave the human soul its only perfume. It has thus destroyed the only check upon the corrosive influence of egoistic passion, the only restraint upon savagery and crime. And this time there is not the slightest hope that the disseminators of the pestilence will repent and provide the remedy for the evil they have wrought. How dark a future would be reserved for mankind had chance not opposed a barrier to this devastating torrent, and, after it had been dammed back, had some germs of good, de- posited by the flood, not been left in the world. But, as the apothegm of the old Roman poet hath it: “Quem Jupiter vult perdere dementat prius.”*® It was thus that Germany, materially prosperous, aggrandized from the worldly standpoint, allowed herself to be deceived so far as to attempt a gigantic and decisive blow towards making good her own monstrous megalomania. The blow was pre- maturely delivered. The world had not yet been sufficiently sapped by the corruption previously spread abroad. It was still but a minority of thoughtless persons who, impelled by a craving for the new and the extravagant, by the deplorable obsession of political passion or of despicable interests, re- ceived and welcomed the advent of the movement. The others, the well-meaning, not entirely contaminated by the virus, had their eyes opened in time to the menace as revealed in the crushing of innocent populations, in the vandalistic destruction of revered monuments, in terror glorified as the true system of warfare, in unscrupulous rapine, in slaughter without pity, in ferocity without limits. Taken thus by sur- prise, the nations armed themselves to resist the barbarians. *Whom Jupiter would destroy, he first makes mad.THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY HUMANITY’S LONG STRUGGLE TOWARD EQUAL RIGHTS AND JUSTICE ROBERT N. McELROY THEODORE RUYSSEN In sharpest opposition to the German Kultur stands that other Culture which had at the same time been growing up in the world out- side of Germany, the culture which is founded on Democracy, on the faith that every other man has rights equal to our own, that we want to give him whatever is justly his, and to live in harmony with him, not in authority over him. This spirit has been developed chiefly, but by no means wholly, in America. Robert Nutt McElroy, whose words on Democracy’s ideal are here presented, was Professor of History and Politics at Princeton Uni- versity, and was chosen by the American Government during the War to direct, in all schools and colleges, through the National Security League, the educational work of teaching why the nation entered the war. Theodore Ruyssen is a noted French scholar and author, Pro- fessor of Philosophy at Bordeaux University, and long president of the leading patriotic Peace Society of France. From Ruyssen as the standard authority, we may learn the Euro- pean view upon Democracy and the equal rights of the smaller nations. The American review of the two hundred year long struggle toward Democracy is here presented by her own writers. To America the Great War was but a single phase in the centuries of effort; but to Europeans many of these ideas of equality, especially as applied to the “little peoples,’ uprose for the first time during the War. Americans have called this the War for Democracy; but many Europeans, even among the Allies, had at the beginning of hostilities still to learn much of what Democracy believes and represents. They have learned its lessons swiftly, and sometimes adopted them more valiantly than the earlier Democracies, Cc. F. H. BY ROBERT N. McELROY HEN you say “an American,’ what do you mean? Do you mean a person of English blood? The Amer- icans without English blood are vastly more numerous than those whose ancestors were English. “American” is a term which has no relation to blood. You may be of pure Ger- man blood and yet be a real American. You may be of 5354 THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY pure Irish blood and yet be a real American. You may be of Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, French, Belgian or Austrian blood and yet be as real an American as if your ancestors had come to this country on board the Mayflower, or had fought with Washington to create the Republic, or later, with Lincoln, to save it. There are more than twenty- six million people in the United States to-day who were born in other countries, or whose parents were foreign born. Each and every one of these is or may easily become a real American, if he has but the spirit of loyalty to the ideals which have made this nation out of many races. In most nations the race tie is the idea at the basis of political unity. In each of them, one race so far outnum- bers all other races that the national name implies a blood kinship of its citizens. But in our nation, in the United States, the tie is not of blood, but of belief in an ideal of liberty; therefore race does not count in determining whether or not one isan American. In that respect America is unique among great, independent nations. Our Republic was founded by people of many races, all intent upon one idea—political liberty. From many lands there came to these shores men and women who cher- ished the idea of political liberty above race or creed or financial interest. By their devotion they made here a na- tion with liberty and equality for all. That ideal furnishes the real test of Americanism. No man, woman or child who wishes special privileges is a real American. No man, woman or child who knowingly denies to another equal rights is a real American: for all Americans must “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain un- alienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Governments are created among men to make these rights secure. The best and noblest men and women of every race have always been ready to sacrifice private in- terests, and even life itself, to preserve them to the world. Resistance to these ideas is treason to the best that is in every race; the defense of them is the supreme duty of everyTHE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY 55 American, and our history is glorious just in so far as we have defended them. The American Revolution was not a fight between Eng- land and America. It was a war which resulted from an attempt of the arbitrary rulers of England, led by a king of German origin, to deny these rights and thus to destroy po- litical liberty in America, as they had already destroyed it in England, and as other arbitrary rulers had destroyed it upon the continent of Europe. America did not stand alone in her fight to preserve political liberty. To her aid came Englishmen and Frenchmen, Poles and Germans, Irish and Scotch, as well as natives of the Colonies. The Fathers of the American Revolution did not all live in America. Some of them never saw our shores. William Pitt, a Father of America, in his speeches in Parliament, used the bold words, “our armies in America,” when referring to the troops which were fighting against the king. Edmund Burke, a Father of America, eloquently pleaded in England the cause of America as the cause of human freedom. The gallant Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette, a Father of Amer- ica, was fighting for the interests of France and America when he carried out the orders of General Washington. Kosciusko, a Father of America, struck for Polish and American freedom when he fought in the American army; while the brave German, Baron von Steuben, a Father of America, unsheathed his sword in the cause of Germany and America when he taught our ragged troops at Valley Forge how to plan a campaign. The victory at Yorktown was not merely an American victory. It wasa world victory. It meant that free govern- ment, the hope of all nations, and kindred, and tongues, was to survive, not for America only, but for the good of all men, in all future ages, and in all countries. As soon as the American Revolution had saved free gov- ernment in America, other countries began to feel the effect. People with souls for freedom, in many lands, began to struggle with new courage for political liberty. France was the first to catch the infection. As the French soldiers, who had fought side by side with the Americans during “the days SENG56 THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY that tried men’s souls,” sailed back to sunny France and their Bourbon despots, they carried in their hearts the ring- ing phrase, “All men are created equal,” and soon the throne of the Bourbons was rocking under the blows for “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” A few years later the Marquis de Lafayette sent to Washington the key to the royal prison- house, the Bastille, which had been taken by the revolution- ists; and he labeled it “the spoil of despotism.” England, too, soon felt the effects of a forward move- ment which the success of the American Revolution revivi- fied. Parliament, under the leadership of William Pitt, the Younger, was soon made once more a really representa- tive assembly, a character which it had lost many years before the American Revolution began. The Reform Bill of 1832 restored free government to England, and this Re- form Bill had been made possible by the failure of George III. to crush free government in America. Thus representative government returned to England, and to-day Americans and English acknowledge the same sovereign. That sovereign is not the descendant of King George III., however, but the “Sovereign People.” And it is a glory to America and to Great Britain alike that wher- ever our flags have been unfurled, the love of that sovereign has since been the theme of political teaching. From free America, and free France, and free England the ideals of a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” spread slowly into many lands. It was this march of free government for the peaceful and benefi- cent conquest of the world for the good of the world, that the gallant French people had in mind when they erected in New York Harbor that wonderful statue of “Liberty En- lightening the World.” Until August, 1914, the spread of American ideals of freedom was steady and almost uninterrupted. The world saw one country after another adopt the ideas for which the heroes of many races had fought at Yorktown; and the friends of freedom began to hope and plan for a lasting world-peace, resting upon the idea of the right of self-gov- ernment.THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY 57 But the peaceful conquest of the world for free govern- ment was watched with jealous foreboding by the Prussian military autocracy, whose power had been built upon the theory that “might makes right.” From the beginning of her history Prussia has cherished the belief that government is something with which the masses of the people, the mer- chant, the farmer and the laborer, have no concern. Her ideals have always been ideals of government from above. “We Hohenzollerns,” said the Kaiser, in frank contempt for the idea of government “of the people, by the people and for the peopie’—“We Hohenzollerns take our crown from God alone. On me the spirit of God has descended. I regard my whole task as appointed by Heaven. Who opposes me I shall crush. Nothing must be settled in the world without the intervention of the German Emperor. He who listens to public opinion runs a danger of inflicting im- mense harm on the state.” In this statement William II. is merely summarizing the philosophy which Prussia has always followed. In the his- tory of Prussia we miss the stirring conflicts for the peo- ple’s rights, which lend a charm to American, English and French history. There are no Runnymede Barons in the history of Prussia, no Simon de Montforts, no Oliver Crom- wells, Pitts, Washingtons, Lafayettes or Lincolns. From the first, Prussia has been what she remained to 1918, a nation whose profession is war. Slowly, but with a ter- rible certainty, she imposed her ideals upon the rest of Ger- many, until Germany became merely an expanded Prussia, a military autocracy, thinking in terms of force, and dream- ing dreams of world-conquest. The philosophy of Prussianized Germany taught that the world must some day be brought, by force of arms, into subjection to the will of the iron masters of Germany. The philosophy of America and England and France, on the other hand, teaches that the rights of small nations are sacred and must not be disregarded. Contrast the words in which the Kaiser told why Germany was at war with the words in which President Wilson states the aims of America.58 THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY The Kaiser said, “The triumph of the greater Germany which some day must dominate all Europe is the single end for which we are fighting.” And, in a still more striking statement, he presents the dream of empire which has del- uged the world with blood: ‘From childhood I have been under the influence of five men,—Alexander, Julius Czsar, Theodoric II., Frederick II., and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream of world-empire (and) they failed. I am dreaming a dream of the German World Empire, and my mailed fist shall succeed.” President Wilson thus declared our aims: “These are the things we shall stand for: (1) “That all nations are equally interested in the peace of the world, and in the political stability of free peoples, and equally responsible for their maintenance. (2) “That the essential principle of peace is the actual equality of nations, in all matters of right and privilege. (3) “That peace cannot securely or justly rest upon an armed balance of power. (4) “That governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no other powers should be supported by the common thought, purpose, or power of the family of nations. (5) “That the seas should be equally free and safe for the use of all peoples . . . accessible to all upon equal terms. (6) “That national armaments should be limited to the necessities of national order and domestic safety.” What does this contrast mean to your mind? It should mean something very definite, if you are a real American. It should cause you again to say with pride, “America means freedom for the world.” BY THEODORE RUYSSEN In his speech delivered before the House of Commons on August 6, 1914, in justification of the participation of the British Empire in the European War, Mr. Asquith, the English prime minister, expressed himself to this effect: “We are fighting to vindicate the principle that the small na- tionalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of internationalTHE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY 59 good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmas- tering power.” On several occasions, members of the Brit- ish and the French cabinets have emphasized the same idea, that the small nations, even the weakest among them, have an equal right to existence with the greatest, and that it is in defense of this right, violated to the injury of Serbia and of Belgium, that the allies are risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of men. “The people are resolved to dispose of themselves in freedom,” proclaims M. Viviani. In terms yet more precise, Mr. Lloyd George thus defines the object of the war: “This,” he declares, “is a war of nationalities.”’ No utterance, I think, could better characterize the gigantic struggle deployed before our eyes throughout the entire Eu- ropean continent. It is not, or rather it is no longer, only Serbia and Bel- gium which are at stake in the fighting at Artois, in the Vosges, and along the Dvina, the Dniester and the Isonzo. By far the most striking feature of this war is the way in which it has raised, one after another, most of the “national” questions of Europe and even of the Orient, not only those which yesterday menaced the equilibrium of Europe, such as the Balkan problems, but even the most ancient of them, slumbering in the obscurity of the past, and in regard to which public opinion has retained only an academic and, so to speak, a conventional interest. Asa matter of fact, who save a few special students concerned himself in June, 1914, about the Polish question or that of Syria? Even among those who maintain the honorable tradition of according their sympathy to unjustly treated peoples, how many were aware of a Ukrainian, a Ruthenian, a Lithuanian question? Thus, through a long train of successive events which should be recognized as something more than a mere series of accidents, manifold national questions, which statesmen and diplomats had attempted to disregard because they in- terfered with their political schemes, have entered the war. Already on July 26, 1914, the uncompromising ultimatum addressed to Serbia by Austria-Hungary gave notice that the Hapsburg Empire had determined to begin, beyond Bosnia and Herzegovina, the first step of the “advance to the East”60 THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY (Drang nach Osten), and gain a decisive start on the road to Salonika; thereby bringing into question the independ- ence of Serbia and with it that of Bulgaria and Greece, dis- turbing again the intricate tangle of Balkan problems of which the treaty of Bucharest and the Convention of London had just relieved the wearied hands of the diplomats. On August 15th, the Grand Duke Constantine made a solemn promise to restore to Poland her territorial unity as well as her political autonomy. A little later, an imperial rescript informed the Russian Jews that henceforth they would en- joy an equal position in the Empire with that of Orthodox subjects. By the pretensions of certain German publicists the Finnish question was discovered as involving a branch of the Germanic stock which extends from the Baltic coast to the Adriatic. With the entrance of Turkey into the war, all the na- tional questions of the Orient were again thrown open; Russia no longer conceals her intention to conquer Armenia, of which she already holds the Caucasian region; Syria and Arabia are growing restless, and, finally, with the fate of Constantinople and the Dardanelles, the very existence of the Ottoman Empire, its final expulsion from Europe, and, perhaps, its dismemberment in Asia have come into question ; this would mean the parceling out of Asia Minor into colonies or spheres of influence. More generally, the whole problem of the relation of the Moslem to the Christian world has risen anew in all its magnitude. The Germans have clearly recognized this, and from the first days of the war they tried to stir up difficulties for Russia in Persia, for England in India and Egypt, for Italy in Tripoli, for France in the whole of northern Africa, up to the day when the Ottoman Empire itself was dragged into their quarrel. This military alliance of the Protestant Kaiser, the Catholic Emperor at Vienna, and the Moslem Commander of the Faithful is a fact of great symbolic significance. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated. It demonstrates con- clusively—despite what certain writers may have said who saw nothing in the ruins of Belgium but an act of Lutheran vandalism—that the age of the great religious wars is pastTHE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY 61 and that even where religious passion plays a part, as no one will deny it does, it is only an auxiliary to national sen- timent. The alliance of Berlin, Vienna and Constantinople is no artificial arrangement, but the expression of the natural and necessary solidarity of the three European Empires which are drawn together by the one common characteristic that they have never granted nor desired to grant justice to conquered peoples. No doubt one may detect certain differences in the rule established by these empires. That of Austria~Hungary has been the least harsh; she has granted parliamentary insti- tutions to many nationalities within the Dual Monarchy and, of the three divisions of Poland, Galicia has undoubtedly been the best treated. Even Germany has never, like Tur- key, made wholesale massacre an instrument of govern- ment. The fact remains, however, that Austria-Hungary, Germany and Turkey are conglomerations of imperfectly absorbed and unequally treated nationalities. None of these states has been able to assimilate its conquests. In Alsace, in Lorraine, in Schleswig, and in Poland, Germany, in spite of the most indefatigable efforts, has been able to “German- ize” only by importing Germans, by expropriating the land owners or by forcing them through persecution to expatriate themselves. In the Hapsburg monarchy, at least a dozen heterogeneous, jealous and hostile nationalities are crowded together, none of which has a decisive preponderance over the others. As for the Turks, it has been justly said that they have been contented to camp, saber in hand, among the subjected population. We must, however, do them the justice to ad- mit that they have not attempted to impose Islamism upon the conquered, and that they have shown themselves very tolerant in one respect, that they have never made an at- tempt to win over to their type of civilization the Greeks, the Balkan Slavs, the Armenians, the Christian communities of the Orient. The lack of mutual understanding between victors and vanquished has remained as profound after six centuries of occupation as at the time when the first horse- men, coming down from Turkestan, directed their daring62 THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY raids against the Byzantine Empire; and whenever the taxes were not paid promptly, or whenever the civil population threatened to become rebellious, great hecatombs soon re- stored order among the discontented and gold to the public coffers. In the absence of any real fusion of the ethnical elements in the three empires into a homogeneous unity or any volun- tary cooperation of the nationalities remaining distinct, it has been necessary to obtain unity through force: military force to begin with, thereafter administrative. Artificial combinations of alien or mutually hostile peoples, some of which knew themselves to be deprived of the political and even of the civil rights accorded to others, Germany, Aus- tria-Hungary and Turkey were doomed to remain military empires, to place the army above the civil law, to perpetuate and to renew noble castes, one of whose privileges it is to monopolize the higher grades of the army, to put this caste and this army at the disposal not of the nation but of the ruler, and, finally, to make him, notwithstanding certain con- cessions to modern parliamentary polity, the arbiter of na- tional destiny, the master of war and peace. In opposition to this triptych, a view of the “allied” forces presents a remarkable unity, despite some incontest- able divergencies. It is doubtless necessary to avoid over- simplified generalizations and merely verbal distinctions. It would be false as well as arbitrary to divide the contending nations which dispute with each other the empire of the world into the oppressors and the defenders of nationality. Germany herself achieved her unity in the name of the na- tionalist principle, and it may even be said that, in a certain sense, Pan-Germanism is nothing but a monstrous perver- sion of that principle. On the other hand, nobody will be apt to forget that in the tragic history of nationality, the record of the allies is far from immaculate. Nations with- out faults exist only in legend. The most liberal of western nations, England, has borne in her side for centuries the sore wound of the Irish question, and the admirable solidar- ity shown by the British Empire to-day cannot make us forget that on the very eve of war it was an open questionTHE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY 63 whether the introduction of Home Rule in Ireland might not inflict upon the United Kingdom the horrors of a civil war. France is far from having made such efforts to ele- vate the dignity of her Mohammedan subjects in northern Africa as might have been expected from the country of the “Rights of Man.” As for Russia, not even her best friends could forget that during the past twenty years she has continuously infringed the liberties of Finland by re- strictions as unconstitutional and unjust as they were tact- less, and that her attempts to Russify eastern Poland have equaled the German attempts to Germanize Prussian Po- land. All these facts are only too true and should be frankly admitted. But these admissions only add force to the state- ment that, as a whole, the group of allied powers represent in their struggle against the empires of armed force the continuity of that liberal tradition to which the nationalities which were enfranchised in the course of the nineteenth century owe their liberation. There is hardly a national movement to which France, England and Russia, separately er together, have not given the support of their political influence or even of their arms. Russia, whatever may have been her faults in respect to the Finns, Poles and Jews, has been an indefatigable helper in the liberation of the Balkan Slavs. England has aided in the freeing of Greece and Bulgaria, and has always shown herself the protectress of small states. As for France, it is needless to recall what Greece, Belgium, Rumania and Italy have owed to her in the conquest of their national independence. And where have all the patriots who have been perse- cuted for dreaming of the emancipation of their respective nationalities found an asylum? Where were the commit- tees for the protection of all the martyred nationalities or- ganized, the “Leagues of the Rights of Peoples,” the “Na- tionalist Headquarters”? Where are the pamphlets printed, where are the periodicals published, which are intended to defend before the tribunal of public opinion the interests, so easily forgotten, of the peoples held in bondage? Is it at Berlin? Is it at Vienna? No; but in the two capitals64 THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY which have been equally hospitable to oppressed peoples ane to “Kings in Exile,” London and Paris. For whom, after all, did men fight in 1914 from the Yser to the Niemen, from the Adige to the Caucasus? In the first instance, Russia arose to defend Serbia, already sacrificed by Europe at the end of the second Balkan War, from the menaces of Austria. England and France re- sponded in their turn to the pathetic appeal of Belgium, crushed under the heel of one of the powers which had guar- anteed by their signature her neutrality. Thus from the very outset, the European war disclosed its original char- acter, which has continually become more apparent. It was a war of nationalities. Without question, it was also some- thing more; it has so profoundly shaken the old structure of the European balance of power that one may well wonder what great social, political, economic, or even religious in- terest there is that it has not imperiled.GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION THE PROSPERITY THAT URGED CENTRAL EUROPE TOWARD EXPANSION AND WAR HENRI HAUSER JOSEPH FRIEDRICH NAUMANN The marvelous economic organization of Germany before the war, and the colossal commercial prosperity which sprang from it, were in part the product of the new Kultur. More largely, however, they sprang from the natural German energy and perseverance in toil. The unhappy result of this prosperity was to enlarge the German self-confidence. The whole nation became desirous of expansion, demanding it as a right and duty, with very little consideration of the rights of other nations against whose commerce or across whose lands they might expand. Chiefly their ideas looked towards the possession of a Middle-Europe Empire (Mittel-Europa), with Turkish, African and South American dependencies. The most able and successful book that appeared in Germany dur- ing the War was the “Central Europe” of J. Friedrich Naumann, one of the most influential of Germany’s radical statesmen, an economist, clergyman, newspaper editor, and member of the Imperial Reichstag. Until his death in August, 1919, Naumann was a leader in the reorganit- zation of the less far-spreading Germany which survived the War. Instead of being blindly boastful, like most German war utterances, Naumann’s “Central Europe” is keenly analytical, patriotic but philo- sophic. He is thus enabled to present in its strongest form the usual plea of his countrymen that they must have space for expansion, both in trade and in territory. Naumann also saw the really new impulse which German organization had introduced into civilization, and so drew the striking picture, which follows, of Germany’s economic prog- ress. Of course it scarcely occurred to Naumann, or to the other German leaders of his hour, to consider the pressure their expansion must exert on other peoples. The superman wastes no remorseful pity on those he tramples down in his glorious progress. Naumann’s picture of pros- perity driving Germany toward war is almost wholly unconscious—and perhaps for that very reason the more impressive. The conscious view of what this lordly expansion involved for the rest of Europe is therefore presented here by the standard French au- thority on economics, Professor Henri Hauser of the University of Dijon, a member of the Institute of France. c. F. H. We. .VOlL, L—s; 6566 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION BY HENRI HAUSER NE of the favorite arguments used by pacificists in re- cent years was that the development of industrial civi- lization made all war henceforward impossible, and so to say unthinkable. The ties formed between modern peoples by industry and commerce are so manifold and so subtle that interest, even in the absence of sentiment, makes it impos- sible to break them. Nevertheless war has broken out. More than that, war has been declared by a people whom we were pleased to con- sider the most remarkable creacion of industrial civilization. And we are bound to recognize that, in the unanimous en- thusiasm with which this people has welcomed the dawn of bloodshed, among the most eager voices have been those of the commercial and manufacturing classes. Financiers, man- agers of works, workingmen themselves, have all figured in the front ranks of the defenders of Imperialism. How are we to explain this paradox? And first let us get rid of a possible misunderstanding. Certain thinkers tell us, “It is not true that economic causes played a preponderant part in the explosion of July, 1914. Germany was not threat- ened by over-population, she had no urgent need of colo- nies.” But the truth is that what counts in the history of humanity is not the actual facts, but the form in which men picture them to their minds. Political economy and history are in their essence psychological sciences. What we are concerned to know is not whether Germany was actually suf- focating. Germany thought she was suffocating, she yielded —to use the very words of one of those who contradict us —to the haunting fear of aggressive “encirclement,” which she felt bound to shatter at all costs. It is this “pathological phenomenon of collective psychology” which we must at- tempt to explain. What strikes us at the very outset in the evolution of German industry is the actual greatness of the phenomenon. There is something impressive in the spectacle of this peo- ple, which forty years ago scarcely counted at all in economic geography, and yet had become on the eve of the war one ofGERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 67 the great forces of the world. With her 5,000 millions 1 of foreign commerce Germany reckoned in the second rank of mercantile nations, after England. Outstripping England herself, she had achieved the second place in the smelting and production of iron and the second also in the manu- facture of steel. Her mercantile marine, inferior to that of France in 1870, was in 1913 surpassed only by those of Eng- land and the United States. All this won our admiration. Are we to disavow the admiration we have expressed, because Germany has dishon- ored herself by crimes? No! For Frenchmen the truth is always the truth. History will certainly record the prodi- gious effort of will by which Germany, victorious on the bat- tlefield in 1870, has won her place by main force in the economic world. I do not know whether it is true that F'ried- rich Karl said, on the night of the surrender of Metz, “We have just conquered in the military sphere: our task is now to fight and conquer in the industrial sphere.” It matters lit- tle whether the words are apocryphal: they express a pro- found and symbolic truth, and admirably render the thought of an entire nation. We do not hesitate then to recognize that the German people, since the foundation of the Empire, have given proof of remarkable qualities. First and foremost they have worked with intense energy, not with the feverish excite- ment which raises mountains in a few days, but with per- sistent and patient everyday labor, regular and methodical. Ostwald is right when he attributes to the Germans the faculty and genius for organization. They have carried to perfection the art of making use of men, of putting every man in his place and of getting the maximum of output from each individual. If the genius for great discoveries seems in recent times to have deserted Germany, the Germans are past masters in the application of the discoveries of science to industry. The statement has often enough been made: It ‘5 the union of the laboratory and the workshop which is the foundation of German wealth. This truth was emphasized The figures given by M. Hauser in milliards (= 1,000 millions of francs) are here given in dollars.; . kh Sie OA sf ' a) I my fd 68 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION in 1897 by M. Raphael-Georges Lévy. In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, which was a revelation to many Frenchmen, he wrote: “The sphere in which science wins its triumphs is that of industry. It is difficult to find a more striking demonstration of this truth than that furnished by the chemical industry of Germany. That industry came from the laboratories of great men of science such as Liebig and Hoffmann, and its continued prosperity is due to the incessant cooperation of hundreds of chemists who come every year from the Universities. Germany is covered with laboratories, several of which have cost over $100,000, and the yearly upkeep of which requires hundreds of thousands.” Again, in one point this analysis was incomplete. Side by side with the union between laboratory and workshop, it is necessary to call attention to the union between the office of the business-director and the library of the economist, the geographer and the historian. For the method which the Germans applied to the production of a new aniline color they also carried into their search for commercial outlets, and their organization of channels of commerce. The Ger- man chemist and the German commercial traveler marched in step to the conquest of the globe. This rise of Germany was a great and, we are prepared to say, in a certain sense, a fine spectacle; but its very rapid- ity contained an element which gave some ground for anx- iety. The evolution of Germany has borne a startling and al- most catastrophic character. From the complex of agri- cultural states, dotted with industrial patches, which con- stituted the Zollverein in 1870, the industrial Empire has sprung up in a few years by a sort of historical ‘“‘right-about- face,’ without any of that slow and secular preparation which marked the rise, for instance, of the English power. Time has had no share in producing industrial Germany: like nearly everything else in modern Germany it is an up- start. A few dates and figures will bring this out clearly. Karl Lamprecht has noted the fact that towards 1880 the infant industry of Germany still needed protection against its older rivals, and this protectionist movement started, by re-GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 69 action, the French movement of 1892. In the midst of the internal struggle over the question of canals in 1894-1901 it is still a matter of debate “whether the majority of occupa- tions and interests in the Empire is still agricultural or has become industrial and commercial.” But facts give the an- swer: In 1893 the consumption of raw iron per caput of the population did not rise to 220 pounds a year; in 1899 it amounted to 340 pounds. The consumption of coal rises from 4,200 to 6,000 pounds a head. In the same period the production of iron and pig-iron rises from five million to more than eight million tons, that of coal from 95 million to 136 million. In these six years the fate of Germany was decided by an increase in production so intensive that it seemed ‘“‘unwholesome,” and was destined to lead to the crisis of 1901. The country which was poor had suddenly become very rich. In 1895 the income from the fortunes of the Em- pire was estimated at four billion dollars; in 1913 the esti- mate varied from eight to ten billions, while the wealth of Germany was estimated at 64 billions. Such are the figures proudly produced by Dr. Helfferich, Director of the Deutsche Bank, the Minister of Finance of the King of Prussia, at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession of William II. This sudden increase in German wealth had very serious consequences for the character and distribution of the popu- lation of Germany. The two most notable results were the progressive disappearance of the rural population and the abrupt cessation of emigration. It is repeatedly stated that the Germans were forced into a policy of expansion and conquest by the increase in their population. This was in- deed the excuse they put forward to justify their attempts to create colonies of settlement in Morocco and Asia Minor. A pitiless Malthusian law had forced them, it was said, to find for themselves a “place in the sun.”” Now there could be no idea more false than this of Germany as an over-popu- lated country. It is quite true that since 1871 the population of the Empire has increased from 40 to nearly 70 millions. It is quite true that in spite of a decline in the birth rate, the increase in the population of Germany was 800,000 a year: that is, 800,000 more births than deaths, 800,000 more70 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION mouths to feed. But this increase was far from being exces- sive, for every year 700,000 Slav laborers came in to work on the great estates of the East, not to mention the Italian, Croatian, Polish, etc., labor employed in towns, mines and works. As for German emigration, it was no longer more than a memory. Between 1880 and 1883 it exceeded 200,000 a year, in 1914 it did not reach 20,000, very much the same figure as our own, and the French are regarded as a people who emigrate very little. The number of arrivals far ex- ceeds that of departures. Germany has ceased to be a coun- try of emigration and is becoming a country of immigration. There is indeed an emigration in Germany, but it is an internal emigration, from the country to the town, from the agricultural regions to the industrial districts. Since 1895 the population living on the land has ceased to be half of the total population: at the present time it is not 44 per cent. Out of 67 million Germans scarcely 17 millions are agri- cultural or live on agriculture. Every year an enormous number of peasants quit the land and rush into colossal fac- tories. It is thus that the number of towns with a population over 100,000 exceeds 45, it is thus that armies of labor are formed which put 15,000 workmen at the disposal of a firm like Mannesermann, more than 30,000 under Thyssen, 73,000, nearly two army corps, under Krupp. In these fig- ures I include all the works belonging to one firm. Germany has definitely passed from the type of the agri- cultural state to that of the industrial state. The equilibrium between the land and the workshop has been upset. The Industrial State has very imperious needs and re- quirements, which are not shared oy the Agricultural State; the Agricultural State lives on itself and for itself, and can live within its own limits. The Industrial State, to use the phrase of Lamprecht, is a “tentacular’’ State. To begin with, it has need of supplies of food. It is cal- culated that 20 millions of the 67 millions of Germany de- pend for their maintenance on foreign harvests and foreign cattle. A dangerous position, since it compels Germany to secure for herself at all times not only free passage over herGERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 71 land frontiers, but, above all, freedom of communication by sea. We know what it costs Germany to-day to be cut off from receiving the wheat of Russia, America and Argentina. The Industrial State is in pressing need not only of capi- tal but of raw material. Germany, when she entered the lists, was regarded as a country rich in coal and iron. She has remained rich in coal; but by working her iron mines intensively I do not say she has exhausted them, but she can no longer extract from them the total amount of ore re- quired by her metallurgical works. Krupp is more and more dependent on Sweden, Spain, North Africa and France. In the same way the spinning and weaving factories of Saxony and Silesia are dependent on Texas and Louisiana. If Swe- den, which has nationalized her mines, puts barriers on the export of her ores, or the price of corn undergoes an ab- normal rise in the market of New Orleans, it means famine for the crowds which throng into the Westphalia district or to the north of the Bohemian mountains. Raw cotton bulks larger than any other article imported into Germany, to the amount of considerably more than $125,000,0c0. The cotton industry employs more than 1% millions of work-people and manufactures goods to the value of more than $250,000,000. Now, two-thirds of the raw cotton consumed in the world is supplied by a single country, the United States. In 1894, a syndicate, the “Sully cotton corner,” took advantage of this situation to produce an enor- mous rise of prices and to reserve the cotton for the Ameri- can factories. On the Bremen Exchange, in February, the price paid for cotton was 85 pfennige a pound, while in De- cember, when the corner had been broken up, it fell to 35. Germany lost in the operation $30,000,000 paid to the for- eigner. A reduction in the production of cotton textiles and widespread dismissal of workmen were the results of this veritable cotton famine, which at the same time disastrously affected our own industries in the Vosges and in Normandy as well as those of Lancashire. The Industrial State has need of capital. In spite of the prodigious increase in German wealth, German industry has an enormous appetite for capital. No sooner is capital72 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION created than it is used up in constructing new works or in remodeling machinery. In the formidable industrial strug- gle in which Germany entered, she was condemned to make new conquests every day, for any defeat, nay more, any check, would be fatal. It would be true to say that capital is swallowed up before it comes into being, for it is antici- pated by credit. Companies with imposing capital dependent on industrial banks, these again dependent on central banks and especially on the Deutsche Bank, these great banks in their turn absorbing all available wealth, including a propor- tion of foreign capital—all this forms a marvelous but fragile structure. The very denials of the German financiers prove that they cannot afford to disregard the assistance of foreign capital. Let but one of the streams which feed the mighty river happen to dry up, and the crisis comes with violent and widespread consequences. Customers are necessary to Germany even more than capital. In spite of their power of increase, in spite of their rapid advance in wealth, in spite of their appetite for enjoyment, the German people cannot by themselves alone absorb the enormous output of the German factories. They are bound to turn more and more to the outside world and to become an exporting industry. All causes then combine to make Germany a “tentacular State,” spreading out in every direction over the world. The general staff of the industrial world needs a “world-policy” to find interest for its capital and to pay the wages of its workmen. The proletariat have need of it to give them a full day’s work and save them from starvation. That is why German Socialism is Imperialist. You know what a hue-and-cry was raised against the French Socialist who dared to make this discovery. We are compelled to-day to recognize that M. Andler was too painfully right. Even as early as 1900 the defenders of the German Naval Law wrote: “The freedom of the seas and vigorous competition in the markets of the world are therefore questions of life and death for the nation, questions in which the working classes are most deeply interested.” We know by recent examples what Germany means by “questions of life and death,” andGERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 73 what methods she is in the habit of using to answer such questions and to deal with any obstacles that bar the way to their solution. Only yesterday the Social Democrat, Konrad Hoenisch, ex-member of the Reichstag, exclaimed: “The social interests of the German proletariat even more than political considerations make victory for Germany neces- sary.” Thus we see the Industrial State condemned to “World- policy.” Its first business is to find means to develop its policy of export. The first means adopted is the system of bounties. As German industry is working less for the home market than for foreign markets it is logical to sell cheap, sometimes even to sell at a loss beyond the frontier in order to win new markets and to discourage all competition. Thanks to the system by which the chief economic forces are grouped in cartels, the process is easy enough. In 1902 the coke-syndicate compelled the German consumer to pay four dollars a ton, while at the same time it agreed to sell large quantities abroad at less than three dollars. In the second half of 1900 the iron-wire syndicate had sold abroad at $1.60 per 100 lbs., while the home price was $2.85. It thus made a minus profit on the foreign market, and on the home market a plus profit of larger size. This gave a balance on the right side. But this time the trick was overdone, for the result was that German iron was bought up abroad to be reéxported to Germany at a profit. Next to the system of bounties comes that of treaties of commerce, which favor the importation of provisions and of laborers (Slavs, for ex- ample), and which secure a moderate tariff for German goods abroad. Such is the basis of the Russo-German Treaty of 1904, the tendency of which was to make Russia an economic colony of Germany. In order to meet the want of iron, Germany had to con- quer new supplies of iron ore. Peaceful conquest to begin with. The expert adviser attached to the commissioners of delimitation in 1871 allowed the iron-ore strata of the Woevre to escape, from ignorance of their real importance and also because he thought them inaccessible by reason of their depth, unworkable because of their high percentage of74 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION phosphorus. But the application of the Thomas process in 1878 converted the Briey basin into the most important iron- field at present being worked in the world. That is why Thyssen made his way into this region at Batilly, Jouaville and Bouligny under fictitious names. At the same time he sent his divers to Diélette to search for ore under the sea: he planted his agents in the mining and metallurgical com- pany of Calvados, started under some one else’s name the company of mines and quarries at Flamanville, and then the powerful company of smelting and steel-works at Caen. By these operations he gained the double advantage of buy- ing ore from us and selling coke to us. With the iron of Lorraine and Normandy and the coal of Westphalia, Ger- many would be the mistress of the world. To make sure of this supremacy it was of importance to remove all competition and establish German industry in the very heart of the country of her rivals. A description was given before the war of the extraordinary control ac- quired by German manufacturers over French works pro- ducing chemical materials, electricity, etc. At Neuville-sur- Saone it was the Badische Sodafabrik which, under a French name, provided the madder-dye for the red trousers of the French army, and possibly it even inspired the Press cam- paign, conducted with the support of sentimental arguments, in favor of a color which was dangerous from a military point of view. The Parisian Aniline Dye Company (Com- pagnie parisienne des couleurs d’aniline) was nothing but a branch of Meister, Lucius and Bruning, of Hoechst. We have been told how a Darmstadt company for producing pharmaceutical goods came and established a branch at Mon- tereau in order to destroy a French factory which was there before, and how the Allgemeine Elektrizititsgesellschaft got hold of Rouen, Nantes, Algiers, Oran and Chateauroux. The same conquests were won at Seville, Granada, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Mendoza, Santiago and Valpa- raiso. Turkey, Russia, Italy and Switzerland shared the fate of France. A remarkable study of the same subject in Italy has been made by M. Giovanni Preziosi in some articles which ap-GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 75 peared in 1914 in the Vita italiana all’ estero, and were col- lected in pamphlet form in 1915 under the significant title, “Germany’s Plan for the Conquest of Italy.” It was indeed a war of conquest, conducted with admirable organizing fac- ulty. At its center was a financial staff, constituted by the “Bancacommerciale . . . ttaliana,”’ which naturally is called “Ttalian,’ just as the companies in France are called “French’”’ or “Parisian.” This product of German finance is described as a “Germanic octopus,” the very image of the “tentacular State” before described. Establishing itself within the di- recting boards, and, by means of a system of secret cards, employing a regular system of commercial espionage to ruin all who resist it, it succeeded in gradually absorbing the economic energies of an entire people—establishments of credit, shipping companies, manufacturing firms; it was even able to corrupt political life, overthrow ministries and con- trol elections. Here, as in Switzerland, the pseudo-Italian German banks “‘act as a pump which pumps out of Italy and pumps into Germany.” Italy, which is considered a poor country, provides capital for rich Germany. To back up this policy of economic conquest the prestige and the strength of the Empire must be put at the service of the manufacturers. To make the State as the Germans understand it, the instrument of German expansion—this is the meaning of what the Germans have well named the policy of “business and power,” Handels und Machtpolitik. No- where is the confusion of the two ideas more clearly exhibited than in the report forwarded to London in February, 1914, by Sir Edward Goschen, on “An Official German Organiza- tion for Influencing the Press of Other Countries.” This important document is too little known in France, perhaps because, outside the Blue Book, it has not appeared in Eng- land except as an ordinary “White Paper.’’ But how in- structive it is! The object of this company was to promote the manu- facturing prestige of Germany abroad. It supplied full in- formation gratuitously or at a low price to foreign journals in their own language concerning Germany and favorable to Germany. It withheld the service from those who showed76 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION themselves deaf to instruction. ‘To reply to news meant to influence opinion on Germany and to meet attacks upon her, and to make the true situation of German industry widely known’’—such was the program. In an article so naively transparent that its publication was thought inopportune and orders came from above not to reproduce it or make any allusion to it, the Deutsche Export Revue crudely remarked: “It is better to choose men already connected with the vari- ous journals, who will serve German interests without at- tracting so much attention.” This fusion of Weltpolittk and business policy was pe- culiarly dangerous for the peace of the world. If Imperial- ism, if “the tentacular State” puts its strength at the dis- posal of manufacturing interests, the temptation is strong and constant to use this strength to break down any re- sistance which stands in the way of the triumph of these interests. If a crisis comes which causes a stoppage of work (there are sometimes 100,000 unemployed in Berlin) the neighboring nation which may be held responsible for the crisis has reason to be on its guard. “Be my customer or I kill you,” seems to be the motto of this industrial system, continually revolving in its diabolical circle, always produc- ing more in order to sell more, always selling more in order to meet the necessities of a production always growing more intensive. Russia was for Germany both a reservoir of labor and a market. France was a bank and a purveyor of minerals. What a temptation to dip deep into the jealously guarded stocking and fill both hands! What a temptation, too, to repair the blunder made in the delimitation of 1871! Even in I91I the Gazette du Rhin et de Westphalie put forward the view that the iron ores of Lorraine and Luxembourg ought to be under the same control as those of Westphalia and the Saar. And Iam told that the great journals of Paris, when informed of this campaign, refused to take this ‘“‘pro- vincial journal” seriously, being blind to the fact that it was the organ of the great manufacturers of the Rhineland and of the Prussian staff. What a temptation again to take the port of Cherbourg in the rear from Diélette!GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 77 As for England, the direct competitor of Germany in all the markets of the world, and manufacturing the same goods, she was the enemy to be crushed. Had she not ac- quired the habit, and had she not taught it to France, of re- fusing to lend money to poor States except in return for good orders? The time was beginning to go by when it was pos- sible to do German business in Turkey with French or Eng- lish gold. Germany’s rivals have learnt from her the lesson of Handels und Machtpolitik. But what is to become of Essen, Gelsenkirchen, and all that immense industrial city of which Westphalia consists, if Rumanians, Greeks, Serbians order their guns and their ironclads, their rails or their loco- motives at Glasgow or at Le Creusot? Germany thought war preferable to this economic encirclement, and the velvet glove gave place to the mailed gauntlet. Little by little the idea of war as necessary, of war as almost a thing to wish for, laid hold on the industrial classes. The proof is to be found as early as 1908 in a popular book by Professor Paul Arndt, one of those small shilling books which served to instruct the German mind. All of us, even the best informed, must reproach ourselves for not having studied or studied closely enough these small books, which would have made the danger clear to us. In this volume the author, after a pean to German greatness, begins a chap- ter “On the dangers of Germany’s participation in world- wide trade.” He shows that this participation increases Ger- many’s dependence on the foreigner and makes her vulnerable by sea as well as by land. If international relations are dis- turbed there will be “many workmen without food, and much depreciation of capital,” and that from causes “in great measure beyond the control of Germany” in countries which may seize the opportunity to weaken Germany. And in a hypothesis which is prophetic he describes the effects of the blockade. But he accepts without hesitation these risks of the World-Policy. ‘No doubt, if we wish to be and to remain a great people, a world power, we expose ourselves to serious struggles. But this must not alarm us. There is profound truth in the dictum that man degenerates in peace time. The78 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION call to arms is often needed to rouse a world benumbed with apathy and indolence. Those who can look far and deeply into things see that warfare is often a blessing to humanity.” I have shown how the over-rapid industrialization of Ger- many led by a mechanical and fatal process to the German war. If any doubt were felt on the part played by economic causes in this war it would be enough to look at the picture of German victory as imagined by the Germans in their dreams during the early months of war. It is an industrial victory, a forced marriage between German coal and foreign iron, the reduction of nations into vassals who are to play the part of perpetual customers of the German workshops. “The metalliferous strata of French Lorraine and Rus- sian Poland,” wrote Baron Zedlitz-Neukirch in 1915, “sup- plement in some degree our own mining works.” If we ask the impetuous Max. Harden what is to become of martyred Belgium, he replies, in October, 1914, “Antwerp not against Hamburg and Bremen, but with them; Liege, working side by side with the arms factories of Hesse, Berlin and Swabia; Cockerill in alliance with Krupp; Belgian and German iron, coal and textiles under one control. From Calais to Ant- werp, Flanders, Limbourg and Brabant, up to and beyond the line of fortresses on the Meuse, all Prussian.” ‘The Ger- man dream is the dream of a conquering man of business, a counting-house romance founded on Freytag’s novel of “Soll und Haben” (“Debit and Credit’). The victory of Ger- many meant for them security of iron-supply and enlarged markets: it meant Briey, Ouenza, Casablanca, Bagdad. The vision has faded and the building of their dreams has crumbled away. But the dream has left its lessons for us, which demand attention not only in the future but to-day. Let us cherish no illusions. Germany, though conquered and curtailed, will not cease to exist. It is idle to suppose, as some publicists write, that we are going to suppress a whole people. Even if we had the military power to do it, policy and morality would forbid us. After our victory there will once more be a Germany which will patiently and persistently resume its labors. The great war will no sooner be ended than the other war, the economic war, will begin again. IfGERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 79 we do not wish to be crushed we must to-day begin to prepare our mobilization for this new war. BY FRIEDRICH NAUMANN During the war we were all wondering why we Germans, and especially we Germans of the Empire, were so little be- loved by the rest of the world. To many well-meaning and sociable people this international dislike is something quite horrible, and they rack their brains to discover what we must do in order to find favor again. But they often look for the source of the ill-will of other nations in very secondary mat- ters, such as perhaps in the lack of social good tone in those who travel abroad, loud-voiced German tourists dressed in Tyrolese homespun, or in the theatrical sword-clanging of some discharged general, and not in the economic national type itself; because they share in the economic and mental changes of their own nation much too unconsciously, It hardly even occurs to them that we are unloved because we have found a method of work in which now and for a long time to come no other European nation can imitate us, and which consequently the others do not regard as fair. It is this to which we have just referred as the transition to the impersonal capitalism of the second stage, a process which with us has demanded about a century and a half of work and education. In order by illustration to make clearer at the outset the distinction between the older and the newer creed of capital- ism I will begin with a little story about London. I wanted to look at the London docks, and said so to a respected Eng- lish friend, whom in spite of the war I greet from across the trenches. He replied, “No one here goes to look at the docks.” Then I inquired at the International Tourist Of- fices of Cook and Son whether they arranged for visits to the docks. Answer: No, because there were no London docks like, for instance, the Hamburg docks, which one could visit and inspect as a whole; the London docks are an un- systematic succession of many very big establishments, each of which belongs to a separate private firm. Thus, as to quantity, labor, money value, goods, the London trade ex-80 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION ceeds that of Hamburg, but as to unity, articulation, organi- zation, they already represent a more antiquated form of life. Hamburg learned from London, but added to its learning quite of itself something peculiarly German, which at the outset appeared like some chance additional characteristic, merely as stricter police supervision and regulation, but which developed in course of time into an essential feature. Why, we ask, does the smaller German sea trade possess the great- est companies? Or another example: in 1900 I was in Paris during the Exhibition and was talking to a German wood carver who had worked for a long time in France, about the difference between Germans and French. The man, so far as I can remember now after fifteen years, spoke somewhat thus: If a French joiner has thirty workmen and can get a larger or- der employing more than this number he accepts it indeed, but puts it out on commission, because he has not sufficient confidence in himself or will not take the trouble to deal with more than thirty workmen. Meanwhile the corresponding German employer would accept the order for himself, would enlarge his workshop, and by reason of this enlargement would seek further new orders. If one of the Frenchmen acts differently, then he is certain to be from Alsace or Switzerland. Thus the Germans have the greater organiz- ing ability both in medium-sized businesses and in skilled handwork. The peculiarity of the Germans does not consist in an essentially new attribute which has not appeared elsewhere in the world, but in the methodical, trained progress in an ability which has existed and does still exist among the hitherto leading nations, but has not been so systematically and intentionally developed. From our own point of view we are still a long way from having arrived at perfection of organization, but in the eyes of others we have already de- viated far from their style of living. They regard us as an unfree people, because we have learnt better than they have how to carry out our work on a common plan and to a common rhythm. And this applies to all types of work. It is not as if industrialism were a special German charac-GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 81 teristic, for the English are an industrial, machine-using, manufacturing nation, and were so before us. Moreover, the peculiar German spirit of which we are speaking shows itself at least as much in our agricultural occupations as in our manufactures. Of course there are all sorts of attempts at organization and codperation in English and French agriculture, as, for example, among the wine growers in Southern France. But when examined closely these attempts are nearly all quite feeble, whereas German agriculture, although the independ- ence of the peasantry is definitely safeguarded, is already almost entirely managed by systematic cooperation, or at least is making daily progress towards this goal. By the joint action of agricultural boards, agricultural schools, loan banks, granaries, and dairies, a strong net is woven round the individual. He has become a peasant codperator, member of a definite profession. He can, no doubt, evade all these regu- lations, but it is to his own injury if he does so. For the sake of personal interest he becomes a member of an im- personal institution and works for it as for himself. This insertation of the individual ego into the joint ego is our spe- cial ability, by which we attain a more intensive cultivation, a better assorted production, and better marketing qualities for international trade. Individualism is fully developed, but it is then carried up into the next higher form of economic cooperative existence. Owing to a like intrinsic impulse, our industrial life is similarly full of ideas of organization and regulations for combining. We have extensive economic syndicates or car-~ tels; moreover, during the last twenty years our German in- dustries have taken on an entirely new appearance. In grow- ing they have become interlaced. By means of employers’ federations, payment cartels, zone compacts, and price agree- ments, a complicated machinery of spheres of business and subordinations has come into being, in which the outsider can hardly find his way, but which has been created step by step as needed, and by means of which the private employer of the old style has quite gently slipped over into the disci- plined, industrial community, and that in the course of one W., VOL. I.—6.82 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION generation and even when at the outset he was quite un- willing. He has become a federated employer. The em- ployers of the first and second generations perhaps only adapted themselves reluctantly to these developments and would rather have remained individualist capitalists in the West European sense; but the employer of the third genera- tion is for the most part born into a combination from the outset. Thus in a certain sense he becomes the free, direct- ing employee of a society which produces steel or yarn or sugar or spirits. The industrial basis of the age is thus dis- covered, and its spirit is now steadily penetrating deeper. In another twenty years we shall see before us the whole scheme of a powerful industry with its domestic regulations and its divisions of labor. The regulation of production is on the way. Things that forty years ago would have seemed like the unreal idealism of socialist and state-socialist dreamers, now appear with incredible certainty as realities which have come into being in the interval. Germany is on the way to become not merely an industrial State, but above all, an or- ganized State. In complete correspondence with this is our experience with the wage-earners, and following their example, with all the employees in the higher groups. The old ideal of the in- dividual who sells his working strength when, where, and how he likes, has almost disappeared in the social ideal of the common unions of wage-earners and workers. The non- unionist is still numerous, it is true, but he is in no way the leader. And what distinguishes the German trade unionist, so far as we can see, from the older English type, is his greater coherence and discipline, which he has painfully but successfully won by fighting, in spite of socialistic law and police intrigue, against the policy of the Government and of the employers. The German masses mean to make their advance as organized groups; that is their guiding principle. It is inadequate to say that they combine in order to secure increased wages. Any one who knows the unionists knows that calculated self-interest is only one side of their ex- istence, and that, especially in the case of the leaders, it is the least decisive influence. They have formed their tradeGERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 83 unionist ideal of conduct, narrow and inflexible, as could hardly be otherwise with people of moderate means who have but little scope for action in their lives, but yet firmly de- cided upon and definite in itself. The idea of a super-per- sonal economic leadership of the masses in work, and in sale and consumption of its products, is prevalent and becomes a mere matter of course. In this the German working classes differ from all the Latin nations, for what in France and Italy is called socialism is indeed related in word and theory to the German workmen’s unions, but has none of the stern- ness of inward determination which has been attained by our social democrats, or even by other unionist groups. All travel along the same path: engineers, teachers, head- teachers, scholars, doctors, even artists. The guilds of hand- workers are coming to life again and adapting themselves to the altered conditions of the time. We are a uniform nation in spite of the quarrels among the numerous associations of opposing interests, magnificently uniform in this method of organizing our daily work and life. Primary schools, uni- versal conscription, police, science and socialistic propaganda, have all worked together to thisend. We were hardly aware that we desired all this in reality: this disciplined work of the second period of capitalism, which may be described as the transition from private capitalism to socialism, if the word socialism be not applied solely to a proletarian vision of great businesses, but is understood, broadly, as an ordering of the nation for the increase of the joint product of each for all. This new German type is incomprehensible to the indi- vidualist nations, to whom he appears partly as a relapse into past times of constraint, and partly as an artificial product of coercion that belies and overcomes humanity. In educated circles in Paris and London they feel a mixture of pity, fear, respect and aversion towards this German type. Even if they could produce the same thing there, they would not wish to do so, for they have no desire for this disciplined soul. They do not desire it because it would be the death and surrender of the individual soul. No one can quite un- derstand this unless he has occasionally tried to look at Ger- many with the eyes of a foreigner. To the German who84 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION knows only Germany, the intrinsic strength of this opposition must necessarily remain hidden; he does not realize how strange he has already become to even the best men of the Western nations, not owing to any particular thing which he does, but merely owing to what he is. This new German character has by no means been pro- duced among us in the German Empire without opposition, for it is something distinct from the old German condition of life and heart. The old German was much more natural, slower, wilder or weaker, just as it happened. All our Ro- manticism lacks the organizing spirit; it is loyal, self-sacri- ficing and companionable, but it is wanting in any guiding idea of aim. The good, ridiculous Germans of former days were thus no objects of general enmity. People thought of them at times as coarse, and wished they had a larger share of French politeness, but foreign peoples had at bottom noth- ing against the worthy bears, who let themselves be pushed hither and thither and yet laughed at it themselves. No one ever supposed that this old, comfortably coarse, downright fellow would one day shake off his dream and stand up as the thinker of labor. Even when philosophers of the highest rank appeared amongst us, foreigners never thought that this signified a practical and economic change in the German character. In- deed, we ourselves hardly noticed how much our philos- ophers were practical prophets. They were regarded as art- ists in ideas and as reformers of the world, without its being realized that, emanating from them, a spirit of labor inspired by reason would transform the entire world in the course of a century. Indeed, the thinkers themselves did not perceive to what purpose they were there. They thought about pure and practical reason in the sense of intellect and morality. But after them came their followers, and tried to introduce into Government, Law, and Administration the reason which they had conceived. They were, it is true, only partially suc- cessful, but again, in the next generation, keen, highly trained thinkers about actual possibilities were found in all depart- ments of work. Neither Bismarck nor Savigny nor Helm- holz nor either of the two Siemens is conceivable withoutGERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 85 this philosopher’s oil poured out for the second and third time. Our technical and agricultural schools are German institutions for thought which aims at realization in fact, and are nowadays almost more characteristic of our national na- ture than the old-established universities. The “high school” with a practical object is a novelty which we first had to assimilate ourselves, and which the people of older civiliza- tions most heartily grudged us when it appeared, because for them knowledge was more an amusement than a practical ability. In the quite recent past, and until our character was thus transformed in this matter of technical organization, the English were always very friendly to us Germans. The great English thinker Carlyle, it is true, understood what was pre- paring in the German spirit; but his fellow-countrymen ac- cepted what they saw before their eyes: the Germans have good schools and buy English machinery! It was not until by reason of these schools the Germans set up their own ma- chines and offered them to foreign nations that they lost the English goodwill. How could the learned brother on the con- tinent be so bold as to mix himself up in business? This learned German technical scholar appeared in all occupations like something essentially improper. The old English world was not adapted to make a systematic working alliance be- tween thought and international trade! From the time of this memorable change onwards, the educated Englishman felt himself deceived by the German and called him a dan- gerous competitor, as indeed he really was, and that too in virtue of the English universal watchword, “Free play for the strong,” but with a quite differently trained strength. How closely the new German method of work is a con- tinuation of the German trained thought can only be realized from a comparison between German management of im- portant undertakings by leading men and the corresponding foreign non-German management. Our financial policy has a perceptible doctrinaire tendency, but on this very account is most successful. Our military education is markedly sci- entific, but is not injured thereby. Our great merchants are almost economists and statisticians by profession. Our wood-86 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION craft is almost as logically thought out as a textbook on grammar. Our ship building is highly mathematical; our steel plates are scientific works; our dyes are chemical 1n- ventions. Into everything there enters to-day less of the lucky spirit of invention than of patient educated industry. Or to put it otherwise: we believe in combined work. That connection with systematic science which we find throughout in the new agriculture and in all the more ex- tensive industrial undertakings was and still is the peculiar quality of German social democracy. Dr. Engels, the friend of Karl Marx, said of it that it was the heiress of German philosophy, and if the saying is not taken to mean the sole heiress, then there is a large kernel of truth in it. Of all working classes, only the German (and the German-Aus- trian) is theoretical in its group instruction in the sense of pure Marxism. This instruction may often be false in de- tails and may be far over the pupils’ heads and remote from present day problems; but the actual fact that we possess the most theoretical labor movement in the world is part of the picture of German economic life. This working class in com- bination with its educated employers, with our syndicate lead- ers, with our Civil Service and officers, does not offer the most charming and amusing society possible, but does con- stitute the most practical, safe and durable human machinery. This living national machine goes its way whether the in- dividual lives or dies, it is impersonal or super-personal, has its frictions and interruptions, but is as a whole something that has never come to pass exactly in this way before. It is the historically developed German character. We are all being much confirmed in this our German method of work by the progress of the war. From the very first days this war, which had been forced upon us, was regarded as a necessary and quite universal duty and task which must be performed. Every one looked to those in re- sponsible positions for a planned organization reaching even to the smallest details. As soon as it was felt that this existed, the troops and the workers at home showed them- selves ready for the greatest and most exceptional efforts, without crediting themselves with this as any special merit.GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 87 The war was really only a continuation of our previous life with other tools but based on the same methods. In this in- deed lies the secret of success. We conquer less through in- dividuals than through the disciplined feeling for combined difficult work ; and those who take the field to amend us after their own pattern must try in battle to equal us. If our opponents like to label this intrinsic connection between the work of war and peace as “German militarism,” we can only regard this as reasonable, for Prussian military discipline influences us all in actual fact, from the captain of industry to the maker of earthworks. All that we object to is the secondary implication which has associated itself with the word militarism, and which in the management of bar- racks in the peace years it was difficult entirely to avoid. But after this war we shall certainly remain much more closely agreed in our common esteem for the voluntary discipline of a great national, military or industrial army so long as the men are still living who have kept at their posts during this struggle. Happen what will, the German spirit has re- ceived its baptism of fire: the national genius was and is a reality. Both to ourselves and to the outside world we have shown ourselves as in essence a single unit. Now it is our concern to carry through to its goal this essential German character, proved in the most sinister of wars. This will and must be set on foot directly peace is concluded. For on this day all Imperial and State officials and all parties and societies will produce their memoranda wherein are noted the things that must be altered after the war. I wager that three-fourths of this memoranda will contain the words: better organization! Our foreign service, our Red Cross, our hospital system, our military clothing, our mili- tary purveying, our horse-breeding, our food-supply, all this and much else must be much more rigidly thought out and calculated for beforehand, so that we shall not again be so situated as now in the ill-advised debates on food. But all organization consists in statistics, grouping, analysis, syn- thesis, control and regulation, and thus there grows up from all sides a State or national socialism, there grows up the “systematized national economy.” Fichte and Hegel nod88 GERMANY’S ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION approval from the walls: now, after the war, the German is at last becoming heart and soul a political economic citizen. His ideal is and will be the organism and not free will, rea- son and not the blind struggle for existence. This constitutes our freedom, our self-development. By its means we shall enjoy our golden age as other conquering nations in other ages and with other abilities and excellences have done before us. Our epoch dawns when English capi- talism has reached and overstepped its highest point, and we have been educated for this epoch by Friedrich II., Kant, Scharnhorst, Siemens, Krupp, Bismarck, Bebel, Legien, Kir: dorf and Ballin. Our dead have fallen on the field for the sake of this our Fatherland. Germany, foremost in the world!GERMANY’S DREAM OF WORLD EMPIRE THE WORSHIP OF THE WAR GOD THOR AS TAUGHT BY TREITSCHKE PRINCE BERNHARD VON BULOW MAXIMILIAN HARDEN RICHARD GRELLING We turn now from the unconscious to the conscious lust for War. In Napoleon’s day Frenchmen had worshiped “Glory” and dreamed their dream of world-empire. The tremendous military successes of Ger- many in 1870 stirred her people to a similar evil obsession. A popular poet in 1878 wrote: Thor stood at the midnight end of the world, His hammer flew from his hand: “So far as my thunderous weapon I’ve hurled Mine are the sea and the land!” And onward hurtled the mighty sledge O’er the wide, wide earth, to fall At last on the Southland’s furthest edge In token that His was all. Since then ’tis the joyous German right, With the hammer, lands to win. We mean to possess the world by might, As Thor the Hammer-God’s kin. Chief teacher and prophet of this demon worship in its early day was Heinrich von Treitschke, who died in 1896. As Professor of His- tory in the University of Berlin he spoke in brilliant, passionate lectures of the splendor of Germany’s new power and the coming wonders of her future. All the young aristocrats of Berlin heard him and thrilled to his inspiration, William II. called him “Our national historian.” Yet ironically enough Treitschke, the inspirer of Germany’s war-lust, was probably of Slavonic parentage, just as Nietzsche, the inspirer of her new philosophy, was of Polish origin. Even Chancellor Von Biilow opens his renowned book, “Imperial Germany,” with a reference to the youthful inspiration which he had caught from Treitschke. Von Biilow is generally regarded as the ablest and strongest of the Imperial Chancellors after Bismarck. His book, published shortly before the Great War, spoke so frankly of Germany’s hopes of world power that foreigners scarcely took it seriously. Such visions seemed impossible to those days. Yet so exactly had this shrewd prince and statesman weighed his words that when, a year after the War had begun, he republished his book, he changed scarcely the least 8990 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE of its ideas. The only exception was in his treatment of the German Socialists. In his first edition he could find no words too harsh for them—they threatened to block the wheels of war. In his later edition, he rewrote the entire chapter on the Socialists and praised them heart- ily. That was their reward for bowing at the shrine of the war-god Thor. Prince Von Bilow’s words in the following and most noted section from his book offer us therefore the highest German official viewpoint as to Germany’s destiny. Of course his words are diplomatically re- strained. In one of his official speeches more than a decade before the War, while urging military expansion, he said to an eager audience, “You will understand that in my official position I can not say much; I can not dot all my i’s.” He then hinted that America as well as Europe was included in his schemes of conquest. So for contrast with Von Biilow’s “restraint” we give a fiery outburst from Max. Harden, gen- erally regarded as the most sincere voice of Germany during the War. As editor of a leading radical paper, Harden was a constant thorn in the side of the Imperial Government—not that he lacked war enthusiasm, but that he was too straightforward about it. He said what he meant; whereas the Government constantly and obviously said what it did not mean, preparing its terrible aggressive strokes in secret, while publicly lamenting that other nations insisted on attacking poor, peaceful Ger- many. Thus Harden was sometimes far ahead of the Government chorus and had to be restrained. At other times he was equally far behind and was reproachfully spurred onward. Yet a third type of German voice is here given from the remarkable book “I Accuse.” No other war book roused such excitement as this and its later continuation, “The Crime.” These were written by a Ger- man and one who knew the national situation thoroughly. With reso- lute severity he tore the mask from all the pretenses of the Imperial Government, and pointed out the truth as to how it had deceived its people and plotted to deceive the world. “I Accuse” was published anonymously in Switzerland, but its combination of intimate knowledge and bitter condemnation drew to it the swift attention of all nations. The German official press could find no words too savage for the “traitor” author, particularly when he was learned to be Dr. Richard Grelling, a professor already academically punished for too much free- dom of opinion. Yet in after-war days most Germans have admitted the justice of Grelling’s every word. Thus the following expressions of Germans’ judgment upon Ger- many were all three written in the heat of war, after their country had tasted her first victories, before she had to face her final defeat. CG. Fo BY PRINCE VON BULOW : ‘| N spite of the length of their history, the German people is the youngest of the great nations of Western Europe. A period of youth has twice fallen to their lot, and with it the struggle to establish their power as a State, and to gainTHE DREAM OF EMPIRE gi freedom for civilization. A thousand years ago they founded the proudest kingdom of the Germans; eight hundred years later they had to build up their State anew on quite dif- ferent foundations, and it is only in our times that, as a united people, they entered the ranks of the nations.” These words, with which Treitschke begins his “German History,” not only show deep historical knowledge, but also have a very modern political significance. Germany is the youngest of the Great Powers of Europe, the homo novus who, having sprung up very recently, has forced his way by his own superior capacity into the circle of the older nations. The new Great Power was looked upon as an uninvited and unwelcome intruder, when, after three glorious and success- ful campaigns, it entered the company of the Great Powers of Europe a formidable figure and demanded its share of the treasures of the world. For centuries Europe had not believed in the possibility of the national unification of the individual German territories as one State. At any rate, the European Powers had done their best to prevent this. In particular, the policy of France, from the time of Richelieu to that of Napoleon III., was directed towards maintaining and intensifying the disruption of Germany, as it was rightly recognized that the ascendancy of France, la prépondérance légitime de la France, depended primarily on this state of affairs. Nor did the other Powers desire the unification of Germany. On this point the Emperor Nicholas and Lord Palmerston, as well as Metternich and Thiers, were at one. Nothing could show more clearly the marvelous way in which the mature wisdom of our old Emperor cooperated with the genius of Prince Bismarck than the fact that they effected the unification of Germany, not only in the face of all the difficulties with which they were confronted at ome —long cherished rivalries and hatreds, all the sins of our past, and all the peculiarities of our political character, but also in spite of all opposition, avowed or secret, and of the displeasure of the whole of Europe. Suddenly the German Empire was in existence. More quickly even than had been feared, far stronger than any one had guessed. None of the other Great Powers had desired92 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE the regeneration of Germany; each of them, when it actually took place, would have liked to prevent it. Small wonder that the new Great Power was not made welcome, but was looked upon asa nuisance. Even a very reserved and pacific policy could effect but little change in this first verdict. This union of the States of the Mid-European continent, so long prevented, so often feared, and at last accomplished by the force of German arms and incomparable statesmanship, seemed to imply something of the nature of a threat, or at any rate to be a disturbing factor. In the middle of the nineties, in Rome, where I was Am- bassador at that time, my English colleague, Sir Clare Ford, said tome: ‘How much pleasanter and easier it was in the world of politics when England, France and Russia consti- tuted the areopagus of Europe, and at most Austria had to be occasionally consulted.” Those good old days are past. More than forty years ago the council of Europe had to admit another member entitled to vote, one that had not only the wish to express its opinion, but also the power to act; a power which our enemies in the world war have been made to feel even more fearfully than they had feared. A strenuous task in the history of the world had reached completion in the masterpiece of Prince Bismarck. The un- flinching purpose of the Hohenzollern dynasty for centuries required the patient heroism of the Prussian army and the resolute devotion of the Prussian people, until, after many changes of fortune, the Mark of Brandenburg rose to the rank of a Great Power as the kingdom of Prussia. Twice the prize seemed to slip from the grasp of the Prussian State. The crushing defeat of 1806 hurled Prussia down from the dizzy heights, which had filled her contemporaries with ad- miration and fear, and which she had attained under the rule of the great Frederick. Those people seemed to be right who had always considered the proud State of the great King to be nothing more than an artificial political structure, that would stand and fall with the unique political and mili- tary genius of its monarch. Its rise, after the overwhelming disasters of Jena and Tilsit, proved to an astonished world what innate and indestructible strength this State possessed.THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 93 Such self-sacrifice and such heroism on the part of a whole people presuppose long-established national self-confidence. And as the people of Prussia did not rise in lawless rebellion like the much-admired Spaniards and the honest Tyrolese peasants, but placed themselves one and all, unquestioningly, at the orders of the King and his advisers, it appeared, to every one’s surprise, that amongst the Prussians conscious- ness as a nation and as a State were one and the same thing ; and that the people had been transformed into a nation under the strict discipline of Frederick’s rule. The reorganization of the State under the guidance of men of creative power during the years 1807 to 1813 won for the Government not only the obedience of its subjects but also their affection. In the war of liberation, from 1813 to 1815, Prussia gained the respect of all, and the confidence of many of the non-Prus- sian Germans. It was a rich inheritance that the great period of upheaval and liberation left behind. But owing to the reaction of a feeble and inglorious foreign policy, and to a home adminis- tration which never knew when to be open-handed and when to refuse, this inheritance was to a large extent squandered in the course of the following decades. In Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister,” when the melancholy Aurelia finds fault in many ways with the Germans, Lo- thario, a man of experience, replies that there is no better nation than the Germans, so long as they are rightly guided. The German, of whatever stock he be, has always accom- plished his greatest works under strong, steady and firm guidance, and has seldom done well without such guidance, or in opposition to the Government and rulers. Bismarck himself has told us in his “Gedanken und Erinnerungen” (“Reflections and Reminiscences”) that he was from the first quite clear on this point. With the intuition of genius he found the way in which the hopes of the people and the ‘nterests of the German Governments might be reconciled. Probably no other statesman ever had so deep a knowledge of the history of the nation he was called upon to guide. Behind the external sequence of events he sought and found the motive forces of national life. He, who was born in94 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE the year of Waterloo, and was confirmed by Schleiermacher in the Church of the Trinity in Berlin, never forgot the great times of the liberation and the rise of Prussia; at the beginning of his career as a molder of the destinies of the world, the remembrance of these days was always with him. He realized that in Germany the will-power of the na- tion would not be strengthened, nor national passions roused by friction between the Government and the people, but by the clash of German pride, honor and ambitions against the resistance and the demands of foreign nations.. So long as the question of German unification was a problem of home politics, a problem over which the political parties, and the Government and the people wrangled, it could not give birth toa mighty, compelling national movement that would sweep nations and princes alike along on a tide of enthusiasm. When he made it clear that the German question was essen- tially a question of European politics, when on this the non- German opponents of German unification began to move, Bismarck gave the princes the opportunity of putting them- selves at the head of the national movement. By this means national policy was interwoven with in- ternational policy ; with incomparable audacity and construc- tive statesmanship, in consummating the work of uniting Germany, he left out of play the political capabilities of the Germans, in which they have never excelled, while he called into action their fighting powers, which have always been their strongest point. By a happy dispensation, Bismarck found a general such as Moltke and a military organizer such as Roon to support him. The military achievements which had enabled us to regain our position as a Great Power in Europe also assured that position. They long discouraged any attempt of the Great Powers to deprive us of our right to a voice in the councils of Europe, a right which we had won in three vic- torious campaigns, and which has since then, for nearly half a century, never been seriously disputed, although it was un- willingly granted. With the single exception of France, every one, in all probability, would have gradually become reconciled to Germany’s political power if her developmentTHE DREAM OF EMPIRE 95 had ceased with the founding of the Empire. But the po- litical unification was not the end of our history but the be- ginning of a new era. In the front rank of the Powers, Germany once more participated in full in the life of Europe. For a long time, however, the life of Europe had formed only a part of the life of all the nations of the world. Foreign politics had become more and more concerned with the world at large. The path of world politics lay open to Germany too, when she had won a powerful position on a level with the older Great Powers. The question was whether we should tread that new path, risk the “grand game,” as Disraeli used to call world politics, or whether we should hesitate to undertake further hazardous enterprises for fear of compromising our newly acquired power. In the Emperor William II. the nation found a clear- sighted, strong-willed guide, who led them along the new road. With him we trod the path of world politics; but not as conquerors, not amid adventures and quarrels. We advanced slowly, and our rate of progress was regulated, not by the impatience of ambition, but by the interests we had to promote and the rights we had to assert. We did not plunge into world politics, we grew, so to speak, into our task in that sphere, and we did not exchange the old Euro- pean policy of Prussia and Germany for the new world policy; as is clearly shown by the course of the Great War both on the economic and the military side, our strength to- day is rooted, as it has been since time immemorial, in the ancient soil of Europe. “Tt is the task of our generation to maintain our position on the Continent, which is the basis of our position in the world, and at the same time to foster our interests overseas and pursue a prudent, sensible and wisely restricted world policy, in such a way that the safety of the German people may not be endangered, and that the future of the nation may not be imperiled.”” With these words I attempted on November 14, 1906, towards the close of a detailed exposi- tion of the international situation, to formulate the task which Germany must perform at the present time, and, as far as man can judge, will have to perform in the future: a96 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE world policy based on the solidly laid foundation of our posi- tion as one of the Great Powers of Europe. At first voices were raised in protest when we trod the new paths of world politics, for it was considered a mis- take to depart from the approved ways of Bismarck’s Con- tinental policy. The fact was overlooked that it was Bis- marck himself who pointed out the new way to us by bring- ing our old policy to a close. His work, in fact, gave us access to world politics. Only when Germany had at- tained political strength was the development of German commerce and industry to a world position possible. It was not till the Empire had secured its old position in Europe that it could think of defending the interests which German enterprise, German industry and commercial foresight had created in all quarters of the globe. It is certain that Bis- marck did not foresee the course of this new development of Germany, nor the details of the problems of this new epoch; and it was not possible for him to do so. The course of events has long driven German policy out from the narrow confines of Europe into the wider world. It was not ambitious restlessness which urged us to imitate the Great Powers that had long ago embarked on world politics. The strength of the nation, rejuvenated by the political reorganization, as it grew, burst the bounds of its old home, and its policy was dictated by the new interests and needs. In proportion as our national life has become world wide, the policy of the German Empire has become a world policy. In the year 1871 the number of inhabitants dwelling within the new German Empire was 41,058,792. They found work and a living in their own country, and, moreover, both were better and easier to get than before; this was due to the protection afforded by increased national power, the great improvement in the means of communication effected at the founding of the Empire, and the blessings of the new common German legislation. In the year 1900 the num- ber of inhabitants had risen to 56,367,178, and to-day it has reached 68,000,000. The Empire could no longer support in the old way this immense mass of humanity within itsTHE DREAM OF EMPIRE 97 boundaries. Owing to this enormous increase of population, German commerce and industry, and in consequence German policy, was confronted with a tremendous problem. This had to be solved, if foreign countries were not to profit by the superfluity of German life which the mother country was not able to support. In the year 1883 about 173,000 Ger- mans emigrated; in 1892 the number was 116,339; in 1898 only 22,921; and since then the average has remained at this last low figure. The German Empire, such as it emerged from the bap- tism of fire of Koniggratz and Sedan, the belated fruit of the slow evolution of our nation, could not come into existence until German intellect and the Prussian monarchy joined forces. They were bound to join forces if a united German State of lasting power was to be achieved. German history, eventful as it is, discloses an abundance of great and mighty deeds: the struggle of the German Em- perors for the heritage of the Casars, German arms vic- torious on the shores of the Great Belt and the Mediter- ranean, in Asia Minor, and in the heart of what is now France; and after the intellectual refining process of the Reformation, the greatest development of artistic and sci- entific life that the world has known since the days of Hellas and the Cinquecento. The result, however, of these glorious activities, as far as the State and politics are concerned, was the dissolution of all forms of government in the nineteenth century, and the fact that German power was outstripped by the younger States of Eastern and Western Europe. Ina thousand years of work, from the point of view of culture, the highest had been accomplished, but politically, nothing had been achieved. The Western and Southern domains of Germany, greatly favored by Nature, accomplished indestructible work in the sphere of German intellectual life, but could not raise suf- ficient strength for the sterner business of creating a State. We modern Germans do not share Treitschke’s harsh opinion that the small German States were worthless. Dur- ing the decades in which we have enjoyed union as an Em- pire, we have recovered a clear perception of the manifold W., VOL. 1. -7.| rts ihe } Tee ey oe! | ee A) PAS It f ei gt Bh) “ >, a ; “A . \ ' i . 98 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE blessings we owe to the small States. Side by side with the sins of German separatism we must place the encouragement and protection afforded to the intellectual life of Germany by the Princes and the cities. The Court of the Muses act Weimar achieved the highest in this respect, but it by no means stood alone. The history of most of the non-Prussian States is con- nected with the name of some one or other of the men of Science and of Art who have helped to raise the magnificent edifice of our intellectual life. When Prussia woke to a consciousness of her duties with regard to the spiritual achievements of Germany, in those terrible but yet splendid years when, as Frederick William III. so well expressed it, the Prussian State must make good by its intellectual powers what it had lost physically. German intellect had already reached its zenith without the help of Prussia. German in- tellectual life, which the whole world has learned to admire, and which even the first Napoleon respected, is predomi- nantly the work of the South and West, achieved under the protection of her Princes, small States, and free cities. But the people who lived on the sandy soil of the Mark, in the plains east of the Elbe and the Oder, so scantly favored by Nature, during the centuries which witnessed the growth of German culture in other parts of the country, prepared the future of Germany as a State in battles and privations under the rule of heroic and politic kings. German intellect was developed in the West and the South, the German State in Prussia. The Princes of the West were the patrons of German culture; the Hohenzollern were the puliticai teachers and task-masters. It took a long time before the importance of Prussia, in which even Goethe only loved her great King, was recog- nized in Germany; before it was realized that this rude and thoroughly prosaic State of soldiers and officials, without many words but with deeds that were all the greater, was performing a task of enormous importance in the work of German civilization: preparing the political culture of the German nation. Prussia became for Germany what Rome was for the ancient world. [Tecpold von Ranke, intellectu-THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 99 ally the most universal and at the same time the most Prus- sian of German historians, says, in his “History of the World,” that it was the task of antiquity to permeate the Greek spirit with the Roman. Classical culture, in which the intellectual life of Western Europe is rooted, was pre- served by the Roman State, which, with its legal and mili- tary foundation, gave to the ancient world its political shape. The Prussian State became the guardian of German intel- lectual life, by giving to the German people a united State and a position on a level with the great Empires of the world. Through the foundation of the Empire we acquired na- tional life as a State. In so doing our political develop- ment embarked on a new and a safe course. But it has not yet reached its goal. Our task has been begun but is by no means yet completed. We must secure and cement the unity of our intellectual and political life by the fusion of the Prussian and the Ger- man spirit. That is what I meant when, not long before my retirement, I said in the Reichstag, with reference to the fact that in the death chamber of Prince Bismarck the only ornament I noticed on the wall was the portrait of Ludwig Uhland, that this juxtaposition summed up all German his- tory, for only the union between the energy and discipline of old Prussian Conservatism and the magnanimous spirit of German Liberalism could insure a happy future for the nation. A century ago Fichte challenged the nation to over- come the difference between thought and being within itself, and thus consciously to create itself; this challenge is also addressed to us. Prussian State life and German intellectual life must become reconciled in such a way that both their growths become intertwined without weakening each other. Such a reconciliation had not quite been achieved before the Great War. The representative of German intellectual life was still sometimes inclined to regard the Prussian State as a hostile power, and the old Prussian at times to regard the free and untrammeled development of German intellect as a destructive force. And again and again in Parliament ard in the Press accusations were leveled in the name ofi AA . iF a? . 8 k mi EE 3 >, 100 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE freedom against Prussia, and in the name of order against the undauntable German intellect, which in its breadth, its philosophic depth and its poetic charm has never been equaled since the days of the Greeks. My late friend, Adolph Wilbrandt, in a pleasing play, has a scene between an official belonging to the North Ger- man nobility and the daughter of a savant of the middle classes. At first they repel each other and quarrel. “I repre- sent the Germany of Schiller, Goethe and Lessing,” says the woman, and the man replies: “And I represent the Ger- many of Bismarck, Bluicher and Moltke.” We often hear similar things from the lips of clever and serious men. Our intellectual and political future depends on whether, and to what extent, we succeed in amalgamating German intellect with the Prussian monarchy. Bismarck, the Prussian, realized better than any one else that in Germany strong government could only be based and maintained on the monarchic principle. The work of union could only be permanent if the monarchy was not a purely ornamental part of the fabric of the Empire, but was made to be the actual support of the union. And if the creative power of Prussian monarchy, well tested in the course of centuries, was to be enlisted in the interests of the new Empire, then the King of Prussia must, as German Emperor, be more than the bearer of shadowy dignities; he must rule and guide—and for this purpose must actually possess monarchic rights such as have been laid down and transcribed in the Constitution of the Empire. Germany would never, or at best very slowly and imper- fectly, have achieved union as a State by following the paths of democracy along which other nations have reached the goal of national development. As a monarchy, with the Federal Princes represented in the Federal Council, and the King of Prussia at the head, we became a united German Empire. Had we been entrusted entirely to the care of quar- reling parties in Parliament, the idea of the Empire would never have gained so much ground, would never have been able to win the heart of Germans to such an extent as isTHE DREAM OF EMPIRE IOI actually the case since the unity of the Empire was placed under the protection of the monarchy. At the beginning of the sixties in the nineteenth century, Crispi, later President of the Ministry in Italy, wrote to Maz- zini that he had been converted from the Republic to the Monarchy, because the latter would unite Italy, whereas the former would disintegrate her: the same applies to us. And it is particularly true in our case because the German Em- pire, situated in the middle of Europe, insufficiently pro- tected by Nature on its frontiers, and surrounded by great military powers, is and must remain a military State. And in history strong military States have always required mon- archic guidance. We have seen that at the moment when Germany’s ex- istence was seriously threatened on the outbreak of war, all hearts turned spontaneously to our Imperial leader, all faith and confidence were placed in him. The whole German peo- ple expressed its devoted patriotism and loyalty to the State by an unpremeditated and instinctive manifestation of mon- archic feeling. And during the whole course of these ter- rible struggles on all fronts and in all climes Germany has realized with satisfaction that, thanks to monarchic leader- ship, in the war she is superior to her opponents in her readi- ness to strike promptly and in the uniformity of her military action. The higher the tide of hatred and rage, of injustice and envy, rises during this war and because of this war, the less will we allow ourselves to be deterred from pursuing our aims, or to be diverted from them. In future let us not for- get what a very small part gratitude plays in politics. In the life of nations a debt of gratitude, in that it hurts national pride, is more apt to lead to silent wrath than to true friend- ship. The wise founder of the Constitution of the United States, George Washington, told his fellow-countrymen that there was no more grievous error than to think that nations can act magnanimously and unselfishly toward each other. We must also be clear on the point that in politics it is not right alone that decides. Pitt, the greatest English statesman, said that the might of no realm would endure for102 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE longer than from sunrise to sunset if absolute justice were to prevail. It was a Frenchman, Pascal, who said that right without might is powerless, and might is mistress of the world. If right decided things, the world would have looked very Averent for the past three thousand years, and the German people would not have had to undergo such suffer- ing as they were exposed to in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and up to the middle of the nineteenth century. Stress must be laid, however, upon the fact that it would be a gross mistake to confound a clear and robust practical policy with a misapprehension of the imponderables. Noth- ing is less in accordance with practical policy in the true sense of the word, or with a Bismarckian policy, than to over- look the importance of imponderables. We can learn from French, English and Russian history how largely our neigh- bors have been guided in their policy by their interests, their wish for power and their keen desire for mastery, both po- litical and economic. But we can also learn from the history of our neighbors how clever they were on the banks of the Seine, of the Thames, and even of the Neva, at cloaking practical motives and instincts in high sounding words which make them seem beautiful. As the wise Greek said, men are moved not so much by things as by their views on things, and it is often not truth but the semblance of truth which rules the world. The man who pursues a practical policy knows better than any one else what an important factor feeling is in the life of the nation, what weight imponderable things have, which, as Prince Bismarck said on February 6, 1888, weigh far, far more heavily than material objects. A clumsy word, a thoughtless phrase, can do more harm at times than defeat in battle. It is a question whether ill-chosen words cannot do more damage than imprudent writings or even deeds, whether the Latin dictum, “Verba volant, scripta manent,” might not more properly be reversed. The expression “c@ur léger,” which Emile Ollivier allowed to escape his lips in 1870 at the beginning of the war, straightway labeled the war for millions of people in the world, and the impression created by them persisted for many years.THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 103 In practical politics and in the administration of affairs dogmatic adherence to principles and unpractical theories is mischievous. Ernest Renan, himself a philosopher, rightly said that philosophy had as little connection with politics as with mechanics or chemistry. The principles of practical politics must be applied in a practical manner, they must not be proclaimed from the housetops in the form of an extreme theory. Otherwise we shall cover Germany with odium, with an evil repute which our noble people assuredly do not de- serve, for we have for centuries actually pursued a policy which is essentially more humane, and in the best sense of the word more idealistic, than France from the times of Philip the Fair, Henry IV. and Richelieu to those of Na- poleon; than Russia from the days of Peter the Great and Catherine to the present time ; than England in all her history. Owing to our seriousness and our logic, owing also to our thoroughness, which at times becomes clumsiness, many a thing sounds cruder on German lips, and is more offensive when expressed in German fashion, than if it had been ut- tered by others. Pascal, probably the deepest French thinker, discriminated between the esprit géometrique and the esprit de finesse. The former causes much mischief in politics, the latter prevents many things and achieves some. The outbreak of war was calculated to force the German nation with sudden violence to realize how greatly the course of foreign politics affects the fate of every German, and that questions of greater politics are like dynamite cartridges which, if they are clumsily handled anywhere in the world, may produce terrible explosions; it was calculated to show us how urgent is the necessity for cool judgment and sensible determination where the web of international relations is concerned in which our national life, in its entirety and in its details, is entangled ; how indispensable, in dealing with these relations, are experience, knowledge of men and things, psychological insight and the right estimation of others which it enables us to form; how desirable is that quality which the Frenchman describes by the untranslatable ex- pression “Je doigté,’ which Prince Bismarck demanded of every one who had anything to do with foreign and diplo-104 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE matic affairs. It depends upon the lever of the pointsman whether two railway trains pass one another or collide with fearful violence. Politics, as Prince Bismarck often said, isan art. Hence goodwill, which in matters of morality is everything, is of little or no account, and ability is the only thing that tells. A short time ago in the Reichstag a deputy opined very truly that all the misfortunes in the world arose from good- will, coupled with incapacity. We need a skillfully con- ducted foreign policy all the more because we are situated in the middle of Europe, wedged in between races hostile to us, and must always reckon with the possibility of attack. We have been encircled for a thousand years, ever since by the Treaty of Verdun the German tribes of Charles the Great were separated from the others and started life as an inde- pendent State under the Carolingian king named Ludwig the German. Hemmed in by Latins and Slavs, we must suit our foreign policy to our geographical position. The present, which is full of great and serious political problems, and still more so the future after the war, require a political generation. It is Germany’s great hope that men of political insight will some day return home from the fiery ordeal by which their souls are tried in this gigantic struggle among the nations. Great-hearted men who will not let their considered judgment on practical questions of home politics be crippled by the pressure of the doctrines of party politics, strong-willed men who will demand of the Government as well a determined policy with great aims, which shall be energetically carried out. When from the bloody seed of this world war we shall reap the increased glory of the German Empire, the im- portant point will be to concentrate the wealth of German intellect, the indestructible German capacity for work, the unwearied German energy upon the interrupted task of Ger- man progress. Fighting so tenaciously tor many months of warfare, the mighty powers and means at Germany's dis- posal have with invincible might and unshakable confidence in victory, mastered, and with God’s help will continue to master the monstrous fate which overtook us so unexpect-THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 105 edly. These powers were fostered and grew during forty- five years of work in times of peace—work which was rest- less, sometimes somber and sullen, much debated, but al- ways unwearied, steadfast and fruitful. This war was the tremendous test of the strength of the edifice erected in peace. Germany has stood the test. In April, 1813, Gneisenau, a great man at that time, wrote: “Prussia will never again be subjugated, for the whole nation participates in the strug- gle; it has developed a greatness of character which makes it invincible.” What was true of Prussia at that time is true of Germany to-day. Less than half a century of peaceful progress along the new path of history, into which Bismarck’s strong hand had guided them, was vouchsafed to the German people. The German Empire, whose forces were welded together on bat- tlefields, must now fight innumerable battles against a world of foes; and the German nation has met the threat of ruin with the determination to wrest from the struggle a glori- ous peace which shall clear and prepare the way toa brilliant future in international politics. It was Germany’s hope and Germany’s desire to strengthen and develop her position among the nations of the world by peaceful work and com- petition. But it has ever been the fate of the German peo- ple, as it is at the present time, to fulfill its own destiny, and hence its destiny in the history of the world, by treading a thorny path. Our nation has never quarreled with its fate, nor does it do so now. With wonderful unanimity and determination it shows the world that its will, its might, its courage rise superior to history and to destiny. It hopes and believes that these qualities, which no nation has ever displayed with such deep and unswerving faith in God, such pure hearts, such simple acquiescence, with never-failing devotion and with such unanimity, will surely get its due reward: a peace worthy of such deeds and sacrifices, worthy of our past, a serious, real and secure guarantee for our future. It betokens an unscientific and unpractical mode of thought to assume that after this world war an era will dawn which in its broad outlines as in its details is diametrically106 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE opposed to the past decades before the war, an era that will break with traditions and earlier development, instead of carrying them on. We are well aware of this. We cannot even desire it, for it is steady organic evolution, and not sudden change, which insures sound growth. Taine, as the result of his lifelong study of the French Revolution, came to the conclusion that, En fait d’histoire il vaut mieux con- tinuer que recommencer.1 We do, however, hope that the purifying, clarifying and civilizing influence of the war, which we have seen at work in the course of the war, will continue to act on the intellectual and public life of Germany after it is over, on the nation in general, and in detail on the Government and the parties. But experience teaches us that, however great the events, however heavy the blows of fate, neither men nor circumstances change suddenly or become the contrary of what they were before—especially not in Germany. Even the tremendous change betokened by the transition from Germany of the period of the Federated Diet, of the worthy small folk, to Germany, the new Empire and Great Power, left untouched the nature of the German, the roots of our character and the fundamental conditions of our existence. The number of problems a nation has solved is always small compared with the number that await solution. That was Germany’s experience after the wars of liberation and the wars of union. The German nation knows it to-day too. It knows that Goethe depicted the German nation in human guise, not in Wagner, who is filled with satisfaction by the contemplation of all the fine things we have at last achieved, but in Faust who, with high self-confidence, ever strives to achieve more, and who gives utterance to this truth as the ultimate conclusion of wisdom: Nur der verdient sich Frei- heit wie das Leben, Der taglich sie erobern muss.” May the consideration of the welfare of the country in Germany always prove stronger than party interests and the claims of special groups. May every German be ever 1 Where history is concerned, it is better to continue than to begin afresh. ‘He alone deserves liberty and life who must conquer them daily anew.THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 107 conscious of the duties which two thousand years of history have imposed on us, a history which led us through the stormy times of the Volkerwanderung (migration of na- tions), by way of Charles the Great and Frederick Barba- rossa, by way of Fehrbellin and Leuthen, Leipzig and Water- loo, Koniggratz and Sedan. May every German at all times be ready to defend the Fatherland, may every German heart for all time subscribe to the sacred vow: Deutschland tiber alles! BY MAXIMILIAN HARDEN Written in I9I5 HEY write and talk much about the great scourge of war. That is all quite true. But we should also bear in mind how much greater is the scourge which is fended off by war. The sum and substance of the matter is this: In looking upon the office of war one must not consider how it strangles, burns, destroys. For that is what the simple eyes of children do which do not further watch the surgeon when he chops off a hand or saws off a leg; which do not see or perceive that it is a matter of saving the entire body. So we must look upon the office of war and of the sword with the eyes of men, and understand why it strangles and why it wreaks cruel deeds. Then it will justify itself and prove of its own accord that it is an office divine in itself, and as necessary and useful to the world as is eating, drinking, or any other work. But that some there are who abuse the office of war, who strangle and destroy without need, out of sheer wantonness—that is not the fault of the office, but of the person. Is there any office, work, or thing so good that wicked and wanton persons will not abuse it ? The organ tone of such words as these at last rolls forth once more in their native land. Therefore cease the pitiful attempts to excuse Germany’s action. No longer wail to strangers, who do not care to hear you, telling them how dear to us were the smiles of peace we had smeared like rouge upon our lips, and how deeply we regret in our hearts that the treachery of conspirators dragged us, unwilling, into a forced war.108 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE Cease, also, you popular writers, the degraded scolding of enemies that does not emanate from passion but out of greedy hankering for the applause of the masses, and which continually nauseates us amid the piety of this hour! Be- cause our statesmen failed to discover and foil shrewd plans of deception is no reason why we may hoist the flag of most pious morality. Not as weak-willed blunderers have we undertaken the fearful risk of this war. We wanted it. Because we had to wish it, and could wish it. May the Teuton devil throttle those whiners whose pleas for excuses make us ludicrous in these hours of lofty experience. We do not stand, and shall not place ourselves, before the court of Europe. Our power shall create new law in Europe. Germany strikes. If it conquers new realms for its genius, the priesthood of all the gods will sing songs of praise to the good war... . Weare waging this war not in order to punish those who have sinned, nor in order to free enslaved peoples and there- after to comfort ourselves with the unselfish and useless con- sciousness of our own righteousness. We wage it from the lofty point of view and ,with the conviction that Germany, as a result of her achievements and in proportion to them, is justified in asking, and must obtain, wider room on earth for development and for working out the possibilities that are in her. The powers from whom she forced her ascend- ancy, in spite of themselves, still live, and some of them have recovered from the weakening she gave them. Spain and the Netherlands, Rome and Hapsburg, France and Eng- land, possessed and settled and ruled great stretches of the most fruitful soil. Now strikes the hour for Germany's rising power. The terms of a peace treaty that does not in- sure this would leave the great effort unrewarded. Even if it brought dozens of shining billions into the National Treas- ury, the fate of Europe would be dependent upon the United States of America. We are waging war for ourselves alone; and still we are convinced that all who desire the good would soon be able to rejoice in the result. For with this war there must also end the politics that have frightened away all the uprightTHE DREAM OF EMPIRE 109 from entering into intimate relations with the most powerful Continental empire. .. . Not only for the territories that are to feed their chil- dren and grandchildren is this warrior host battling, but also for the conquering triumph of the German genius, for the forces of sentiment that rise from Goethe and Beethoven and Bismarck and Schiller and Kant and Kleist, working on throughout time and eternity. Never was there a war more just; never one the result of which could bring such happiness as must this, even for the conquered. In order that that spirit might conquer we were obliged to forge the mightiest weapons for it. Over the meadows of the Scheldt is wafted the word of the King: How proud I feel my heart flame When in every German land I find such a warrior band! For German land, the German sword! Thus be the empire’s strength preserved! This strength was begotten by that spirit. The fash- ioning of such weapons was possible only because millions of industrious persons, with untiring and unremitting labors, transformed the poor Germany into the rich Germany, which was then able to prepare and conduct the war as a great industry. And what the spirit created once again serves the spirit. It shall not lay waste, nor banish us free men into slavery, but rather it shall call forth to the light of heaven a new, richer soul of life out of the ruins of a storm-tossed civilization. It shall, it must, it will conquer new provinces for the majesty of the noble German spirit (Deutschheit) that never will grow chill and numb, as that of the Roman did. Otherwise—and even though unnum- bered billions flowed into the Rhine—the expense of this war would be shamefully wasted. BY DR. RICHARD GRELLING The official version states that the Triple Entente has attacked us. “We have to protect our holiest possessions, the Fatherland and our own hearths against a sudden ruth- less attack.’ So said the Emperor in his speech of August110 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 6th. “The sword must then decide. In the midst of peace the enemy falls upon us, therefore to arms! Every hesi- tation, every delay, would be treachery to the Fatherland. The existence of our empire is at stake—the existence of German power and German character.” Such is the official version which crops up in a thousand various forms from the Chancellor down to the last street- sweeper. Semi-officially, however, and in the confidence of secrecy many Germans can be heard asserting that we were not, it is true, attacked, but that we would have been attacked later, if we had not now begun the war at a moment favorable for us. Should we then ask for evidence in support of this hypothesis, most of those who maintain this view have nothing to say, or else they declare that the intention of the enemy to attack us was so obvious that any proof would be superfluous. ‘What did they mean by their enormous prep- arations” is what they most frequently say. And what about our preparations? I reply, which were certainly greater and more comprehensive than in any other country in the world. Did ever any country in time of peace act as we did in 1913 when we suddenly raised the strength of our army on a peace footing by 140,000 men, that is to say, from 720,000 to 860,000, and when we rose to an extraordi- nary war tax of £50,000,000? “What was the meaning of the Entente, the celebrated policy of ‘encirclement’ (Einkret- sung), if they did not mean to attack us?” is what they next say. And what, I reply, was the meaning of the Triple Al- liance which involved even stricter obligations than the En- tente, and in spite of this, according to our assertions, was defensive in its nature? “Yes, but think of the Pan-Slavs!”’ is urged as an objection against me. And what about the Pan-Germans? I venture to answer. Are our “All- deutschen,” our national party, our Pan-Germans of the school of Treitschke and Bernhardi, in any way better or less aggressive than the Pan-Slavs? Such “Pan-tendencies”’ are to be found in all countries. They are harmless, so long as they do not advance to action. The decisive act was, how- ever, taken by our Pan-Germans, when they drove us intoTHE DREAM OF EMPIRE 111 this horrible war—a war desired and openly proclaimed by them. And they had and still have friends and patrons in high places. They have gradually acquired more influence in our authoritative circles than ever the Pan-Slavs exercised at the Russian court. I need not mention by name the person who for years has been the influential head and the batter- ing-ram of this movement against the originally peace-loving mind of the Emperor. Every one knows to whom I refer.® The Zabern telegram, the message of farewell to the Dan- zig Hussars, the open demonstration from the tribune of the Reichstag against our Morocco policy, which was at the time still peaceful in intention—these and countless other occurrences and suggestions leave not the slightest room for doubt as to the quarter and the camp from which the in- citers to war have discharged their destructive missiles over Germany. One has but to wander along the streets of Ber- lin to see in all bookshops the work of Frobenius, entitled “The German Empire’s Hour of Destiny,” with the com- mendatory telegram of the exalted gentleman on the outside. In his recommendation he expresses the desire that this “‘dis- tinguished book” which he has “read with the greatest in- terest” will find the widest circulation among the German people. And this Frobenius is a comrade in thought of Bern- hardi, and the whole purport of his book is that we should strike before it is too late; since the others mean to attack us, We must anticipate them and attack them. Of course no proof, not the shadow of a proof, is advanced in support of this premise, which in reality is but a pretext, and which is denied by Bernhardi himself. But that does not inconvenience these great minds; they do not recognize the defects of their logic. They do not see that of the two assertions only one can be true. Either we have been attacked, in which case we are conducting a defensive war, or else we were going to be attacked, and in that case we are conducting a preventive war. If the sec- ond statement is true the first must be untrue; and in that case all official utterances from the Imperial speech from the *The Crown Prince Frederick William.112 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE Palace on the 31st of July down to the speech of the Chan- cellor on the 2nd of December are branded as lies. If the assertion that it is a defensive war is true, the idea of a preventive war is at once put completely aside, and it is superfluous to discuss further whether the presuppositions of a preventive war in fact existed, or whether such a pre- ventive war politically and morally can be defended. Bis- marck, who after all knew something about politics, emphati- cally answered this latter question in the negative, in stating that “even victorious wars cannot be justified unless they are forced upon one, and that one cannot see the cards of Provi- dence far enough ahead to anticipate historical development according to one’s own calculation.” * This dictum of the great man of the past appears to have fallen into oblivion. While monument after monument has been erected to his memory, this sentence might have been inscribed in brass and in marble in the walls of the palaces of kings and of governments in places where it would at all times have been visible; then perhaps the German people and the world might have been spared this most terrible of evils. Bismarck also after 1870 was repeatedly urged by generals and by the instigators of war to undertake a new campaign against France in order to crush once for all and to make harmless for all time the country that was again raising its head. All such efforts he constantly rejected with unyield- ing energy, and the idea of initiating a war because it must come sooner or later, he declared to be “criminal” and “in- sane.” The saying is apposite, and those whom it fits will not be able to escape its application. The Imperial War—The Place in the Sun It will be obvious from all that I have so far said that I regard the present war neither as a defensive nor as a pre- ventive war. This war is purely a war of conquest, born of imperialist ideas and serving imperialist ends. It is nothing else. It is a war for the celebrated “Place in the sun,’ which “Bismarck, “Gedanken und Erinnerungen.”THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 113 it is supposed is being refused us, and which we must take forcibly with the sword in our hand. What is the meaning of the ‘“‘Place in the sun”? No one says clearly what it is, and every one understands the phrase in a different sense. The idea is so alien to the people that it may be presumed that they would not have allowed themselves to have been sacrificed, if it had been said to them: ‘You must gain for us a place in the sun.” For the initiated, however, it is the magic spell which unites their imperialistic desires. “Only thus relying on the sword, can we gain the place in the sun, which is our due, but which is not voluntarily accorded to us.” With this in- scription, and with the motto pro patria et gloria, the photograph of the German Crown Prince is sold in German bookshops. The Chosen People The place in the sun is the world-power which is due to us, as to the chosen people of God. From the point of view of the psychology of the nation it is remarkable how the old Jewish idea has mastered the good, Christian, Protestant, anti-semitic Empire, and how it has ousted the true teaching of Christ, that all men are brothers. We change our religious ideas, like our uniforms, ac- cording to our needs and our circumstances. The God whom in war we invoke every day, whom we entreat to grant that we may destroy as many of the enemy as possible, and to whom we give thanks when he fulfills our prayers, is the old Jewish God, Jehovah, the God of battles and of vengeance, to whom no sacrifice appears too great, if it is to serve the power and the dominion of his chosen people. The Christian God, however, and his “only-begotten Son,” who wandered about on earth preaching love and sac- rifice, whose kingdom is not of this world—they have noth- ing to do with this shedding of blood, which is entirely con- tradictory to the doctrine they taught. If it were known in certain places in Germany how edu- W., VOL. I.—8.114 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE cated men and religious people throughout the whole world judge these continual blasphemous appeals to God! Luigi Luzzatti, one of the most distinguished politicians and most important thinkers in Italy, who, as is well known, has more than once been Prime Minister (be it observed a strict Jew—this I mention as an example to Germany, whose mission is to “bring freedom,” although in time of peace it does not go so far as to promote a Jew to be a Second Lieu- tenant), Luigi Luzzatti has recently published in the Cor- riere della Sera a remarkable article bearing the title “The abuse of the name of God,” from which I quote some sen- tences : “From the day on which this fearful war broke out Princes (not the people, it must be said) have bored every one by the use and abuse of the name of God. In the tele- grams which were recently exchanged between the Austrian Emperor and the Sultan the Almighty makes his appearance. The matter would take on an ironical tinge if up in Heaven the conquerors and the defeated of Lepanto and the soul of John Sobieski were to hear of it. One could have wished that at least on this occasion they might have felt enough shame to induce them to leave heaven in peace out of the question! . . . Fortunately God has not yet appeared in the telegrams exchanged between the monarchs of England and Japan. And indeed it would have been a difficult matter to reconcile in the same fearful uproar of war Jesus and Bud- dha, a religion without God and a religion which rests on a personal God and Saviour. We are reminded of a bitterly ironical saying of Voltaire, who observed ‘Since God cre- ated man in his own image, how often has man endeavored to render a similar service to God.’ . . . Let us save God from such profanation! Let us leave in peace the Father of all mankind who punishes guilt and rewards virtue, and who gives no one the right to represent Him on earth, and to claim for himself His omnipotence in this tragedy of war.” Such is the judgment of serious men abroad on certain German peculiarities and on the presumption of Germany to be the chosen people of God. The place in the sun which is due to us as the chosenTHE DREAM OF EMPIRE 115 people, thus represents the true object of this war, even if it is not admitted to the nation that this is the object. Germany's Brilliant Development If any one seeks a place in the sun, and seeks it sword in hand, it must be assumed that hitherto he has stood in the shadow. Is this so in the case of Germany? I maintain that the opposite is the case, and in support of this assertion I rely on those very people who have pressed the sword into our hand to enable us to seek a place in the sun. In the chapter entitled ‘Financial and Political Preparation for War” Bernhardi gives a comprehensive view of the brilliant and unprecedented economic development of Germany since the Franco-Prussian war. He points out, and supports his assertion freely with statistics, that the increase of wealth continues on an ascending scale, and that the advance in trade and industry since the foundation of the Empire has been extraordinary. He quotes a lecture delivered by Pro- fessor Dade before a general meeting of the Finance and Tax Reformers held on the 22nd February, 1910, from which we gather that the value of German imports and ex- ports in the last years before 1910 had increased from 300 million pounds sterling to between 725 million pounds and Boo million pounds. In 1912 German imports and exports reached a value of approximately 1,200 million pounds sterling. This brilliant picture of our industrial development, which could be supported by a series of other figures, is nat- urally of use to General Bernhardi, only in so far as it en- ables him to represent as tolerable a further increase of mili- tary burdens. He forgets, however, that in thus demon- strating our continuous increase of national wealth, and in particular in emphasizing our increasing advantage over England, he cuts from under his own feet the ground on which there should be erected the edifice of his Imperialism. If we already have such a sunny corner in the sun, what 1s still lacking? What more do we want? If in many respects we, the most recent industrial State in the world, the growth of scarcely more than two genera-116 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE tions, are already placing England, the oldest industrial State, in the shadow, we certainly cannot complain of any deficiency of sunshine. What about extension of territory? What about Colo- nies? Does the happiness of nations depend on the number of square miles which they possess, or does it depend on their Colonies? If that were the case, small countries like Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway would necessarily be poor in comparison with Great States, whereas as a matter of fact the opposite is the case. The highest figures for imports and exports per head of the population are shown by Holland, followed by Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark, and then only after these the great Powers. The Belgian 3 per cents. stood at 96 when the German stood at 83 per cent. The Norwegian 3% per cents. stood at 102 when the Russian could be had at 81. Similar figures may be adduced in every sphere of economic life. The greatness of a country, and in particular the ex- tent of its Colonial possessions, has no relation to the pros- perity of acountry. The best proof for this fact is found in Germany itself. No one, not even the most fanatical nationalist, will or can dispute the fact that the increase in prosperity of Germany in the last forty years, and in particular in the twenty-six years which have elapsed since the present Emperor ascended the throne, has been without precedent in the history of the world. On the occasion of the celebration of the twenty- fifth anniversary of the accession of William II. a compila- tion appeared under the title, “Social Culture and the Well- being of the People during the first 25 Years of the Reign of William II.” This work describes, and supports with statistics, the prosperity of Germany in all branches of hu- man culture during this period. It is superfluous to repro- duce here these well-known figures. The increase of the national income and the national wealth correspond to the commercial and industrial develop- ment of Germany. Dr. Karl Helfferich, Director of the German Bank,® in his contribution to the compilation men- ®* Afterward Secretary of the Treasury.THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 117 tioned above, summarizes his conclusions in the following words: “The wealth of the German people amounts to-day to more than 15,000 million pounds, as against about 10,000 million pounds about the middle of the nineties of last cen- tury. “These solid figures summarize, expressed in money, the result of the enormous economic labor which Germany has achieved under the government of our Emperor.” That is the place in the sun which we occupy, which no one has disputed, can dispute, or means to dispute, a place in the sun for which we are indebted to the spirit of enterprise, the pertinacity and the skillful methods of our merchants and our manufacturers, but not to the braggart company of our nationalists, and just as little to the sword of our generals or the plans of campaign of our General Staff. It is exclusively the work of the German merchant and his motto “My field is the world,” exclusively the result of the long-enduring condition of peace, which, to judge from the experience of the past, the longer it lasted would have more and more promoted the prosperity of the German people. The Place in the Sun for Us—The Place in the Shadow for the Others In reality our imperialists are seeking to achieve some- thing quite different. They also know, even if they do not say it to the stupid people (and Bernhardi’s book proves that this is so) that we have indeed the place in the sun, that no one seeks to dispute it, and that if any one were to seek to do so, he would necessarily fail. But it is something else that they want. They want the exclusive place in the sun; they are striving for the world-donunion of Germany, and that, at any rate, is what the others are not prepared to yield to them. The German Wehr-Verein, in a meeting held in the House of Representatives, has quite recently expressed this118 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE with all the lucidity that can be desired. In this manifesto we find the following words: “We need room and air for the further development of our German nationality. The time for moderation is past. Relentlessly thinking only of our interests, we must and we will dictate peace. Only one peace can be thought of, a peace which assures the permanent leading world-position of Germany. . . . The criminal breakers of the peace... England, France and Russia, must be so weakened that in future they will cease to be a danger to the peace of the world.” Thus we find, on the one side, breakers of the peace, and on the other a permanent leading world-position! Ex- plain this to me, Count Oerindur! Here we find truth and falsehood mingled in a most dexterous manner. On the one side the true aims of the war-party are openly pro- claimed, and yet on the other the pretense that the peace was broken by the other party is boldly maintained. Never- theless, these gentlemen do not succeed in their somer- sault over logic. If to extend our nationality we must ob- tain for Germany the permanent leading position in the world, that is equivalent to saying in other words that we must compel the others to subject themselves to our leader- ship, since to-day we already enjoy equal privileges with others, but not a leadership. If, however, we do this, it is we who are the breakers of the peace, and not the others. In reality that is the position of affairs, as I will point out. It is leadership that we seek, not merely equal privileges with others. It would be nonsense to say that we seek the latter, since we already possess in the fullest measure such equal privileges. If we are not, as a German professor has expressed it, “morally and intellectually beyond all compari- son superior to all other nations,” there is at least one su- periority which has willingly been granted to our Prussian Germany by the rest of the world for a century and a half. I refer to our military superiority. While we need only fear God, but nothing else in the world, Germany has been feared by all—almost more than God Himself. Even Taci-THE DREAM OF EMPIRE 119 tus long ago pointed out that the defectiveness of the Ger- man frontiers was made good by fear of the Teutons. The fear of Germany produces the effect that our word weighs heavily in the council of the nations despite all “encircle- ment,’”’ and despite the wretchedness of our diplomacy. On a certain occasion recently the most important con- ditions of peace were being discussed in a lively conversa- tion. Frenchmen, Germans, and Englishmen living abroad were taking part in the discussion seated round the com- mon table, and in the end they almost arrived at an agree- ment as to the terms of peace. Then, however, the German observed in jest, “One more condition; you French must take over en bloc our German diplomatists.”” The French- man sprang up in indignation and broke off the peace nego- tiations, exclaiming, “4h ¢a, non! Cac’est trop. Nous con- tinuerons a combattre.” ® And with these words he left the restaurant. The lack of dexterity shown by our diplomacy—where could all the high-born Borussen and Saxo-Borussen be ex- pected to learn skill in business !—the defects of our diplo- macy are constantly made good by the weight of the army, standing in the background. For long the Triple Alliance was indeed only a sham, but it looked quite well from the outside, and it worked almost like a being of flesh and blood. Thus in all the conflicts of recent years Germany, in union with Austria and Italy, has come out quite well in the end, and her allies, relying on the power of Germany, have been able to bear home spoil, with which it would scarcely be proper to compare the acquisitions of the Triple Alliance. Was Austria not able in 1908 to bag Bosnia and Herzego- vina, a fat morsel of more importance than twenty Mo- roccos? Was Italy not able to appropriate without a Eu- ropean conflict Tripoli and the A®gean islands—acquisitions which it can scarcely be expected to disgorge again? In addition to the open door in Morocco, which is of more value than any costly rights of possession demanding the expenditure of blood, have we not got into the bargain a considerable piece of the French Congo—an exchange which ‘“That, no! That is too much. We will continue to fight.” ncecreeeceenen nt120 THE DREAM OF EMPIRE cost Caillaux, the Minister responsible for it, his prestige and his position, and which almost cost his wife her life? Did we not, acting with our ally Austria, achieve in her interests the great feat of gracefully turning the Monte- negrins out of Scutari, which they had purchased with streams of blood, and of introducing there an international garrison? Was not the creation of that mannikin-kingdom of Albania, that “‘vile abortion of filth and fire,” * accom- plished exclusively in the interests of our allies, Austria and Italy? Were we not able to complete with England and Turkey an agreement that was favorable to us in connection with Asia Minor and the Bagdad line? This list of successes could be considerably lengthened. I need not emphasize the fact that, from my point of view, many—indeed nearly all—of these diplomatic bickerings, these alterations and annexations of territory have not the slightest connection with the real interests of the nations. When we reflect that a European war almost broke out in I912 on the question whether Serbia should receive her celebrated “‘window on the Adriatic’—when we reflect that nearly every one of the questions mentioned above brought Europe for the time being to the verge of an armed conflict, while these so-called “vital questions” frequently had not in any way decisive importance for the well-being, in the true sense of the word, of the States immediately concerned, we are constantly constrained to admire anew the lamb-like patience of the nations and the craziness of the diplomatists. 7 Spottegeburt aus Dreck und Feuer—Faust.THE POISONS BREWED BY MILITARISM WHAT MILITARY METHODS DID IN GERMANY FRIEDRICH VON BERNHARDI EUGENE ETIENNE CHARLES ALTSCHUL FREDERICK WILLIAM HOHENZOLLERN That military training has wide values and might even, under proper methods, breed high virtues, no thoughtful man denies. But the picture of what actual militarism, carried enthusiastically to its fullest power, produced in Germany, warns us that it may easily become a weapon more suited to devils than to men. To make this picture clear, to show the progress of German militarism through enthusiasm to falsehood and treachery, and through strictness to brutality and vilest foulness, the German writers are here called on to speak for themselves. First comes the high-priest of militarism before the War, General Bernhardi. He wrote several books which were much honored in Ger- many, and which preached a sort of Darwinian scientific theory that war is the chief means of advancing civilization, because it results always in the “survival of the fittest,” that is, of the Germans. At the opening of the War, Bernhardi was given a command on the Russian front; later he commanded one of the western armies. We give here his teaching as expressed in his last book just before the War, “Our Future—A Word of Warning to Germany.” In this book, while urging all the splendors of war, its uplifting character, its delights, its profits, Bernhardi closes his introduction with the grim warning to his people that the crisis is close at hand and that they “can pass through this crisis and reach victory only if they are determined to the utmost to win and to endure the heaviest burdens and sacrifices.” This ominous forecast of suffering is very different from the au- thor’s usual cheerful war-praise. The glory of militarism, as Bern- hardi usually presents it, was obviously the side the German leaders intended their people to see. In startling contrast is its other face of treachery and cunning, as revealed in our second article. This is an official bulletin from the French Minister of War, M. Etienne, who declared that it was a secret German official document secretly secured by him. France guaranteed this document publicly to the world; and Germany has, at least by silence, admitted its authen- ticity. Comment is unnecessary as to its methods and its criminality. A still blacker side of militarism is discussed by Mr. Altschul, a well-known American citizen. He draws his evidence wholly from Ger- man sources, to prove the barbarity of Germany’s process of military training, and the resulting barbarity and submissive obedience of her troops. This evidence is largely quoted from the notorious trial of 121122 POISONS OF MILITARISM Rosa Luxemburg, the socialist leader since killed in the German tumults of 1919. The examples of evil practices are here limited to a few ; they might have been expanded indefinitely to establish that each foulness was not an exceptional case but a common custom, often unprintable in its gross details. Lastly, in contrast to these terrible cumulative German voices, we let the noisy younger “War Lord” speak for himself. The Crown Prince of the German Empire shouldered his share in the intellectual preparation of his countrymen for the War, by writing in 1913 a book of his own, called “Germany in Arms.” Perhaps it is not a very great book; but it will at least enable readers to understand the writer, who, when the War was over, altered his voice and spoke in less self-asser- tive tones. Gk oo BY GENERAL BERNHARDI T is quite clear that the decisive factor in all diplomatic negotiations is always the factor of actually existing and therefore effective force. Consequently, it is most important for every State which desires to maintain its position among the Powers, to enlarge its sphere of influence, and it 1s par- ticularly important that it should increase all its instruments of power, its army, its navy and its finances. At the same time, it is at least as important to increase the moral and mental strength of the population in every way. Superior moral and mental force alone can form an equivalent for superiority in the material factors which one’s opponents may possess. An advancing civilization and increasing armaments must go hand in hand. Only then can the great- est efficiency be obtained. It follows that absolutely the most important task of a modern State consists in making its armed force as powerful as possible, not only in order to be able to be victorious in war, but also with a view to being successful in diplomatic negotiations. The expansion of the armed forces of the nation is particularly valuable, because military service is perhaps the most important means for increasing the mental and moral forces of the nation. A statesman who does not appreciate the close inter- dependence between armed strength and policy, and who tries to negotiate with his opponents without constantly re- lying on the living forces of the State—he need, of course, not continually and demonstratively show his reliance upon force—can never reckon upon success. A leading GermanPOISONS OF MILITARISM 123 statesman has expressed the opinion that continual reliance upon Germany’s army, while negotiating, would before long involve Germany in differences with all the world.’ If that opinion is founded on his conviction and is not merely a phrase, it would show that he does not understand the very elements of foreign policy. Reliance on our military power is the only means whereby we can obtain what we require without war. Respect of our armed forces will cause our opponents to be cautious in dealing with Germany. Besides, our readiness to throw the army into the diplomatic balance will encourage our friends, and will powerfully encourage them. If in diplomatic negotiations, in the course of which we show our reliance upon our armed strength, we do not suc- ceed by peaceful means either in carrying our point or in adjourning the decision: if, for instance, in case of serious differences concerning a question of territory, we cannot obtain its neutralization or the preservation of the status quo, then we must go to war and defend our justified claims The stronger our armed forces are, the greater is the prob- ability that we shall be successful. Besides, the better our army and navy are organized, the more highly developed is the military, moral and mental strength of the nation and the greater is the confidence in the political determination of Germany among her allies, the more likely will be Ger- many’s victory. War is the continuation of foreign policy with non- diplomatic means. It is the most powerful, but at the same time the most dangerous instrument of policy. It may be asserted that the possibility of war is a necessary imstru- ment of foreign policy. One cannot imagine foreign pol- icy without the possibility of an appeal to arms. If two States are in disagreement, and their disagreement cannot be settled by peaceful means, then no settlement is pos- sible between them except by war. Only the knowledge of the disadvantages to which war may give rise is able to induce a State to sacrifice part of its valuable interests to its opponent. *Von Bethmann-Hollweg.124 POISONS OF MILITARISM It is not generally recognized that this is the case. Even in leading circles the erroneous view is often expressed that one can obtain real political advantages by means of ne- gotiations. There are people who believe that one can in- duce one’s opponent to sacrifice his own interests solely by diplomatic means. Many people even endeavor to eliminate war from international life, and to replace it by international laws and law courts, by arbitration. These say that war is a relic of barbarism which brings untold misery upon man- kind, that it is a violation of right, that it appeals to the brutal instincts of humanity, that it stands in contradiction to the law of Christian love, and is therefore unworthy of a modern and progressive civilized State. The progress of civilization and the closer economic re- lations among nations, many assert, create constantly in- creasing common interests among nations, and should tend to make wars impossible. The abolition of war should fur- ther become probable through the progress of morality. These ideas which, in Treitschke’s words, come to the front only in times when nations become soft and decadent, have obtained such importance during the last few years that even governments have allowed themselves to be influenced by them. It is noteworthy that, owing to the pressure of public opinion, ex-President Taft has gone so far as ac- tually to propose the conclusion of general arbitration trea- ties. In Germany the desire to preserve the peace has, since 1871, exerted an unfavorable influence upon foreign policy. The desire for peace has created a political situation in Germany which I cannot consider favorable to the coun- try. The desire to preserve the peace which everywhere and always is placed in the foreground in Germany, seems to justify our faint-hearted peace policy. To support such views can only do harm and is likely to lame public opinion. We must strenuously combat the peace propaganda. War must regain its moral justification and its political sig- nificance in the eyes of the public. It is necessary that its high significance as a powerful promoter of civilization should become generally recognized. We must learn to un-POISONS OF MILITARISM 125 derstand that economic and individual interests alone must never be the decisive factor in a truly civilized State. We must recognize that the most valuable treasures of a nation are not material, but moral, that it is necessary to make sacrifices and to suffer in the interests of a great cause, that sacrifice and suffering are more precious than enjoyment. In short, we must become convinced that a war fought for an ideal or fought with the intention of maintaining one’s position in the world, is not a barbaric act, but the highest expression of true civilization, that war is a political neces- sity, and that it is fought in the interest of biological, so- cial and moral progress. In the life of individuals and of States there is no stand- ing still. They must rise or decline. I believe it is abso- lutely wrong to contemplate only the barbaric and pernicious side of war, and to omit its practical and ideal benefits. Those who look only upon the harm done by war have never clearly contemplated a great and serious war. Those who have taken part in war will judge differently. How great and holy was the patriotic wave of 1870! All egotistical in- terests disappeared before the glorious feeling which united all Germans and moved them to offer themselves unselfishly to the Fatherland! On the other hand, one must not judge of wars by those wars of the past which have arisen from dynastic or per- sonal reasons, or from sheer lust of robbery. A war always leads to brutalities and to suffering. But at the same time it gives rise to the noblest actions, espe- cially when the freedom, honor and future of a nation are at stake. Then the brutalities and wrongs ot war disap- pear before the idealism which animates the whole. The common danger unites all in a common effort, and this uni- fying factor is a force which frees the mind of the people and elevates them for a long time. Wars destroy the shams of peace, reveal great personalities and place them in power. They give scope to strength, greatness and truth to all the virtues, to unselfishness and to the joy of sacrifice. One ought not to overestimate the economic damage done by war. Although wars bring about economic crises,126 POISONS OF MILITARISM and do harm to the business of many individuals, the victor usually derives the greatest economic advantage from his victory. Germany’s great economic development was made possible only by the victories of 1866 and 1870-71. Throughout history we find that increasing prosperity and increasing political power go hand in hand, because capital and labor require the security of armed power to develop freely. If peace has to be bought with a diminution of po- litical power, the economic damage done by it may prove greater than that inflicted by a sanguinary war. Lastly, it should be remembered that a war which has been chival- rously fought with honest arms is a more moral form of competition than one fought with gold and intrigue under the appearance of peace. Victories of intrigue and gold are won by those who possess gold and lack conscience and morality. They are not triumphs of civilization. Wars are ennobling because small-minded men are swamped in the greatness of the movement. The nations and States are at their greatest when fighting with their whole strength for liberty, independence, and honor. Only in States which calculate with the possibility of war will the character of the nation possess that energy which enables them to develop their moral and mental forces to the highest degree. War has its ideal side and peace has its blessings. At the same time, peace is no blessing if it lasts too long, espe- cially if its maintenance has to be paid for with the abandon- ment of the national ideals. Such a peace dishonors a na- tion, and in such a peace small-mindedness and selfishness flourish, while idealism is destroyed by materialism and the simplicity of manners by luxury. In such times money becomes all powerful,.and character is of little value. The more deeply we penetrate into history, the more clearly we recognize that peace is the normal and the desirable state, but that wars are required from time to time in order to cleanse the moral atmosphere. Political tension can become so great and the irreconcilable interests so acute and so involved that the Gordian knot can only be cut with the sword. When a nation sees its power jeopardized, when itsPOISONS OF MILITARISM 127 ability to solve its problems in its own way is threatened, and when the highest possessions of a nation can no longer be preserved by compromise, then war becomes a moral duty. Such situations will arise as long as the nations look at the development of the world from different points of view. When the pursuit of their ideals leads to differences, war becomes the highest expression of the will to civilization and idealism makes it a necessity. In view of the compelling logic of those considerations it seems surprising that the peace movement has obtained so great an influence. Its success is due to the fact that it is supported by powerful private, and especially by large cap- italistic, interests. There is a great contrast between the views of the United States and Germany on the question of peace and war. The United States have conquered their independence and unity on the field of battle, and they have acquired a great heritage of glory, self-consciousness, and liberty. At present the United States have many competi- tors, but no enemies. Their relations with England are se- cured by the community of language, not of race. Their differences with Japan cannot endanger their vital interests, should it come to war. America need not fear overpopu- tation, in view of her vast and thinly peopled districts in the South and West. The natural wealth of the country makes the Americans independent of foreign States, and their struggle with nature steels their muscles and enables them to undertake the greatest and most difficult tasks. Under these circumstances it is only natural that the Ameri- cans look upon the peace movement with sympathy, for peace can only bring them advantage, while war can only harm them by impeding the development of the country and upsetting the money market. ermany is in a totally different position. Since the col- lapse of the ancient German Empire the German nation has had to fight against its enemies. It has wrested from the Slavs the territories in the East, and to-day the Slavonic flood beats against its frontier with renewed hostility. Towards the West and South the Germans had to defend themselves against the Latin nations, and to preserve their128 POISONS OF MILITARISM political independence during centuries of war, without being able to disarm the hostility of the fanatical French. The most recent political and economic development of Ger- many has at last made England also our most bitter enemy. England fears that she may lose the mastery of the sea and her trade supremacy. She opposes us throughout the world with hostility, and prevents us acquiring colonies, the possession of which is for Germany a question of life or death. If we consider our national circumstances, it is evident why the peace idea has many adherents in Germany, but that idea is not much appreciated by the patriotically in- clined and by the educated. History has taught us that a State which is in Germany’s position can preserve that position only sword in hand. BY EUGENE ETIENNE French Minister of War Paris, April 2, 1913. I have just received from a reliable source the following official secret report concerning the strengthening of the German army: [Memorandum of the German Headquarters Staff on the strengthening of the German army, March Io, 1913.{ The increase has taken place in three stages :— (1) The Conference of Algeciras has removed the last doubt with regard to the existence of an Entente between France, England, and Russia. Moreover, we have seen that Austria-Hungary was obliged to keep some of her forces mobilized against Serbia and Italy; finally our fleet was not at that time sufficiently strong. At the end of the dispute the first matter taken in hand was the strengthening of our coast defenses and the increase of our naval forces. To meet the English plan of sending an Expeditionary Force of 100,000 men to the Continent, it would be necessary to make a better formation of reserves, to be used according to circumstances in the protection of the Coast, in fortresses and in siege operations. It was already clear at that timePOISONS OF MILITARISM 129 that it would be absolutely necessary to make a great effort. (2) The French having violated the Morocco Conven- tions, brought on the incident of Agadir. At that time the progress made by the French army, the moral recovery of the nation, the technical advance in the realm of aviation and of machine guns rendered an attack on France less easy than in the previous period. Further, an attack by the Eng- lish fleet had to be considered. This difficult situation opened our eyes to the necessity for an increase in the army. This increase was from this moment considered as a min- imum. (3) The war in the Balkans might have involved us in a war in support of our ally. The new situation in the south of Austria-Hungary lessened the value of the help which this ally could give us. On the other hand, France was strengthened by a new loi des cadres; it was accordingly nec- essary to anticipate the date of execution contemplated by the new military law. Public opinion is being prepared for a new increase in the active army, which would insure Germany an honorable peace and the possibility of properly insuring her influence in the affairs of the world. The new army law and the sup- plementary law which should follow will enable her almost completely to attain this end. Neither ridiculous shriekings for revenge by French chauvinists, nor the Englishmen’s gnashing of teeth, nor the wild gestures of the Slavs will turn us from our aim of protecting and extending Deutschtum (German influence) all the world over. The French may arm as much as they wish, they cannot in one day increase their population. The employment of an army of negroes in the theater of European operations will remain for a long time a dream, and in any case be devoid of beauty. Aim and Obligations of Our National Policy, of Our Army, and of the Special Organizations for Army Purposes Our new army law is only an extension of the military education of the German nation. Our ancestors of 1813 W., VOL, I.—9.130 POISONS OF MILITARISM made greater sacrifices. It is our sacred duty to sharpen the sword that has been put into our hands and to hold it ready for defense as well as for offense. We must allow the idea to sink into the minds of our people that our arma- ments are an answer to the armaments and policy of the French. We must accustom them to think that an offensive war on our part is a necessity, in order to combat the provo- cations of our adversaries. We must act with prudence so as not to arouse suspicion, and to avoid the crises which might injure our economic existence. We must so manage matters that under the heavy weight of powerful arma- ments, considerable sacrifices, and strained political rela- tions, an outbreak (Losschlagen) should be considered as a relief, because after it would come decades of peace and prosperity, as after 1870. We must prepare for war from the financial point of view; there is much to be done in this direction. We must not arouse the distrust of our finan- ciers, but there are many things which cannot be concealed. We must not be anxious about the fate of our colonies. The final result in Europe will settle their position. On the other hand, we must stir up trouble in the north of Africa and in Russia. It is a means of keeping the forces of the enemy engaged. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary that we should open up relations, by means of well-chosen or- ganizations, with influential people in Egypt, Tunis, Al- geria, and Morocco, in order to prepare the measures which would be necessary in the case of a European war. Of course in case of war we should openly recognize these se- cret allies; and on the conclusion of peace we should secure to them the advantages which they had gained. These aims are capable of realization. The first attempt which was made some years ago opened up for us the desired relations. Unfortunately these relations were not sufficiently consoli- dated. Whether we like it or not it will be necessary to resort to preparations of this kind, in order to bring a cam- paign rapidly to a conclusion. Risings provoked in time of war by political agents need to be carefully prepared and by material means. They must break out simultaneously with the destruction of the meansPOISONS OF MILITARISM 131 of communication; they must have a controlling head to be found among the influential leaders, religious or political. The Egyptian School is particularly suited to this purpose ; more and more it serves as a bond between the intellectuals of the Mohammedan World. However this may be, we must be strong in order to an- nihilate at one powerful swoop our enemres in the east and west. But in the next European war it will also be neces- sary that the small states should be forced to follow us or be subdued. In certain conditions their armies and their strong positions can be rapidly conquered or neutralized ; this would probably be the case with Belgium and Holland, so as to prevent our enemy in the west from gaining ter- ritory which they could use as a base of operations against our flank. In the north we have nothing to fear from Den- mark or Scandinavia, especially as in any event we shall provide for the concentration of a strong northern army, capable of replying to any menace from this direction. In the most unfavorable case, Denmark might be forced by England to abandon her neutrality ; but by this time the de- cision would already have been reached both on land and on sea. Our northern army, the strength of which could be largely increased by Dutch formations, would oppose a very active defense to any offensive measures from this quarter. In the south, Switzerland forms an extremely solid bul- wark, and we can rely on her energetically defending her neutrality against France, and thus protecting our flank. As was stated above, the situation with regard to the small states on our northwestern frontier cannot be viewed in quite the same light. This will be a vital question for us, and our aim must be to take the offensive with a large su- periority from the first days. For this purpose it will be necessary to concentrate a large army, followed up by strong Landwehr formations, which will induce the small states to follow us or at least to remain inactive in the theater of operations, and which would crush them in the event of armed resistance. If we could induce these states to or- ganize their system of fortification in such a manner as to constitute an effective protection for our flank we could132 POISONS OF MILITARISM abandon the proposed invasion. But for this, army reor- ganization, particularly in Belgium, would be necessary in order that it might really guarantee an effective resistance. If, on the contrary, their defensive organization was es- tablished against us, thus giving definite advantages to our adversary in the west, we could in no circumstances offer Belgium a guarantee for the security of her neutrality. Ac- cordingly, a vast field is open to our diplomacy to work in this country on the lines of our interests. The arrangements made with this end in view allow us to hope that it will be possible to take the offensive imme- diately after the complete concentration of the army of the Lower Rhine. An ultimatum with a short time-limit, to be followed immediately by invasion, would allow a sufficient justification for our action in international law. Such are the duties which devolve on our army and which demand a striking force of considerable numbers. If the enemy attacks us, or if we wish to overcome him, we will act as our brothers did a hundred years ago; the eagle thus provoked will soar in his flight, will seize the enemy in his steel claws and render him harmless. We will then remember that the provinces of the ancient German Em- pire, the County of Burgundy and a large part of Lorraine, ate still in the hands of the French; that thousands of brother Germans in the Baltic provinces are groaning under the Slav yoke. It is a national question of restoring to Germany her former possessions. BY CHARLES ALTSCHUL The Great War has focussed the attention of all Ameri- cans upon political and social conditions in foreign coun- tries, and has familiarized them with many matters which had not occupied their minds before. The feature which probably attracts more attention than any other is the dif- ference in the respective points of view of the Teutonic and of the English-speaking nations, as revealed in all mat- ters relating to war and warfare. Character and habits of other peoples have been more closely studied than ever be- fore, and the aggressive leaders of the group of enemyPOISONS OF MILITARISM 133 nations, the Germans, have quite naturally come in for the closest scrutiny. Accustomed as these leaders have been for many years to universal military service, to a large standing army, to offi- cers drawn principally from the ranks of the nobility, and to marked class distinctions, they have absorbed certain no- tions which to us, who have grown up under very different conditions, seem like worship of constituted authority and the unwarranted surrender of individual responsibility. The gradual development of these very notions has brought about an inordinate influence of the military group in public affairs, which at the present moment is frequently referred to and much discussed. It may therefore not be amiss to try to throw some side-lights on the subject. At the outbreak of the war, the German army was ac- knowledged to be the most stupendous military machine im- aginable. It was in all its branches efficient, scientifically developed, thoroughly up to date, and very ably officered. It consisted of a small contingent of professional soldiery and of a mass of men made available by universal military service, and seemed truly representative of the entire nation. To belong to any branch of the service carried, as a matter of fact, a certain prestige at home, and the ambition of almost all educated men was to be appointed officers of re- serve after concluding the regular term of service with the colors. The disappointment in this country at the receipt of the horrifying news about the conduct of this representative body of men when the German army broke into Belgium, was as great as it was sincere. The stories seemed beyond belief; it was incredible that fathers, sons, brothers, could have been so unmindful of their education, of their heritage of whole-souled and humane instincts! But the sickening and revolting details were confirmed, and repeated from dif- ferent districts, until one could no longer resist the con- viction that frightfulness was to be a feature of German campaigning, to be carried out as ruthlessly as the com- manding officers saw fit. Although fully aware that war conditions usually re- ss134 POISONS OF MILITARISM sult in the commission of atrocities by every army—because all restraint of normal life is removed, and the lack of nor- mal surroundings brings about a deplorable abandonment of self-control—yet the world stood aghast at this display of license and brutality. The question very naturally presented itself, whether our earlier very favorable impression of the German army had been warranted or whether insufficient knowledge had driven us to wrong conclusions? What had contemporary opinion in Germany been on this very important matter ? What did the daily press reveal—the best mirror of passing impressions everywhere? In a country in which the influence of Governmental agencies on the press is as great as we now all know it to be in Germany, one cannot expect a frank expression about an institution as closely interwoven with the Government as the army is, except in the opposition newspapers. The press of Germany, as that of most countries, caters nowadays assiduously to the taste of its readers, and devotes much space to matters in which its particular public is especially interested. On this account, the fullest discussion of condi- tions in the army is likely to be found in those newspapers which circulate most widely among the masses, from which the bulk of the army, the common soldier, is drawn. The best source of information for our purposes would there- fore seem to be the daily newspaper Vorwiarts, the official organ at that time of the Social Democratic party, the party which secured about one-third of all the votes cast for the Reichstag at the last election before the war—not only so- cialistic votes, but those of liberals of every description as well, who could in no other manner give expression to their anti-Governmental views. The trial, in 1914, of the socialist, Rosa Luxemburg, one of the active workers in the field of socialistic propaganda, brought to light much information of value in connection with what one of the representatives in the Reichstag, Schulz, called “the gloomy, barbarous bestiality of mal- treating soldiers (Scheusiligkeiten der Soldatenmisshand- lungen) which recalls the Middle Ages.” Rosa LuxemburgPOISONS OF MILITARISM 135 was tried because, at a public meeting, she had used the expression, “It is surely one of those tragedies (Dramen) which are enacted in the German barracks day after day, but the groans of the participants rarely reach our ears.” She explained at her trial that she meant by tragedies, “Any abuse of a soldier, of course particularly such as leads to suicide, desertion, or such as have similar conse- quences. Whatever instances of maltreatment are to be proved here, are tragedies. . . . It can also be proved that these incidents of daily occurrence are considered tragedies by the witnesses. . . . Was it not a tragedy when a soldier in Bautzen threw himself from a fourth story window, and was unfortunate enough to miss his goal and was court-mar- tialed and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for de- sertion?” In answering the statement of the public prosecutor to the effect that, according to the complaint of the Minister of War, defendant had by her remark insulted all the offi- cers, non-commissioned officers, and besides, all persons at- tached to the Prussian army, her attorneys expressed their readiness to prove the correctness of the defendant’s state- ment. They said: ‘We do not intend to prove single blows and knocks, but innumerable ones. The examination of this evidence is startling. We may assert that not one per cent. of it has ever reached the public or the courts-martial. There is an endless chain of complaints which no one has, so far, heard of. Scarcely a witness will speak of two or three blows only, but it is always the question of a chain of incredible cases of maltreatment stretching over a period varying from a month to several years. . . . We have sub- mitted hundreds of decisions of courts-martial from the year 1907 to 1913, in which alone tens of thousands of cases of maltreatment of soldiers have been judicially es- tablished.” When the prosecution of the defendant was first an- nounced, an appeal was issued through the Vorwarts, call- ing upon all to come forward and testify whose own ex- periences in the army were apt to substantiate the statement of the defendant. It is no slight matter in Germany to136 POISONS OF MILITARISM espouse openly the cause of one who is being prosecuted by the Government in a matter as zealously guarded as the reputation of the army ; nevertheless, when the trial started, 922 men from all parts of Germany had responded, and were ready to testify to something like 30,000 separate in- stances of brutal treatment of soldiers. Before the trial came to an abrupt end, the attorneys for the defendant had stated in court what testimony they were prepared to produce in support of the defense, and had men- tioned the names of witnesses and the evidence which was to be proved by each. These witnesses were not called to the stand and did not have the opportunity to testify to these facts; the trial was adjourned before that. But the statement that they were ready to do so was made in open court by the attorneys of Rosa Luxemburg, and their stand- ing as Rechtsanwalt—a title conferred on lawyers in Ger- many when they have borne themselves faultlessly in fol- lowing their profession a certain length of time—is a war- ranty of the integrity of their statement. It will suffice to select from the mass of material pre- sented some particularly striking examples. One witness would testify that: “He was struck in the face with the fist by Lieutenant Erler so that a tooth bled and got loose. He was beaten till he was bleeding, but report of the case was not sent higher up. Musketeer Hempel shot and killed himself after drill, because he had been grossly insulted by a corporal in front of the company. A reservist threw himself in front of a railroad train, another drowned himself, because they could no longer stand the abuse of N.C.O.?. Huebner.” “Another witnessed maltreatment so severe as to cause blood to flow; spitting at soldiers by superiors; cursing by officers, one of whom made two soldiers poke the head of another, who was bodily and mentally weak, into the snow up to his neck. This lieutenant stuck his sword be- tween a soldier’s hands which were tied behind his back, so that when he walked, the point struck the hollow of his knees 2The letters N. C. O. mean “non-commissioned officer.”POISONS OF MILITARISM 137 “A Polish recruit was maltreated so fearfully by a N.C.O, that he finally hanged himself. The N.C.O. got the soldiers to certify that they had seen nothing.” “An officer struck him when he did not succeed in an exercise which had not been practiced and which was not according to regulations. Disgusting invective was used and maltreatment practiced by officers. When the adjutant took his deposition and he wanted to testify to instances of brutality, the adjutant did not want to hear about it and said that the soldier had not got enough.” “Captain von Rock used terribly offensive language. His body servant (Bursche) attempted suicide owing to bad treatment. A N.C.O. broke two ribs of a soldier who while bayoneting dodged a little because he was timid. Neither had the courage to file a complaint.” “Soldiers were struck in the face during instruction. Were made to bend their knees while stretching out the rifle, until they dropped. Holes in the clothes were intentionally torn open, and the soldiers told jeeringly that they would now be worth while mending. Witness saw hundreds of times helmets pressed down and the bands which held them under the chin pulled so that the soldiers got red in the face. Alsatians and Lorrainers particularly were maltreated and frequently called ‘damned French-heads,’ ‘French skulls,’ etc. The N.C.O.’s warned men against complain- ing, promising worse treatment for such cases.” “Witness knew of a case of suicide in consequence of maltreatment. Witness himself, after complaining about a sergeant, was abused by the captain and got five days’ light arrest for improper conduct towards a superior.”’ “A recruit was so badly abused by a N.C.O., in the room, that he cried and said, if that had happened to him in civil life he would have smashed the fellow’s head; he was too much ashamed to tell what had really occurred.” “A merchant by the name of Schuchardt shot himself in 1907 on account of abuse. This case was not brought into court.” “Witness received his training from two N.C.O.’s who had already been punished for maltreating soldiers. Sev-ij ——te—> Ij Dh 1 ' tial ae 138 POISONS OF MILITARISM eral N.C.O.’s maltreated regularly and grossly. Recruits were compelled to sweep the rooms of the N.C.O.’s from nine till eleven at night with tooth-brushes. One recruit was tortured until he went insane and was then dismissed as un- fit for the service.” “T jeutenant Schmidt boxed a soldier’s ears, then ordered all the men to leave the room, and one heard only groaning and cursing. The recruit was injured in such a manner that he had to be discharged, and received a pension for in- jury in the service.” They would have continued to present to the court the details of their evidence, but before the trial had proceeded very far the Minister of War gave notice that he would submit to courts-martial all cases that had been mentioned, which had not been passed upon by such courts before, and were not yet outlawed. This attempt to force before courts- martial the witnesses who had volunteered to testify in favor of Rosa Luxemburg before a civil court, was looked upon as a veiled threat, because these witnesses were more likely to be treated as if they themselves were the accused, if the military authorities desired to frighten off others from testifying. At the request of the Government, but against the ve- hement protest of the defendant, this interesting trial was then adjourned to give the Minister of War an opportunity to carry out his plan. The outbreak of the present war, soon after the last court proceedings, resulted in the case being dropped. There is other material available from which to gather information concerning the conditions in the German army in times of peace. On April 8, 1914, the Vorwdrts pub- lished an article on “German Kultur in the Barracks,” which commences: “When we hear different Prussian Ministers of War talking in the Reichstag about the maltreatment of soldiers, we might be led to believe that a great improvement had taken place with respect to this deep-seated evil in the army. However, he who attentively follows the incessant flow of instances of cruelty, shudders at the abyss of bru- tality which is still yawning. We wish to submit but a smallPOISONS OF MILITARISM 139 selection from the record of cases of maltreatment which have come into court during the last fifteen months; they will suffice to put all attempts at whitewashing in their right place.” The details then fully presented cover the cases of eight officers and of about fifteen non-commissioned officers. The instances of brutality are about the same as mentioned in our former list; but these non-commissioned officers seem to have outdone those whose records we listened to before. We hear that— “In the fourth squadron of the Regiment Garde-du- Corps, two acting corporals and three ‘professional regulars’ maltreated recruits in the most brutal manner with ropes, snaffles, horse brushes, the sword, etc. One of the victims became temporarily insane. “In the Queen Augusta Guard Regiment No. 4, Sergeant Waske ordered a grenadier to lie down before a cuspidor and then called out ‘Drink.’ The grenadier drank from it quite obediently, which proves that ‘servile obedience’ (Kadaver- gehorsam) is no idle phrase.” Glancing further through this illuminating file of papers, we come across an article by Richard Gadke on “Maltreat- ment in the Army,’ from which a few extracts follow: “Tt is likely that but a tenth part of all the reprehensible acts comes to the notice of the superiors, and only at a public trial, exposed as by a stroke of lightning, does one see what is really going on. It is the system that must be attacked, bitterly and relentlessly. The system which has sprung from old, bad, and moldering custom, from antiquated views of the time of the armies of mercenaries. The nature of our entire military organization still resembles that of a troup of lansquenets, gathered from the roughest elements of the people, rather than an army of the people which draws into its fold the flower of our youth for the sole purpose of teach- ing them the use of arms and preparing them for a defense of the Fatherland. Thus, we reach the idea of purely pas- sive, purely suffering obedience; and many a commander is still subconsciously controlled by the opinion of Frederick140 POISONS OF MILITARISM the Great, that a soldier should fear his superior more than the enemy.” Further on, we find extracts from a book by a retired Prussian captain, Hans Pommer, “Twenty Years as Officer of Infantry in the Imperial Provinces” (Reichslanden) ,who says, among other things: “The disciplining of German soldiers is still done by coercive measures, which may have been warranted under feudal serfdom, but which must be considered a mockery of human rights when employed in a modern army of the people. “T knew a captain who insulted his men in the common- est manner and made a habit of striking the man who held his horse when he dismounted, who maltreated his body- servant (Bursche), and yet no one had the courage to pro- ceed against this torturer of soldiers. This captain, who should really have been retired from the army, was even honored with a command in China. Another captain, who closed his career only after having been appointed brigade commander, was so blinded when in rage that he did not mind riding down three rows of men in order to punish a man in the fourth.” From time to time other news-items and articles have appeared in the German press, all reciting similar instances of outrage upon the person or dignity of the soldier. The cumulative proof of brutality is shown in the relentless and unexpected light which Germans themselves have thrown upon the conditions in their army in times of peace. lf Americans had been familiar with these details, they would have expected the worst during the stress of a campaign, and would have been less unprepared for the unheard of barbarities practiced in so many places where the Germans set foot. If officers, non-commissioned officers, and pro- fessional regulars treat their own recruits in the fashion described, in times of peace, what could be expected of troops commanded by such ruffans in enemy country, under the terrific excitement of combat, and particularly when “frightfulness” is the slogan? It is not contended that all German officers are addicted to these practices. There are, no doubt, a great many, perhaps a majority among them,POISONS OF MILITARISM 141 who are themselves opposed to such conditions. But the system has evidently continued in spite of the more humane, and has become so thoroughly ingrained that it showed its true colors as soon as the first opportunity presented itself. BY CROWN PRINCE FREDERICK WILLIAM To-day, indeed, we live in a time which points with spe- cial satisfaction to the proud height of its culture, which is only too willing to boast of its international cosmopolitan- ism, and flatters itself with visionary dreams of the possi- bility of an everlasting peace throughout the world. This view of life is un-German and does not suit us. The Ger- man who loves his people, who believes in the greatness and the future of our homeland, and who is unwilling to see its position diminished, dare not close his eyes in the indul- gence of dreams such as these, he dare not allow himself to be lulled into indolent sleep by the lullabies of peace sung by the Utopians. Germany has behind her since the last great war a period of economic prosperity, which has in it something almost disconcerting. Comfort has so increased in all circles of our people that luxury and claims to a certain style of life have undergone a rank development. Now certainly we must not thanklessly deny that a wave of economic pros- perity brings with it much that is good. But the shady side of this too rapid development often manifests itself in a painful and threatening manner. Already the appreciation of wealth has gained in our country an importance which we can only observe with anxiety. The old ideals, even the position and the honor of the nation, may be sympathetically affected; for peace, peace at any price, is necessary for the undisturbed acquisition of money. But the study of history teaches us that all those States which in the decisive hour have been guided by purely commercial considerations have miserably come to grief. The sympathies of civilized nations are to-day, as in the battles of antiquity, still with the sturdy and the bold fight- ing armies; they are with the brave combatants who, in the words which Lessing puts in the mouth of Tellheim, are— aA Wy ATE é ry nae K a i] 142 POISONS OF MILITARISM soldiers for their country, and fight out of the love which they bear to the cause. Certainly diplomatic dexterity can, and should, postpone the conflict for a time, and at times dis- entangle the difficulties. Certainly all those in authority must and will be fully conscious of their enormous respon- sibility in the grave hour of decision. They must make it clear to their own minds that the gigantic conflagration, once enkindled, cannot be so easily or so quickly extin- guished. As, however, lightning is an adjustment of the tension between two differently charged strata of the at- mosphere, so the sword will always be and remain until the end of the world the decisive factor. Therefore every one, to whom his country is dear, and who believes in a great future for our nation, must joyfully do his part in the task of seeing that the old military spirit of our fathers is not lost, and that it is not sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. For the sword alone is not decisive, but the arm steeled in exercise which bears the sword. Each of us must keep himself fit for arms and also prepared in his mind for the great solemn hour when the Emperor calls us to the standard—the hour when we no longer belong to ourselves, but to the Fatherland with all the forces of our mind and our body; for all these faculties must be brought to the highest exertion, to that “will to victory” which has never been without success in history. [Later comes this passage:] Our country is obliged more than any other country to place all its confidence in its good weapons. Set in the center of Europe, it is badly protected by its unfavorable geographic frontiers, and is regarded by many nations without affection. Upon the Ger- man Empire, therefore, is imposed more emphatically than upon any other peoples of the earth the sacred duty of watch- ing carefully that its army and its navy be always prepared to meet any attack from the outside. It is only by reliance upon our brave sword that we shall be able to maintain that place in the sun which belongs to us, and which the world does not seem very willing to accord us. [The royal author then describes a regimental maneuver of the guards on the field at Doberitz:] The steel helmetsPOISONS OF MILITARISM 143 glitter in the sunshine; in the galloping exercises every in- dividual horseman endeavors to keep on to the man in front, and to keep the right direction—no easy matter when there is dust, and the ground is rough. Many a one stumbles, and away past him gallops the company of riders. What does it matter! When you plane wood, shavings must fall. And there the call resounds over the field, clear and quiver- ing amid the uproar of the galloping mass, “Front!” The reins whirl round, and as if by a stroke of magic, the line is formed again, with a front of five impetuous squadrons of the guards,—and then comes the signal, “Charge!” Then the last ounce is taken out of the horses, and with bodies strained forward and with lances in rest with a “hurrah” we ride to the attack. For any one who has taken part in such attacks, there is nothing fairer in the world! And yet to the true horseman there is one thing which appears more beautiful: if all that were the same, but if only at the end of the rapid charge the enemy were to ride out against us, and the struggle for which we have been drilled and trained, the struggle for life and death, were to begin. How often during such attacks have I heard the yearning call of a comrade riding behind: “Donnewetter: if that were only the real thing!” O horseman’s spirit! All who are true soldiers must know and feel: “Dulce et de- corum est pro patria mori.” * *Glad and glorious [or sweet and fitting] it is to die for one’s country.WOE TO THE CONQUERED! THE SUBJECT FOREIGN NATIONS WITHIN THE GERMAN EMPIRE ERNEST BARKER We face here another side of our review, not the sources of the German outburst, but the results which would have followed upon her success, as these results are revealed in lesser shape by her treatment of foreign races previously her subjects. Along the whole eastern border of Germany and Austria there extended, for a century, a thou- sand mile wide strip of country sometimes called the “Dead Lands of Europe,” a desert of misery in what Nature meant to be a glorious fertility. As Germany has never attempted to maintain that she ruled her submerged foreign peoples for their own good—except as it was sup- posedly good for all peoples to become German or die—the theme need scarcely be presented from more than a single viewpoint. Mr. Ernest Barker is a recognized British authority upon this theme, a Fellow of Oxford University, who has written several works upon the life of various conquered peoples. Perhaps the War itself has taught the only necessary lesson as to Germany’s treatment of subject races. The Poles when appealed to for aid by both Germany and Russia, and offered equally flattering prom- ises by each, preferred positively and even desperately to cast in their lot with the old, autocratic, stupid, selfish misgovernment of Russia rather than trust themselves to “enlightened Germany.” BY ERNEST BARKER OR the last hundred years a dominant conception among the Germans has been that of “the folk” (das Volk). The folk—they have thought and said—is a being and al- most a person; and as such it has its corresponding attributes —its sense of right; its way of speech; its songs, its poetry and its music. Law, according to a great German jurist, is the organ of folk-right; folk-music, folk-songs, folk- poetry—all these are the natural outpourings of the Volks- geist; while as for the folk-speech, that is not only the mediurn for the expression, but also the condition of the existence, of these other things. The philosophy of Hegel 144WOE TO THE CONQUERED! 145 represents in many ways the apotheosis of this German idea of the folk. To Hegel the folk, politically organized as a state, is the home of a system of social ethics that inspires and controls the life of the individual, who finds his peace in its will and his duty in filling duly a station in its system. “The spirit of a nation controls and entirely dominates from within each person,” so that “he feels it to be his own very being . . . he looks upon it as his absolute final aim,” and “his life is hid with that of his fellows in the common life of his people.” The “culture” of the folk—the nation or people—thus becomes a sacred tradition; and the language in which it is enshrined becomes, as it were, the vehicle which carries the holy ark of the covenant. Imbued with ideas of this order, the Germans have shown themselves sedulously careful to maintain the purity of their language, seeking to exclude all foreign or ““Welsh” words, and to express every idea and every concept by means of native Germanic words. ‘‘This movement,” it is said, “has grown with the growth of national unity, and a powerful society, the Sprachverein, has been recently founded, and has published handbooks of native words for almost every department of modern life.” Thus the lan- guage of commerce, of chemistry and of every range of thought, is made purely German; and thus the German lan- guage, unlike the English, which has borrowed freely, and continues to borrow freely, from almost every language that has been or now is spoken, remains what we may call “self- sufficient,’ and indebted to no other. Much may be said, both for and against this cult of linguistic purity. A language which refuses to borrow from other languages loses that flexibility, subtlety of expres- sion and variety of shades of meaning, which an abundance of ‘“loan-words” enables a language that borrows such words freely to attain; but, on the other hand, linguistic purity conduces to a political result, as indeed it is largely based on a political motive—a conscious and vivid sense of na- tional unity and national uniqueness. But whatever may be said of the two ideals—“national- ism in language, as against borrowing; a pure, as opposed W., VOL. 1—¥_.146 WOE TO THE CONQUERED! to a mixed, language”—a new and difficult problem arises, when we find the people who use the pure German tongue seeking to suppress other tongues that are used within the boundaries of German territory—the Polish, the Danish and the French. This is a policy which the Germans have more and more pursued since they finally attained their own na- tional unity in 1870; and it is a policy which cannot but seem to most of us illogical and inconsistent. If folk-speech is a consecrated thing, because it is the vehicle of folk- culture, surely the folk-speech of Poles and Danes and Frenchmen can plead a title to existence, and a right to be used no less than that of the Germans. To inflict dumbness on a people and to mutilate its tongue, at the same time that you proclaim the pure sanctity of your own speech, is to sin against the spirit of nationality with the same breath with which you proclaim it holy. Why, then, do the Germans seek to coerce into the use of an alien speech—a speech which is the vehicle of a cul- ture that is not their own culture—those peoples who dwell in German territory, but do not belong by blood or tradi- tion to the German people itself? At bottom, perhaps, the reason is an instinctive feeling that the area of German gov- ernment should be also the area of German nationality, and that, if there are alien elements in the area of German gov- ernment, they must be, as it were, chemically changed and transmuted until they are unified with and incorporated into the area of German nationality. Just as foreign words must be purged from the German language, so foreign languages must be purged from the German soil; and just as it is resolved that foreign words must not be used in Ger- man speech, so it is enacted that foreign speech must not be used on German soil. The analogy here implied and used is not, of course, a true or valid analogy. It is one thing for a German who speaks German to say that he himself will use no word but German, nor does he lose his freedom if he thus abne- gates the use of foreign words: it is another thing for a German to say that other peoples within the German borders, who do not speak German, shall use no language but Ger-WOE TO THE CONQUERED! 147 man in schools and courts of law and public meetings, and these other peoples do lose their freedom when they are thus compulsorily deprived of the use of their native lan- guage. But the analogy, however untrue, is pressed, as we shall see, to its uttermost consequences. The instinctive feeling which leads to its application is corroborated by other instincts. There is the German pas- sion for drill and uniformity and Polizei. Accustomed to putting men into actual and physical uniform, the German Government has drifted, as it were, by a curious extension of policy, into the habit of seeking to put men into meta- phorical and mental uniform. After all, it can be argued, the army needs a uniform language of command; and if the army demands linguistic unity, will not linguistic unity best suit the needs of the schools, the law-courts, and all public intercourse? The administration of education will be easier if schools are not bilingual; the administration of justice will be simpler if there is only one language for plead- ing; the whole of public administration will run on a single gear, instead of running on several, if the State addresses its subjects, and can always expect to be addressed by its subjects, in a single language. Last, but by no means least, we have to remember that spirit of exclusive nationalism which has entered so strongly and so pervasively into German life. There is the feeling that German culture is so large, so embracing, so universal, that it is good for all to use the language which is the key to all its treasures. If men are forced to use it, they are, after all, being ‘‘forced to be free”; and at the cost of a little compulsion in their schooldays they are initiated into the large freedom of the mind, which will come from a full and liberal education in German speech, and, through Ger- man speech, in German culture. These, then, are some of the reasons why the period be- tween the end of the Franco-Prussian war and the begin- ning of the present war is filled with examples of linguistic oppression in the German Empire. That oppression takes four main forms. First and foremost, it affects the school; and since religious instruction is part of the work of the148 WOE TO THE CONQUERED! school, it affects religious instruction, and tends to result in something perilously akin to religious persecution. Sec- ondly, it affects the law-court, the post-office and all the organs of public administration. Thirdly, it affects public meetings: and finally—and most striking of all—under de- crees like that of April, 1899, which required teachers in Posen to disuse Polish in the family circle, and under police action such as that which entails domiciliary visits for the seizure of Polish literature, it affects the home itself. Much of the oppression is based on administrative or- ders, such as the orders of the Minister of Education, which make the use of German compulsory in schools ; some of it is based on administrative action by the police ; but part of it is based on direct legislation by the German Reichstag itself, and oppression of this kind cannot be ascribed to “bureaucratic” methods, but must necessarily be referred to the deliberate will of the German people itself, as expressed by its representatives. It is a law of the Reichstag of 1908 which regulates the use of languages other than German in public meetings. Under Article 12 of that law—the law of associations—the use of German is made compulsory in public meetings, except at election times. An exception is made for those districts in which more than 60 per cent. of the population do not speak Ger- man; but even this exception is to disappear at the end of twenty years from the passing of the Act. A Polish dep- uty, therefore, must speak to his constituents in German, except at election times—or unless the district in which he is speaking is one which contains more than 60 per cent. of inhabitants who do not speak German. It is necessary, in order to comprehend the methods and the results of linguistic oppression in the German Empire, to study separately the three main areas of such oppression —Prussian Poland, Danish Schleswig and Alsace-Lorraine. The methods used, and the results attained, were indeed much the same in all the three areas; and the law of 1908 applied to them all equally. But the three areas differ in some respects; and the methods and results of linguistic op- pression, so far as it is based on administrative action,WOE TO THE CONQUERED! 149 which in its nature varies from one area to another, have also shown a number of differences. In this connection it must be remembered that the Poles and the Danes in the German Empire are subjects of Prus- sia, and as such were governed by the Prussian Ministry ; while the people of Alsace-Lorraine were not included in Prussia, their country being a federal territory (Reichsland) governed by the federal authority. Another difference, which is also important, is that the Poles are distinct from the Germans of Prussia both in religion and language; the Danes differ in language, but not in religion; while the ma- jority of the people of Alsace-Lorraine differ in religion (being Roman Catholics), but not in language—speaking, as they do, a German dialect. In 1815 Frederic William III., in a rescript to his Polish subjects, promised to respect their nationality and to give their language an equal position with German in public meetings. Down to 1870 the promise was on the whole ob- served. Between 1830 and 1841, it is true, a governor of the province of Posen, Flottwell by name, pursued a policy of Germanization, founding schools to encourage German culture, and buying land from Polish owners to sell it again to Germans. But his policy was not extreme: the Poles remained loyal subjects of Prussia; and they fought for Prussia in the war against Austria in 1866 and the war against France in 1870. Almost immediately after 1870, however, Bismarck began a campaign against the Poles. In 1872 he embarked on a struggle with the Roman Catholic Church, which is the Church of the Poles. “The beginning of the struggle,” he says in his “Reflections and Remi- niscences,” ‘‘was decided for me preponderantly by its Polish side’; and he refers to statistics which “proved the rapid progress of the Polish nationality at the expense of the Ger- mans,” and to official reports which showed that “there were whole villages in Posen and West Prussia containing thou- sands of Germans who through the influence of the Catholic section had been educated according to Polish ideas, and were officially described as Poles, though in the previous generation they were officially Germans.” To meet this sit-= the a aye! A 150 WOE TO THE CONQUERED! uation, a law of 1872 deprived the clergy of the right of inspecting schools which they had hitherto enjoyed, and gave the work to Government officials. Next year, 1873, an administrative order required that the German language alone should be employed in schools, except for religious instruction—though even for this purpose German might be used, if the pupils were sufficiently advanced to under- stand the language. The war thus begun in the schools was continued and extended in succeeding years. A further step was attempted in 1883, when the provincial Government of Posen ordered that religious instruction should be given in German, if half the students in a school were of German birth. The Prussian Minister of Education at the time disapproved of the order, and it was rescinded; but a later Minister, Dr. Studt, reversed the action of his predecessor, and since the beginning of this century the principle of the order of 1883 has been enforced, the alleged grounds being “the awk- wardness of a bilingual system of education, and still more the persistent efforts of the Poles to make their privileged position a means of racial isolation.” By thus enforcing on Polish children religious instruction given in a language other than their own, the Prussian Government practically turned linguistic oppression into religious persecution; and, indeed, as the confession of Bismarck, quoted above, suffi- ciently illustrates, the anti-Polish policy of the Government was from the first also anti-Catholic in its motives. Besides interfering with religious instruction, the Prus- sian Government also interfered with the life of the family. A decree of 1899, already mentioned above, required teach- ers—German teachers who had married Polish wives—to cease to use the Polish language in their homes. Children who are deaf-mutes are instructed in German—with the re- sult that they cannot converse with their father and mother, their sisters and brothers. The possession of Polish books dealing with Polish history and literature renders a pupil liable to exclusion from secondary schools. Domiciliary visits by the police are the inevitable result of this rule; and such visits, in their turn, inevitably result in “incidents” andWOE TO THE CONQUERED! I51 misery. At Thorn, for instance, a town in West Prussia, the police suspected a secret society of schoolboys. They visited the homes of a number of boys attending one of the schools, which they thought to be the center of the “con- spiracy,” and in six of the homes they found historical and religious books printed in Polish, which were immediately confiscated. Sixty of the boys were charged with belonging to an illegal society, and brought to trial. That there was a society among the boys, and that the object of the society was to study Polish history and literature (subjects ex- cluded from the curriculum of the schools), was not denied ; that there was any “conspiracy,” or any “illegal” intention, was not and could not be proved. None the less, a number of the boys were expelled from the town and the district— only to be aided, by a sum of £1,000 raised by Polish students in Switzerland, to pursue their studies at Lem- berg and Cracow, in Austrian Poland, where the Govern- ment was not so impossibly rigorous. Under conditions such as these, school life becomes a burden and a torment. The German schoolmaster becomes a rigorous martinet: the Polish schoolboy becomes a sullen rebel: the school becomes a battleground. Children are punished by the police for misdemeanors committed in school: one pupil may be confined in a house of correction for not giving his answers in German during a lesson on the catechism; another may be condemned to four months’ imprisonment for /ése-majesté, because he has spoken “trea- sonably” about current politics. While children are pun- ished, parents are fined. A French author, writing in 1910, estimates the total of the fines up to that date at a sum of $50,000. The result of the whole system is truancy en masse and a system of school-strikes. A series of such strikes began in 1906, and lasted into the spring of 1907. They began in Posen, but they extended as far as Breslau in Silesia. In October, 1906, there were 40,000 children on strike, and in the course of 1907 as many as 60,000. The Government replied with a heavy hand, by wholesale dismissals, imprisonments and fines. For “incitement” to school-strikes 35 priests were sentenced to periods of im-152 WOE TO THE CONQUERED! prisonment amounting in the aggregate to 20 months, and to fines amounting to $1,500; 1,450 parents were fined $4,500 for the non-attendance of their children at school; other persons were sentenced to terms of imprisonment amounting in the aggregate to 6% years for offenses con- nected with the school-strikes. So far of the schools. Linguistic oppression, however, has also invaded other areas than that of the school. In 1870 Polish was still used in the law courts and Govern- ment offices: a Pole might still address the Government in Polish, and still be answered in Polish. That has all been changed. German is now the only language of justice and administration: and just before the war, in 1913, Prussian postmen were refusing to transmit or deliver letters ad- dressed in Polish. Persons with Polish names are pressed or forced to change them to a German form; a Pole called Szulc or Szuman may be fined if he fails to write himself Schultz or Schumann. Villages and streets have been rebap- tized in German; over 2,000 streets, it is said, have been thus renamed in the dominant language. Shop signs must be in German; the very inscriptions on tomb-stones must be in German; railway book-stalls must not sell Polish papers. A Polish deputy, speaking in the Prussian Parliament not long ago, could say: “No Pole can plead his own cause before the courts in his mother tongue, and should he wish to employ it before the administrative authorities, he is not heard. Im- memorial names are summarily abolished. Family names are distorted by the authorities. Every class meeting is held under police surveillance, and open-air meetings are pro- hibited altogether, Polish theatrical performances are for the most part forbidden or stopped.” The interference of the Government with public meetings and with the drama—it should also be added, with the Press —is an interference with freedom of thought and its expres- sion only second, if indeed it is second, to interference with freedom of education. The law of 1908 on public meetings has already been mentioned. Polish drama was everywhere prohibited, except, it is said, in the town of Posen during the winter; and Polish amateurs could not produce a Polish play,WOE TO THE CONQUERED! 153 because a translation had to be presented to the police in order that their consent be obtained—a consent which always ar- rived too late. Polish papers were subject to rigorous super- vision, and their editors often found their way to prison, though this, it should be added, is a fate not unknown to editors of German papers. The result of this repression was intellectual stagnation. It is hard for the things of the mind to flourish under a censorship of this order; and the intellec- tual life of the Poles migrated steadily from Prussian Po- land to the milder air of Austrian Poland. Yet, in spite of all oppression, the unconquerable spirit of the Poles has striven to maintain its life and vigor. Volun- tary effort and voluntary associations—which have played a great part in Poland, particularly in the economic sphere, but also, and with almost equal vigor, in the intellectual—have been directed to the preservation of the national life. The “Sokol” associations of the Poles, for social and educational purposes, are numerous; in 1914 there were said to be as many as 1,000, each with a membership of about 100. The congress of Sokols at Posen in 1905 decided to organize courses of lectures and conferences on literary and historical subjects. If Polish culture was excluded from the official schools, it was thus fostered by the voluntary agency of edu- cational associations, which correspond, in their way, to our own “Workers’ Educational Association”; and as long as these associations were active, Polish speech and Polish cul- ture could not die. The Polish Press, whatever the surveil- lance to which it was subject, continued to exist; its chief organ was said to have a circulation of 70,000. Popular libraries are also flourishing; they disseminate the national literature, and serve, along with the Press, as an instrument of national education. On the whole, the German policy of linguistic oppression failed to attain its object in Prussian Poland. Indirectly it even benefited the Poles. Taught to be bilingual, they have found their gift of tongues to be economically valuable, and they have been successful competitors for business with German rivals, who only knew and could only use a single language. This is an undesigned mercy, which can hardly154 WOE TO THE CONQUERED! excuse those who have been its involuntary donors. It won the Prussian Government no gratitude; while the design and the execution of its linguistic policy turned the Poles, loyal subjects of Prussia fifty years ago, into the ways of passive resistance and resolute, if quiet, defiance. A race which was, and might have continued to be, loyal, if it had been left free to speak and to use its own language, lost its loyalty when it was commanded to speak and to use an alien language as a sign of loyalty. The perverse policy of the German Government naturally had perverse results. Intended to Germanize the Poles, it made them more Polish. Intended to incorporate them in German culture, it has driven them back on the ardent culti- vation of their own. Intended to create loyalty, it destroyed loyalty. Intended to strengthen Germanism, it strengthened the Poles at the expense of the Germans. “The Polish language,” wrote a German professor in 1914, “gains not only in the country districts, but also in the towns, and even in the town of Posen. The Polish middle class grows, while the German decreases.” But it is always so. He who sows dragons’ teeth can only reap a crop of armed and defiant warriors. Such is the treatment of their language that has been meted out to the 3,500,000 Poles in Prussia. That treat- ment was the model which the Germans followed in dealing with the Danes of Northern Schleswig. At first sight it is curious that they should have done so. There are only some 150,000 Danes in Northern Schleswig; and it could hardly have threatened German culture if they had continued to use their own language freely. The Danes, again, are Protes- tant, like the majority of the Germans of Prussia; and one might have expected to find a natural bond of religious sym- pathy between Prussia and the Danes, such as could not exist between Prussia and the Catholic Poles. But the Prussian passion for uniformity and rule tri- umphed over these differences; and the Danes, in spite of the differences of their position, were treated on parallel lines with the Poles. ‘To conquer the school is to conquer the future,” said Bismarck ; and on that line, as we have seen,WOE TO THE CONQUERED! Iss he acted in dealing with the Poles. It is exactly on the same line that the Prussian Government acted towards the Danes. It is one of the tragedies of the history of German educa- tion that the school, instead of being used as an end in itself, should have been used as a means to political objects. This is the real meaning of Bismarck’s saying; and it has been the real motive of much of the educational policy of the Prussian Government. Dr. Studt (the Prussian Minister of Educa- tion who was responsible for the order that religious instruc- tion should be given to the Poles in German if half of the pupils of a school were of German birth) is reported to have said in 1907, in visiting North Schleswig, “Teachers should always remember that it is their mission to educate children by inculcating the sentiments of loyalty and love to the Ger- man fatherland.” To import a political motive into educa- tion is fatal to a free and liberal education; and when that political motive results in the use of compulsion, and the drilling of a non-German population in German speech and history and culture, it is fatal to any sort of education at all.ALSACE-LORRAINE WHY FRANCE AND GERMANY CONTINUED IRRECONCILABLE CHARLES HAZEN THE OFFICIAL PROTEST OF ALSACE HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE WILLIAM DAVIS Even more complete than the German government’s failure with the Danes and Poles was its failure to satisfy the people of Alsace-Lor- raine. Indeed from the time of the seizure of these lands by the newly created German Empire in 1871, their people were so ill-treated that the “Crime of Alsace” remained an ever-festering sore in European statecraft. The question as to the original State ownership of Alsace and the German-speaking portion of Lorraine is of no importance whatever. From ancient Roman days the ownership of the west bank of the Rhine has been in constant dispute between Teuton and Gaul. Moreover no region in the world possessed any permanent nationality so long as, under the feudal system of medieval times, kings and dukes disposed of their States as private inheritances, splitting them up at will and presenting them as personal gifts to one another. The people of Alsace only acquired a real nationality of their own in that red birth-hour of Europe’s Democracy, the French Revolution. Then at last the awakened Alsatians ceased to belong to some king by his “divine right”; they came into the peoples’ “divine right” of Na- tionality. Passionately they declared themselves French. And there- after they were French. They sealed their love and loyalty in the blood of a hundred battlefields. In face of this great rich patriotism of the people, no argument pleading that a German emperor or duke of old once held Alsace as part of his inheritance, has any meaning for the modern world. In 1871 the German Empire seized this French land by force, in defiance of the desperate protests of the Alsatians. That was the orig- inal crime. But time heals all ancient wrongs, and a wiser Germany might have at length won the affections of the Alsatians. She did not do so. For over forty years they remained Democrats and Frenchmen, and were persecuted as such. The conditions of the seizure of Alsace by Germany are here de- scribed by America’s foremost authority on European history, Pro- fessor Hazen of Columbia University. The persecution that followed in the Prussian military effort to force Alsace to become German is given in the words of Professor Davis of the University of Minnesota, quoted from his book, “The Roots of the War.’ On a theme which has so long vexed Europe we can get our clearest view from un- prejudiced American scholars. The extreme German view is voiced by Treitschke, the foremost advocate of progress by conquest. As Professor of History in Berlin in the 1890’s and favorite historical lecturer to the Court, he established the view of official Germany. 156ALSACE-LORRAINE 157 BY CHARLES HAZEN ? HE Treaty of Frankfort, which closed the Franco-Ger- man War of 1870, transferred to Germany from France a territory nearly as large as the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island, 5,600 square miles, 1,700 villages, towns and cities, and 1,600,000 human beings, the consent of not one of whom was either asked or given. What reasons did the Germans give for this momentous act, this violent mutilation of a neighbor, this subjection of a million six hundred thousand of its citizens to an alien rule? Many different arguments were urged by many different kinds of people. Poets, historians, editors gave one set of reasons, economists another, military men and Bismarck still a different one. It was the opinions and the determination of the military men and of Bismarck that really counted and were decisive. Nevertheless the latter were entirely willing that the German masses should be influenced by considera- tions less harsh and materialistic, provided only they were influenced in the same direction and toward the same end. Virtue in their opinion had its place in the world of thought and action, only virtue should never become a fetish. This danger has thus far been successfully avoided in Germany. The argument that presented the fairest exterior, and that influenced the great popular classes of Germany, justi- fying this forcible annexation against their will of a protest- ing people, was that after all these people had once been Ger- mans, and were Germans still in all essentials, and that, as soon as they found themselves once more in the German family, the false and perverted ideas that the French régime had inculcated in them would drop away, and the “long-lost brothers” would thus be liberated not only in body but in soul from an intolerable and unworthy thraldom to the foreigner. It was widely asserted that the Alsatians were real Germans at heart despite the attempts of the French to make them French, and that annexation, as soon as it was an accom- 1Reproduced from the Unpopular Review by kind permission of Messrs. Henry Holt & Co.158 ALSACE-LORRAINE plished fact and, therefore, safe, would be greeted by them with unfeigned satisfaction and joy. This was the argument of Germany’s historical rights, an argument which can be clearly presented only if given at length, a task from which we are precluded here. Alsace and Lorraine had once been included within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. Therefore, they should be in- cluded within the new German Empire. But so had Holland and so had Switzerland been parts of the Holy Roman Em- pire, but had long been independent, and were entirely satis- fied with their independence, and were highly resolved to maintain it, as their history and their constant attitude amply demonstrated. Was this a reason for Germany’s resuming them? Nowadays the Pan-Germanists believe that Germany should do this very thing, but in 1870 the reason was not considered applicable to them, though it was considered per- tinent and adequate to the case of Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans said that the annexation of Alsace to France was the work of a robber-king, Louis XIV., who had torn it from Germany ; and that Germany, now that she had the power, had also the duty to take back the stolen goods. We have no desire to enter upon a defense of Louis XIV. His political morality was not fundamentally superior to that of the pres- ent ex-Emperor of Germany. But he lived in the seventeenth century, while William II. lives in the twentieth. Moreover it is altogether too summary a statement to say that Louis XIV. simply seized Alsace-Lorraine by an unjust and wanton use of force. To say, as Count von Hertling does, that they were snatched by a robber king is an undue simplification of history. The process of annexation began in 1552 with the acquisition of Metz, Toul and Verdun, in return, it should never be forgotten, for services to the Protestants of Germany in their war against Charles V., bent upon the extermination of Protestantism. A part was se- cured by violence and usurpation during the succeeding period. A century later, in 1766, Lorraine was incorporated in France by an entirely natural and peaceful process, the extinction of the reigning house by death, and the passage by inheritance of the country to the related House of Bourbon.ALSACE-LORRAINE 159 Mulhouse voluntarily and unanimously sought incorporation in France in 1798. Thus Alsace and Lorraine became French. The process covered therefore a period of two hundred and forty-six years. One thing is certain, the robber king did not reign or live that long. German historical exegesis is sometimes too curt. Having acquired Alsace and Lorraine, France did some- thing which Germany did not do after 1871. She ruled them well and humanely. She gave them the maximum of liberty. She left them largely alone, trusting to time and not to com- pulsion to reveal to them the advantage of the French con- nection. Gradually and quietly, without friction or injustice or heart-burning, the Alsatians and Lorrainers found them- selves more comfortable, more prosperous, more peaceful than they had ever been. And when the French Revolution came, with its attractive, captivating message of liberty and equality, with its powerful attack upon a despotic past, upon feudalism and tyranny in social and political customs and in- stitutions, when the tonic and invigorating spirit of the new era of democracy swept over France it found no more en- thusiastic adherents than in Alsace and Lorraine. By a pro- found intellectual and spiritual sympathy, by a complete community of interests and convictions, those provinces be- came French through and through in every fiber of their being. The evidence of this complete and willing and joyous absorption of Alsace-Lorraine in the life of France is over- whelming. The Napoleonic period continued the work of consolida- tion and inner fusion. Alsace and Lorraine were swallowed up, like all the other provinces of Old France, in the general history of the country. They took an honorable, whole- hearted and distinguished part in the long series of Napo- leonic wars. By every token a people could give, they were completely and proudly French. On the Arc de Triomphe in Paris are inscribed the names of twenty-eight Alsatian and Lorraine generals, among others, Kellermann and Kléber, Lefebvre and Rapp, Custine and Marshal Ney. The careers and characters of these men- ~~ a ee 160 ALSACE-LORRAINE were the common talk of the Alsatian fireside and of the camp. They were the heroes of the people, adding imperish- able luster to the history of Alsace and Lorraine, their native lands. In the face of evidence like this, it was sheer and jejune nonsense to claim, as many of the Germans did, that the people of these provinces were Germans, long-lost brothers, waiting to be delivered from bondage. Some of them knew that this was nonsense, though they would not admit it or would only half concede the facts. Heinrich von Sybel, friend of Bismarck, and historian of the Founding of the German Empire, made at the time a brief for Germany’s right to the provinces, basing it on ancient possession, yet he said this in 1871: “We know, indeed, that the Lorrainers since 1766, the Alsatians since 1801, have become good Frenchmen, and to- day, oppose, by a large majority, the reunion with their Fatherland. For such an attitude, we do not deny, we feel respect. The inhabitants were born and brought up in the great French commonwealth; they would be men desti- tute of common feeling and patriotism if, notwithstanding their German speech, they did not consider themselves French to-day. But we trust to the power of Nature; water can be diverted for a time into artificial channels, but with the removal of the dam will flow with the full stream. If to-day the inhabitants find the French more sympathetic than the Germans, soon they will find themselves among their own kind in Germany. In Germany they will find the best gifts of the French State, the consciousness and security of a mighty commonwealth, a sound harvest of science and art, a wide market for their industry, and a progressive parlia- mentary life. They will have lower taxes, greater religious freedom, numerous schools, and in the army will meet the sons of the educated class.” It may be said in passing that the Alsatians and Lorrainers have not found their own kind in Germany since they were forced to become subjects of the Empire, nor have they par- ticipated in a particularly progressive parliamentary life, norALSACE-LORRAINE 161 has their service in the German army been to their taste or advantage. Other reasons in justification of their seizure of Alsace- Lorraine were urged by the Germans, and have been reiter- ated ever since. Ethnology has been invoked. Skulls in Alsace are of the German type. Ethnic unity should be repre- sented by political unity. To which it may be replied that in Alsace are also abundantly found skulls that are of the Celtic type. Moreover if Germany has the right to annex this country by reason of ethnic affinity, by what right does she hold unwilling Polish people, who are racially utterly dissimilar, Slavs not Teutons? Evidently what is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander. This eth- nological argument is not serious, nor is the other one that, as the Alsatians largely speak German, they are Germans and belong in the German Empire. Yet this argument has seemed to a good many superficial people to have weight. Are those who speak a given language justified in forcibly annexing others who speak it? In Switzerland three lan- guages are spoken, and the one most widely spoken is Ger- man. Would the Germans be justified in annexing the larger part of Switzerland, France in annexing the French cantons, Italy the Italian? If the map of Europe is to be based on the linguistic theory of one language, one people, it will have to be redrawn from top to bottom and from end to end, and will when com- pleted along the new line present a surprising and shocking appearance. For in nearly every existing state of Europe more than one language is in use; in the British Isles, Gaelic, Welsh, English; in France, Breton, Basque, Provengal, Italian, French; in Finland, Swedish, Russian, Finnish; in Austria-Hungary at least ten different languages; in Russia a considerable number. Moreover, one is tempted to ask if the fact that the people of the United States speak English would give England title to our country which, it will be recalled, once belonged to the British Empire. If the German Empire, created in 1871, has the right to ‘‘resume”’ what had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, which died in 1806, it is difficult to deny sim- W., VOL. I.—11.— ee ee 162 ALSACE-LORRAINE ilar privileges to the British Empire, which has never died, but has had a continuous history. And those privileges should also be extended to Spain, which once ruled most of Central and South America, where Spanish is still spoken. Evidently Count von Hertling’s linguistic statesmanship leaves out of account some rather important historical fac- tors necessary to the picture of the contemporary world. It is not a panacea for the ills of the world; it is a quack medi- cine, liberally advertised, and the honesty of whose proprietor is not absolutely above reproach. But the Germans had still other arguments. In annexing Alsace-Lorraine, in drawing the western boundary as they did, they said that they were but establishing the “natural” boundary. In other words the Vosges, being mountains, are a natural obstacle of importance, therefore, a fit frontier, while the Rhine, being a river, is not one. Concerning this it may be said that the Vosges mountains are not Alps, and that the Rhine was considered a boundary by Julius Cesar, and has always been and will always be a formidable ditch to cross in the face of an enemy controlling the other side. Moreover, in 1871, the Germans were not bound by the theory when it didn’t suit them. They pushed their line west of the Vosges whenever they saw a sufficient advantage in so doing. These various reasons for the annexation of Alsace-Lor- raine were not the real ones that determined the action of the Government. They were simply so much food for gudgeon, so much dust for the eyes of excessive innocence. Military reasons were the primary reasons for the famous act. The boundary was determined largely by the military men. They wished Metz, and they took it, because, as Moltke said, it was the equivalent of an army of a hundred thousand men, though it was west of the linguistic boundary, and as French as Bordeaux itself. The Germans took Alsace because it would be, as Bis- marck said, an admirable glacis, a military zone behind which is a fortress, in fact a powerful first line fortification. It was on the ground of military necessity, in other words of military advantage, that Germany made the annexations ofALSACE-LORRAINE 163 1871. Bismarck, there is abundant reason to believe, took no stock in the other arguments to which we have alluded—that of language, that of the natural frontier, that of historical right. These theories might be valuable, as they had an influence over the popular mind. Over his own mind they apparently had none. In 1867 he expressed in an interview the following opinion: “Suppose,” he said, “France entirely conquered, and a Prussian garrison in Paris; what are we to do with our victory? We could not even decently take Alsace, for the Alsatians are become Frenchmen and wish to remain so.” But by October, 1870, after the Prussian vic- tories of August and September, he sang a different tune. “Germany,” he then said, “wants peace and will make war until she gets it, let the consequences be ever so lamentable from a humane point of view. . . . This peace will be se- cured by a line of fortresses between Strassburg and Metz, as well as by those two towns, which will protect Germany against the dread of a second attack by France.” At the end of the following January, after the capitulation of Paris, his words were as follows: “As you see, we are keeping Metz; but I confess I do not like that part of the arrangement. Strassburg is German in speech and will be so in heart ten years hence. Metz, however, is French, and will be a hotbed of disaffection for a long time to come.” Military reasons then were the primary reasons for the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Another reason, powerful with the government, was the economic advantage to be de- rived. Germany wished the coal and iron mines of these provinces. She had begun the process of acquiring such lands at the expense of France in 1815 after the overthrow of Napoleon. She carried it much farther in 1871. Itas to the annexation of 1871 that she is indebted for much of her industrial strength to-day, the basis of her political power and of her vaulting ambition. In 1913, out of 28,000,000 tons of iron ore extracted from German soil, 21,000,000 came from the mines of annexed Lorraine. To the rapes of 1815 and 1871, Germany owes much, as she is very well aware. The French, having lost their mines, subsequently164 ALSACE-LORRAINE discovered others in the part of Lorraine left to them in 1871, in the valley of the Briey. In 1913, owing to the expansion of her industries, Ger- many was obliged to import from abroad 14,000,000 tons of ‘ronore. This is almost the exact amount annually extracted from the mines of Briey, which Germany seized at the be- ginning of the present war. But there is another angle from which this famous trans- action must be contemplated, the point of view of those most immediately concerned. In February, 1871, before even the negotiations for peace between France and Germany began, the people of Alsace-Lorraine protested against what they saw was coming. Their representatives in the French Na- tional Assembly solemnly declared “the immutable will of Alsace and Lorraine to remain French territory,” asserted that France could not agree to the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, that the French people did not have the right to accept such a mutilation, that France might “experience the blows of force, but could not sanction its decrees,” that Europe could “neither permit nor ratify the abandonment of Alsace and Lorraine,” that it could not allow “the seizure of a people as a common herd” nor permit a peace which would be “a legitimate and permanent provocation to war.” The conclusion of this protest was as follows: “Wherefore we call our fellow-citizens of France and the governments aiid peoples of the entire world to witness in advance that we hold to be null and void every act and treaty, vote or plebis- cite, which would consent to the abandonment, in favor of the foreigner, of all or of any part of our provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.” Two weeks later, on March 1, 1371, immediately after the ratification of the preliminaries of peace by the National As- sembly, the representatives of the sacrificed provinces again solemnly protested against outraged right. This famous pro- test, whose passion and whose pathos have since moved all right-thinking men for two generations and ought to arrest and fix the attention of the world to-day, should be read in full.ALSACE-LORRAINE 165 ~ THE PROTEST OF 1871 The representatives of Alsace and Lorraine submitted to the Assembly, before peace negotiations were begun, a dec- laration affirming in the most formal way, in the name of the two provinces, their will and their right to remain French. Handed over, in contempt of all justice and by an odious abuse of force, to the domination of foreigners, we now have a final duty to perform. We declare once more null and void a compact which dis- poses of us without our consent. Henceforth and forever each and every one of us will be completely justified in demanding our rights in whatever way and manner our consciences may approve. At the moment of leaving the chamber where our dignity no longer permits us to sit and in spite of the bitterness of our grief, the supreme thought which we find at the bottom of our hearts is a thought of gratitude to those who, for six months, have not ceased to fight in our defense, and our un- alterable attachment to France from which we are torn by violence. We shall follow you with our wishes and we shall await with entire confidence in the future, the resumption by a re- generated France of the course of her great destiny. Your brothers of Alsace and Lorraine, now cut off from the common family, will preserve for France, absent from their hearths, a filial affection until the day when she shall resume her rightful place there once more. BY HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE In view of our obligation to secure the peace of the world, who will venture to object that the people of Alsace and Lorraine do not want to belong to us? The doctrine of the right of all the branches of the German race to de- cide on their own destinies, the plausible solution of demo- gogues without a fatherland, shivers to pieces in presence of the sacred necessity of these great days. These terri- tories are ours by the right of the sword, and we shall— ee tay el ey 5 } ang it 166 ALSACE-LORRAINE dispose of them in virtue of a higher right—the right of the German nation, which will not permit its lost children to remain strangers to the German Empire. We Germans who know Germany and France know better than these unfortunates themselves what is good for the people of Alsace, who have remained under the misleading influence of their French connection outside the sympathies of new Germany. Against their will we shall restore them to their true selves. . . . Before the nineteenth century closes, the world will recognize that the spirits of Erwin von Steinbach and Sebastian Brandt are still alive, and that we were only obeying the dictates of national honor when we made little account of the preferences of the people who live in Alsace today. BY WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS : Unfortunately the conquerors of 1871 had never learned the sage proverb: “The more haste, the less speed.” If loyal subjects of the Kaiser could have been made by ministerial edicts from Berlin, the Alsatians would have been instantly contented and happy: but they were not Brandenburgers. Their lands had been trampled over by invading armies: their homes had often been desolated: Strassburg had been ruthlessly bombarded: while up and down the whole land they were still mourning their dead. On the 30th of Sep- tember, 1872, the new government, however, enforced its edict compelling all the people to decide whether they wished to be Germans or Frenchmen. If Germans they must submit to the new régime. If Frenchmen they must prepare speedily to quit the land of their fathers wherein they were now counted as alien interlopers. As a result, at the very least 45,000 persons (in the main among the most intelligent and promising young men in the land) deliberately took the sor- rowful road to exile. In 1914 these men, gray-headed now, were to see visions, dream dreams, and say moving things to the soldiers of France. Almost simultaneously the teaching of the French language in elementary schools was forbidden. * Copyright, 1918. Reprinted by the kind permission of The Cen- tury Co.ALSACE-LORRAINE 167 In the city of Strassburg, where the Marseillaise had first been flung upon the air, it was prohibited to learn its lan- guage, save as a “foreign tongue” for advanced pupils, like English, Italian and Russian. Under French occupation a certain mongrel type of German had always been spoken in the Alsatian villages. The French had never troubled about this. It had not prevented the Alsatians from being zealous patriots. Now, by a natural reaction, many a Teuton-speaking Alsatian prided himself on chattering also a little bad French. But what drove the annexed population to peculiar wrath, was the almost instant enforcement of the German military conscription. Their slain brethren in the French uniform were hardly cold and buried before the youth of the two provinces were commanded to don the spiked helmet and follow the Prussian drill-sergeant. Vain were protests. In 1871 a deputation of citizens went up to Berlin to expostu- late. Bismarck told them brusquely, “Prussia had an im- mense experience of the results produced by wearing the Prussian uniform. Get the King’s coat on a man’s back and let him wear it for three years, and you have made not only a good soldier but a good ‘burgher’ [for Germany] out of him.” “Yes,” retorted Klein, leader of the deputation, “but you must get the coat on first and that is what you can never do!” Twelve thousand Alsatian young men at that time fled from their homeland merely to escape the Kaiser’s livery, and entered the Frencharmy. The rest submitted outwardly, but with a sullen spirit that made them of most dubious value as soldiers. The new régime might introduce an admirable legal system and build many new railroads,—all this counted for nothing beside the tyranny of the drill-master. The conquerors had in fact adopted a relentless policy of “thorough,” and held to it with native tenacity. Under the French régime, whatever the Paris government, the Alsa- tians had enjoyed pretty complete local autonomy. The French prefect had usually been a lax, good-natured func- tionary, only meddling in serious cases. The government had no doubt been haphazard, unscientific, somewhat ineffi- cient—and popular. Now everything was changed. A168 ALSACE-LORRAINE swarm of officials with all the Prussian characteristics, plus even greater rigidity—thanks to feeling themselves on the defensive and to being charged with the propagation of Kultur—was turned loose on the land with autocratic pow- ers. Down to 1879 the two provinces were ruled practically by a military dictator sent from Berlin. In that year an attempt was made to set up a simulacrum of constitutional rule. The provinces were henceforth to be a “Reichsland,” a dominion held by all the Empire In common, not by Prussia merely, but with the Kaiser appointing the governor-general and otherwise exercising pretty complete sway. There were to be a local elective diet and other forms of political “free- dom,” but the powers of the governor-general and his coun- cil (appointed by the crown) were such that the voters could do little more than register public protests by their ballots at one governmental act after another. The Berlin rulers did ‘ndeed make a serious attempt to conciliate local opinion by sending down for once a really humane and enlightened governor, Baron von Manteuffel. His intentions were good, and he tried sincerely to let the Alsatians preserve their self- respect. “I do not ask for your sympathy,” he declared, “but I advise you to look on the union of Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire as definitive.” Von Manteuffel won the personal good will of the people he was sent to govern. But his very condescension raised against him enemies at home. He was accused by his fellow Germans of “negotiating with the enemy’’ because he adopted mild measures; and the horde of lesser officials who had swarmed into the new province, greedy adventurers (“‘car- pet-baggers” Americans would call them), anxious only to seize on every public post, tyrannize and grow fat, denounced him as little better than a traitor. In 1887 he died. The Alsatians mourned him, but he had not convinced them their new masters were anything but despots. At many an elec- tion the deputies Alsace-Lorraine sent up to the Reichstag were violent “protesters” against the new régime, and the friction grew rather than diminished. It was under Man- teuffel that the Bishop of Metz was awarded the PrussianALSACE-LORRAINE 169 Order of the Crown, which he repaid by expressing his regret at this unwelcome honor in a public letter to the governor. When Manteuffel died, the small-fry officials felt that their time was come. Kindness had failed; “proper sever- ity” should now teach these returned but ungrateful sons of the Fatherland, the provincials, to appreciate their blessings. What happened soon after is thus summed up by Paul Hymans, a native Alsatian,—born in 1874 after the annexa- tion, and witness to many things. “Within a few months Alsace was subjected to every kind of German brutality. Deputies were expelled and Alsatian societies were dissolved. Political prosecutions took place on every side, for offenses such as seditious cries or emblems, membership in the ‘League of Patriots,’ high treason, etc. To guard the Alsa- tians against ‘intimidation’ by their French relatives, in- tercourse with persons beyond the frontier was made im- possible by a regulation prescribing the use of passports.” There was even a report that Bismarck wished there would be an insurrection in the hope of crushing disaffection once for all in blood. The natives were too wise for such folly. They offered the passive resistance which is always so exasperating to a government which demands inward submission as well as external obedience. Of course all important government offices were retained by Germans from across the Rhine. Emigrants were sent in from Prussia to take the farms of the exiles who had gone to France, just as other colonists had been sent into the Polish lands. The newcomers nat- urally were treated as pariahs by the natives. Their social relations were miserable. A Prussian came to Alsace as a stationmaster. Being a domestic soul, he desired a wife; no Alsatian girl would marry him. He was obliged to send to Berlin for a consort to share his home and responsibili- ties. In all, about 300,000 Germans thus settled in the Reichsland; but they remained a mere army of occupation among the 1,550,000 odd natives who longed to see thei go. They were only so many untactful provocatives to fric- tion and a new disloyalty. After William II. had ousted Bismarck, there was a par-~~ ae ee 170 ALSACE-LORRAINE tial relaxation of the worst of the régime of petty officials that had followed Manteuffel. William, however, by his speeches gave small encouragement to the hopes of the Al- satians for a revocation of the deed of 1871. “We would rather,” said he in an oration, “sacrifice our eighteen army corps and our 42,000,000 inhabitants on the field of battle than surrender a single stone my father and [his generals] . .. have gained.” A new generation was growing up in Alsace-Lorraine: young men and women to whom French days were a story for their elders, but the new generation was not being won for the German régime. Unfortunately for their loyalty the Alsatians as a race had a keen sense of humor. It was not always possible for them to take their Prussian pre- ceptors with sufficient seriousness. In 1895 occurred a typical incident at Detwiller, a village near Zabern. A cer- tain peasant had a fine white cock with a lordly red crest. The owner most treasonably dyed the bird’s tail blue— making him the veritable emblem and colors of France. This overt act was promptly denounced by the emperor's loyal police. They ordered the peasant to slaughter his sedition-teaching fowl. The man refused. The police saber then avenged the outraged fatherland: and so the feathered traitor perished. The Paris papers made merry over the tale: and diplomats more gravely observed that the incident had completely effaced all the efforts of the Kaiser to cultivate “good relations” with France at the opening of the Kiel Canal and the visit there of some French warships.® From the beginning of the third emperor’s reign down to the eve of the great conflict matters did not better them- ® German self-seriousness and lack of humor produced weird results sometimes in Alsace. A’ German Protestant clergyman visited an Alsa- tian pastor’s family. He tried hard to persuade his clerical friend to speak German in his household. The other replied that “his wife insisted on speaking French.” ‘The visiting cleric vainly argued that it was weak and cowardly to be thus dominated by a woman. Finding his efforts unsuccessful, he sent his friend a treatise “On the Biological Imbecility of Woman” (“Uber den biologischen-Schwachsinn des Weibes’). The Pan-German congress, to which he formally reported this deplorable case of demi-treason, duly applauded his patriotic en- deavors.ALSACE-LORRAINE 171 selves. Sometimes it was a case of petty persecution, some- times of grievous invasion of ordinary human rights Finally in 1911 the German authorities conferred on their Reichsland a moderately complete autonomy with a real local constitution, putting it somewhat on a par with the other German states, although the governor-general was still sent down from Berlin and there were other unpleasant evidences of servitude. This long-delayed benevolence pro- duced no lucky results. The newly elected “Landtag”’ promptly showed its disaffection by cutting down the gov- ernor-general’s salary, and refusing to vote the annual al- lowance for the Emperor’s hunting trips to Alsace, when he had deigned to chase a few stags and flush some par- tridges in the game preserves of this part of his dominions. The Prussians promptly retaliated in 1912 by canceling the orders for locomotives for their state railways which had been given to an Alsatian concern, That same year the “All-Highest” visited Strassburg and flung his imperial warning at the Mayor. “Listen! Up to now you have only known the good side of me; you might be able to learn the other side of me. Things cannot continue as they are: if this situation lasts, we will suppress your Constitution and annex you to Prussia!” The Social Democrats all over the empire of course danced with glee at this threat. Their spokesman in the Reichstag declared that here was a confession, on the very highest authority, “that annexation to Prussia is the heavi- est punishment one can threaten to impose upon a people for resistance against Germany. It is punishment like hard labor in the penitentiary, with loss of civil rights!’ The Landtag, however, was not suitably intimidated. It an- swered the Kaiser by two resolutions: (1) that their new constitution was not to be altered save by the will of the Al- Satians themselves; (2) that the Reichsland should have a national flag. Neither of these suggestions of course was acceptable at Berlin, and so the stress continued. In 1913 came the notorious Zabern incident. Zabern was a pleasant little city in Alsace. In its garrison was the gist. Prussian infantry, and among the officers thereof172 ALSACE-LORRAINE was a youthful lieutenant of the true junker school, a certain noble Baron von Forstner of some twenty years of age, who took his honors very seriously. School children and factory lads seem to have called names at him, and he, in addressing his men, seems to have retaliated by styling the Alsatian recruits Wackes, a local title of derogation. There was another story that he had promised his men a ten- mark piece if one of them brought down a Social Democrat, provided it came to shooting. The reports of von Forstner’s crude remarks spread; the town papers grew caustic and the colonel of the garrison, von Reuter, warned the local civil magistrate, Director Mahler, to restore order (there having been small demonstrations) or he would do so him- self. On November 29, 1913, Mahler having refused to object to lawful proceedings, when a civilian crowd gath- ered in front of the barracks, von Reuter directed a subal- tern to order it to go home. The angry burghers refused, whereupon the military charged out and arrested some fifteen civilians, including three high judges and the state prosecuting attorney himself who chanced to get caught in the throng. These four dignitaries were speedily released ; the other civilians were held in durance vile over night and then released. This clash of burgher and soldier produced wrath throughout Germany; von Reuter was already hated by the liberals as an exponent of extreme junker theories. He was tried for violating the law which forbade the soldiery to interfere in civilian matters, but was promptly acquitted by his military court on a technicality. The wrath of the liberals was great, and it was shared by many level-headed conservatives. The Governor-General of Alsace himself felt constrained to resign as a protest at this usurpation of civilian functions—but an order from the Emperor com- manding the military henceforth to keep within their au- thority caused him to withdraw his action. Very quickly, however, Zabern and the noble lieutenant, Baron von Forstner, again gave business for the telegraph. This highborn gentleman had not been wisely withdrawn te another garrison town less acquainted with his manner-ALSACE-LORRAINE 173 isms. He fell into an undignified altercation with a lame shoemaker of the neighborhood. Very probably the clown presumed upon his physical weakness and made unflattering remarks. Von Forstner, not feeling that his opponent’s infirmity should be any protection, drew his saber and wounded the cripple. Once more there was uproar. Von Forstner was promptly tried by court martial. In a lower court he was convicted and sentenced to one year in cus- tody ; a higher tribunal, however, promptly took up the case on appeal and acquitted the lieutenant “for self-defense”’ ! * Von Forstner had thus vindicated his ‘‘honor,” so dear to every Prussian officer, by repaying revilings with a blow from the noble’s weapon, but in the Reichstag civilian wrath boiled over. The defense of the government advanced by Bethmann-Hollweg was feeble and evasive; and oil was poured on the flames by the arrogance of the war minister, who spoke also, and said bluntly that von Forstner might have been overanxious to protect himself, but that such a “courageous young officer” was an asset to the nation. The chancellor was of course not so much to blame as the mili- tary officials, and behind them the Kaiser, their chief, who had allowed the folly of a subaltern workman, and the “Jewd fellows of the baser sort” in an Alsatian town, to make a great national issue. But it was easier to bait Bethmann-Hollweg than William of Hohenzollern and the War Office. The Reichstag, on the 6th of December, 1913, oassed a vote of censure upon the government, 393 to 54, only the ever-faithful Conservatives voting in behalf of the military. Had this vote of censure been carried in almost any other European parliament, the Prime Minister and all his subordinates would have resigned immediately. As it was, Bethmann-Hollweg, holding his office not by parliamentary majorities but by the good favor of the Kaiser and the military, smiled blandly and continued with the next items on the government program. Only the socialists were bold ‘The crippled shoemaker was held by two soldiers while their lieu- tenant slashed him. Afterwards a pocket knife was discovered in the civilian’s pocket. It was against this that the officer defended himself.174, ALSACE-LORRAINE enough to insist that he should auit office. The “National Liberals” and the “Centrum,” although they had voted for the censure, were unwilling to force the issue. The Reich- stag had simply expressed the opinion of a pretentious, off- cially recognized debating club. Nevertheless the incident had sent panic through the junkers and the princely gentlemen in the Potsdam pal- aces, Doubtless they cursed von Forstner and von Reuter roundly in private as “‘blockheads” and “asses” even while they publicly defended them. The rift between the civilians and the military had been advertised too clearly. The Zabern incident, in other words, taught the junkers, the Pan-German propagandists, and their allies, the great manufacturers who were clutching at world trade, that despite the great material prosperity they had brought the Empire, despite the careful drilling of public opinion, their position was getting precarious. It doubtless had its effect upon their august personal head, the God-crowned Em- peror and King. Its whole effect surely was to get them all to quicken their efforts, already promising fearful success, to ease the home situation by a foreign war. In that same year (1913) the situation became so bad that Alsatian conscripts who had lately, as a special favor, been allowed to render their army service near their home towns as were the rest of their fellow citizens, were now ordered to perform their terms in the army at a distance from their native state.° Nineteen hundred and fourteen saw increased friction, with the poet-artist, Jacob Waltz, one of the most distin- guished literary men in Alsace, under prosecution for trea- son because of satires upon the German administration in the form of books for children. For this crime he was tried before the Imperial Supreme Court at Leipzig, ac- quitted on the more serious charge, but sentenced to one year’s imprisonment “for insulting the police and inciting to disorder.” He fled to France, and very soon thereafter ® During three sojourns in Germany the author was assured that the Alsatian conscripts could not be trusted in battle on the Western front. In 1914 I understand they were actually mobilized against Russia.ALSACE-LORRAINE 175 the Great War began, at the outbreak of which several prominent Alsatians either escaped over the border or were imprisoned for the attempt. When the European conflict commenced it was clear enough that the German attempt to assimilate Alsace had failed utterly. ‘In Alsace-Lorraine we are in an enemy’s country,” a Prussian statesman is quoted as saying: and the Kaiser’s forces were sent through the country with a healthy anxiety lest the first defeat make the whole region blaze up in revolt behind them. Many of the “needful se- verities” the Germans inflicted on Belgium were explained as being absolutely unavoidable, because the experience of Alsace-Lorraine had demonstrated that a policy of “‘le- niency” was useless for a conquered population. The fact of course was, as an American writer has well put it, that “begotten as the Prussian system had been under conditions where iron discipline was a requisite for success, thoroughly convinced of its own efficiency, it knew no law but that of force, and failed in those peaceful contests where victory must be won by conciliation.” However, the issue of the lost provinces had still larger bearings, important for all the world. A calm-minded Frenchman stated the issue as seen by his nation thus: “It is produced by an irreconcilable opposition between two con- flicting conceptions of right; sovereignty of government by right of conquest—the principle of the German monarchy ; sovereignty of the people, whence arises the right of every population to determine its nationality—the principle of French democracy.” In 1884 the “International Peace League,’ one of those multifarious and pathetically ineffective peace societies which were covering the earth, met at Geneva and passed this resolution: ‘The conquest and forcible annexation of Alsace-Lorraine constitutes the chief obstacle to [lasting] peace, and the true cause of the enormous armaments.” This statement was still true with only a slight exaggeration in 1914. If Germany had been sure of the loyalty of her Reichsland and on reasonably good terms with France, Ar- mageddon could hardly have come to pass as it actually did.AUSTRIA FINDS DANGER IN THE BALKANS GROWTH OF A NATIONAL SPIRIT AMONG THE SERBS CONSTANTIN DUMBA G. M. TREVELYAN Let us look now, in briefer fashion, to the racial problems of Aus- tria, her treatment of her vassal peoples, her resistance to the every- where rising tide of Nationalism and Democracy, and her consequent difficulties with Serbia and with Russia. Some clever maker of phrases may in some far future day dismiss the Great War as “the war about pigs.” From one narrow viewpoint, that is what it was. Serbia’s main product for export, her main source of national wealth, was the humble pig. But since the little mountain land was persistently barred from access to the sea, her export of pigs was largely dependent on the goodwill of her neighbors. Her eastern neighbor, Bulgaria, raised pigs also and naturally sought to bar the Serbian product in that direction. Hence for many years Serbia’s chief commercial outlet for her pigs was through Austria. The Austrian government, after annexing Bosnia in 1909, declared war on the Ser- bian pig. He was barred from entry into Austria. Thus Serbia faced economic destruction. So serious was the situation that King Peter of Serbia and his councilors solemnly considered the necessity of sur- render, of placing their land under Austria’s government and so re- opening the market. Instead they fought the two Balkan wars against Turkey and Bulgaria, and emerged triumphant, thinking that now surely they had won a seaport, a means of exit for the pigs. But Austria, and also Italy, in the peace treaty of 1913 in the Balkans, the Treaty of Bucharest, barred Serbia from the sea. Thus Austria still held her little rival in economic slavery. What wonder that the Ser- bian hatred for Austria overleaped diplomatic bounds! This of course was only one phase of the Balkan quarrels; but Aus- tria dealt with all problems in the same spirit. She took the calmly Teutonic attitude that her rights, her wishes, must override all others. What matter if Serbia perished, so long as Austria expanded. This faith is well expressed by Dr. Dumba, the Austrian Ambassador to the United States in 1914. In offering to explain the situation to Amer- icans, Dr. Dumba sees the Balkan troubles solely as a crafty diplomatic struggle between Austria and Russia. He assumes as an axiom that some great Power will of course devour the little Balkan States and only exerts himself to show how wickedly Russia works and how nobly Austria conducts what he calmly calls her “natural expansion toward the east.” That phrase in fact has long been the catchword of Aus- trian policy, the “Drang nach Oest,” the “Summons toward the East,” the “Call of the Orient.” For a more sympathetic view of the Serbians themselves, it has 176AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS 177 seemed better to offer not a Serbian writer but a more impartial state- ment by a well-known British essayist who dwelt for a time in Serbia. It should be remembered that Britain was not, at the outbreak of the War, pro-Serbian. She would never have fought for Serbia, but was inclined officially to approve of punishing her for “disturbing the peace of Europe”’—even though that peace was to Serbia but a form of death. C.F Hi: BY CONSTANTIN THEODOR DUMBA HE war between Austria-Hungary and Russia may well be said to be the outcome of conflicting civilizations and conflicting aims. The controversy between the Dual Monarchy and the Serbian Kingdom is only an incident in the greater struggle between German civilization, as repre- sented by Austria-Hungary, and Russian aspirations on the southern frontier of the Dual Monarchy. Toa proper un- derstanding of the conflicting trend of these two forces— Austria-Hungary and Russia—a realization of the respec- tive interests of the two Powers in the Near East is essential. Our interest in the Near East is economic, and not at all nationalistic. Russia’s interest is solely sentimental or na- tionalistic. The Monarchy was the dominant trade factor in the Balkan States. Russia has no trade worth mention- ing, either in Serbia or in any other Balkan State. The Gagarin line of steamers on the Danube, which Russia main- tained at great cost, carried hardly any freight to Belgrade, except supplies for the Russian minister in the Serbian capital. Austria-Hungary sent merchants and commercial travelers into the Balkan States. Russia, on the other hand, sent priests, consuls, agitators, and apostles of the Slavic idea. The natural expansion of the German Empire of Austria toward the Near East began after the permanent expulsion of the Turkish hordes by the victories of Prince Eugene of Savoy. Parallel with the Austrian expansion southeastward went the Russian advance toward the Black Sea. In an effort to avert a clash in this parallel but gradually con- centering expansion, Emperor Joseph and Empress Catha- rine met late in the eighteenth century—1787—in the Cri- mea, and reached an agreement for the dismemberment of W., VOL. 1.—12.178 AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS Turkey. Under this project of monarchs, the western part of the Ottoman Empire, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, now the bone of contention between the Monarchy on the one hand and Russia and Serbia on the other, was apportioned to Austria. To Russia’s share were allotted the regions now known as Rumania and Bulgaria. It was at this period that the Russian dream of the possession of Constantinople, first broached in the form of a mythical will of Peter the Great, began to assume reality as a governing principle of Russian policy in southeastern Europe. In the nineteenth century, Metternich, in vain, tried his conservative policy for the maintenance of the territorial integrity of Turkey. The Monarchy’s championship of Turkey as a permanent territorial and political entity in Eu- rope failed because of Russia’s persistent aggressions. At the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, which adjusted the bounda- ries of the Balkan Peninsula after the Russo-Turkish War, Count Andrassy abandoned this policy of Prince Metternich. Under the treaty negotiated in Berlin, the independence of the kingdoms of Serbia and Rumania was recognized and the tributary principality of Bulgaria was created. In these arrangements the principle of nationality was the predomi- nant consideration. Count Andrassy’s chief interest in the proceedings of the Congress on behalf of Austria-Hun- gary was commercial, as Russia’s was sentimental or na- tionalistic. Andrassy sought to secure an outlet for our industrial products. This attitude was in accord with Austria’s previ- ous dealings with Balkan peoples. He first concluded a com- mercial treaty with Rumania before it was an independent kingdom. Accordingly, one of the clauses which were in- corporated into the Treaty of Berlin at Austria’s behest placed Serbia under the obligation to reach a commercial un- derstanding with the Dual Monarchy. But even this obliga- tion Serbia carried out only under great pressure from Vienna. Another outcome of the Congress of Berlin—and a fateful one, as now appears—was the mandate of the Powers for the occupation of the provinces of Bosnia-HerzegovinaAUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS 179 by Austria-Hungary for purposes of pacification and ad- ministration. The relations between the Monarchy and Serbia in the first years of the new order of things were satisfactory and harmonious. Hand in hand with the economic dependence of Serbia upon Austria-Hungary as the main and almost exclusive outlet for Serbian commerce, went a political in- timacy between King Milan’s administration and the Gov- ernment at Vienna. But against this friendly relation the Radical Russophile party carried on an energetic campaign. This campaign was supported at much cost by Russia, which conferred scholarships upon hundreds of Serbian students in Russian universities, and educated many Ser- bian officers in Russian military colleges. In addition to these cultural efforts of the Russian Government, the so- called Slavic Benevolent Society in Moscow and St. Peters- burg always stood ready with ample funds to give material support to all poor Serbs who should show a desire to avail themselves of the educational facilities of the Russian Em- pire. Such were the mild beginnings of the Russian propa- ganda in Serbia, which was destined to lead to a tragic climax in Serajevo a few years later. After the assassination of King Alexander, son of King Milan, and Queen Draga in June, 1903, the Russophile Rad- ical party, under Nikola Pashitch, the present premier, came into complete and almost undisputed control in Belgrade. Under King Peter, the successor of King Alexander, the Russian minister at Belgrade assumed the role of a sort of viceroy. Russian dominance over Serbian affairs was espe- cially conspicuous under the late Baron Hartwig, who was at the head of the Russian legation in the Serbian capital during the two Balkan wars and until his death in 1914. Under the influences set at work by Russia, the attitude of Serbia toward Austria-Hungary underwent a complete reversal. As Austro-Hungarian minister to Serbia before 1903, I often discussed with the king or his ministers the destiny of Serbia. They all seemed to take it for granted that the door to the west had been closed to the Serbian nation by the Austro-— i 180 AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and only the door to the south—in Macedonia—was open. Serbia had given up the dream of a Serbian expansion at the expense of the Monarchy, and was considering conquests to the south, in Old Serbia. Accordingly, the activities of the nationalistic societies under the department of propaganda at the Serbian Foreign Office were cultural. They took the form of the establishment of schools and churches in Mace- donia for the spread of the national ideal, very often at the expense of the Bulgarians. This purely educational cam- paign lasted until the sudden end of the reign of Alexander. Under King Peter began the propaganda of action which was destined to have a tragic counterpart in the assassi- nation of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his consort in Serajevo. Bands of raiders, or comitadjis, were organized, armed with bombs and rifles, and sent into the debatable territory of Macedonia to convince Bulgarians and other nationali- ties that they were really good Serbs. These methods, until the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was an- nounced by Austria in 1908, were applied only to Mace- donia. After that event, the activities of the propaganda under the inspiration of Russia were transferred to Aus- trian and Hungarian territory. The active interest of Russia in the newly annexed lands came in the wake of two rebuffs for Russian arms and Russian diplomacy. During Russia’s struggle with Japan, the Monarchy had maintained the friendliest relations with Russia, in the hope that the colossus of the North would succeed in retaining its outlet in the Far East. With the triumph of Japan in Manchuria, Russia swung back to a keen revival of interest in the affairs of the Near East. But the second disappointment—this time a failure for Russian diplomacy—was to come. It is the custom to speak of the annexation of Bosria and Herzegovina as having been carried out by Austria to the accompaniment of profound secrecy. Such is not the case. The Monarchy, before the formal act, had exchanged several friendly notes on the subject with Russia. It is not gen-AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS 181 erally known that Russia had even given her conditional approval of the plan of annexation in advance of its exe- cution, At a conference in the Castle of Buchlau, in Mo- ravia, in the autumn of 1908, Baron von Aehrenthal, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, had ob- tained the consent of Iswolski, his Russian colleague, to the prospective step. In return for Russia’s friendly atti- tude in the matter, von Aehrenthal pledged to the Russian Foreign Minister Austria-Hungary’s consent to the open- ing of the Straits of Constantinople to the Russian fleets. When Iswolski, on continuing his trip, presented this plan to the British Foreign Office, he was quickly convinced that the agreed-upon guid pro quo was impracticable. Then began the opposition of Russia to the annexation by Austria- Hungary of the country which had been rescued from an- archy and placed upon the road to progress by Austrian arms and statesmanship, and in which Austria-Hungary had expended vast sums for essential improvements. This op- position was voiced by the Russian press in a series of vio- lent utterances and by Serbia in a campaign of incendiary and indecent attack upon the Dual Monarchy. Serbia's de- fiant attitude lasted from October, 1908, until the follow- ing March. Austria-Hungary was then compelled to pro- ceed at great cost to a partial mobilization as a defensive measure. In point of fact, the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina was neither a stealthy nor an unforeseen event. On the eve of the opening of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, Aus- tria, like England, had set down conditions for its neutral- ity in the coming conflict. The Monarchy, among other considerations, stipulated the acquisition of control in Bos- nia, and Great Britain the inviolability of the Straits of Constantinople. Both these conditions Russia sought to evade after the defeat of Turkey. England enforced the performance of Russia’s promises by the dramatic appear- ance of its fleet in Besika Bay; the Monarchy obtained the performance of Russia’s part of the bargain with the Dual Monarchy at the hands of the Congress of Berlin. Despite the double assent which Russia had given to our182 AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS control in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia picked out the Bos- nian issue as the key-note of a wide appeal to all Slavic nations as an example of the “Austrian peril.” Russia is extremely reactionary in its domestic policies and extremely revolutionary in its foreign policies. The character of the Russian agitation carried on in the Austrian Slavic prov- inces may well be designated as revolutionary. The courts in Hungary only recently finished consideration of a char- acteristic method of Russian propaganda on Hungarian ter- ritory. Several Ruthenians, whom the Russians call Malo- russi—“Little Russians’”—were convicted of high treason under the cover of religion. The chief witness for the de- fense was the Pan-Slavist leader Bobrinski, a member of the Russian Duma, who had come from Russia to appear before the court under a pledge of immunity. It was shown in the course of the testimony that a swarm of Bobrinski’s paid agents had agitated among the Austrian and Hun- garian Ruthenians, ostensibly in an effort to detach them from the United Orthodox to the Russian Orthodox Church, but actually in an attempt to develop anti-Austrian sentiment among these “lost children” of Russia. Bobrinski’s guilt of the charge of plotting against the peace of a friendly State was proved with sufficient conclusiveness, but it was im- possible to convict him because of the promise of immunity under which he had consented to appear on Hungarian soil. The trial and the disclosures which it brought about created a profound feeling of resentment throughout Aus- tria and Hungary. The Hungarian Government had caught Bobrinski—and behind Bobrinski something that loomed like a menacing cloud up in the North. Any approach to the hard methods of Kaulbars would not be endured with patience by any great Power. Kaul- bars, with his Russian diplomatic entourage, terrorized Bul- garia during the period of uncertainty that followed the abduction, on the 9th of August, 1886 (old calendar), of Prince Alexander, by Russian agents, from his bed in the palace. With Alexander out of the way, Kaulbars, assum- ing the powers of a viceroy under suspended constitutional guarantees, attempted to browbeat and intimidate the Bul-AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS 183 garian regency, and actually made a deliberate and sys- tematic attempt to promote a revolution against the Gov- ernment, by informing the people, in fiery proclamation and by a series of speeches throughout the country, that the Government had incurred the displeasure of the Czar, and that, therefore, Bulgaria would suffer untold evils unless it quickly compelled its rulers to obey the mandate of Alex- ander III. The extraordinary methods of Kaulbars and his masters at St. Petersburg produced such a strong wave of indigna- tion in Vienna that the Monarchy at that early stage was brought to the brink of war against Russia in defense of the independence of Bulgaria. The strings that led from Prague, the capital of Bohemia, to St. Petersburg and Moscow, the center of the Pan- Slavistic movement, were estimated as ominous and signifi- cant symptoms. The frequent pilgrimages of prominent Slavic leaders—like Kramar and Klofac, the Czechs, to St. Petersburg or Belgrade, and the numerous Sokol congresses and conferences, within and outside of the limits of the Monarchy, were outward signs of the intense character of a determined and dangerous agitation. The Government of the Dual Monarchy has been taught by experience that the Serbian Kingdom is the torpedo which -Russia has launched at the body of the Monarchy. That is why the Austro-Hungarian Government, in its dealings with Serbia after the crime of Serajevo, found no alternative to insistent and uncompromising action. Any quibbling, any half-measures in repressing such intolerable activities as have characterized the Russo-Serbian propa- ganda on Austrian territory, would have perpetuated the peril and made the situation worse than it was. It would have been tantamount to abdication by the Monarchy of its sovereignty on its own soil. And such an abdication we are not yet prepared to make. It must vindicate its sov- ereignty and insure order within its boundaries, even at the risk of incurring the accusation of undue aggressiveness from those who do not realize that the patience of the Dual Monarchy has been long and its desire for peace constant.184 AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS BY G. M. TREVELYAN Prior to the outbreak of war singularly little was known in Western Europe about the Serbians and their quarrel with Austria-Hungary, and that little was chiefly derived from Austrian and Hungarian sources. Everything that there is to say against the Russian Government—and there is much to say against it—has for years past been told to England and America. But the wrongs of the nationalities of Aus- tria-Hungary were little known to the general public over here. The fact that these suffering races were branches of the “Slav” family prevented them from getting a fair hear- ing before the world. The prejudice against “Slav” peoples was a remarkable obsession which the events of the war have served to re- move. Because one Slav government, namely, the Russian Government, was a bad government (though, in fact, no worse than the Hungarian or the German in its treatment of subject races), therefore all Slav peoples were regarded as barbarians. It seemed quite natural that seven million “barbarous” South Slavs should be subjected to the rule of “cultured” Germans from Vienna and “chivalrous” Mag- yars from Buda-Pest. And if the Serbians over the border showed any desire to liberate their brothers of Bosnia and Croatia, they obtained none of the sympathy which the Piedmontese had obtained sixty years before, when they made themselves equally obnoxious to Austria on behalf of their brother Italians. The present world-war was in its origin a “punitive ex- pedition” against the Serbians for having the impudence to sympathize with their brother Serbs and Croats in Aus- tria-Hungary. The expedition was to have been made in August, 1913, as Signor Giolitti revealed to the world, but owing to Italy’s refusal to join the German Powers in a war of aggression it was postponed for a year until the murder of the Archduke by Austrian subjects seemed a fit- ting opportunity to wipe Serbia off the diplomatic map.’ 1 The idea that the Serbian Government was connected with the mur- der was put forward without proof by Count Forgach, the AustrianAUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS 185 The “punitive expedition” began by “chivalrous” Hungari- ans murdering two to three thousand men, women and chil- dren of the “barbarous” Slavs near Shabatz and Losnitza. They burnt a large number of the “barbarian” women and children alive, and gouged out the eyes of others.? The Serbians have not taken any reprisals; and although they captured 60,000 Austrian prisoners, those prisoners when questioned made no complaints of their treatment. The Aus- trian wounded were treated on an absolute equality with the Serbian, in the Serbian hospitals. In this war Slav “bar- barism’”’ shows up very well against German “culture” and Magyar “chivalry.” The case for keeping the South Slavs of Bosnia, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia subject to Aus- trians and Magyars on the ground of inferior civilization was always a fraud, and has now been thoroughly exposed. All the nationalist movements inside Austria-Hungary had been growing with great rapidity during the last half- dozen years before the war, especially the movement draw- ing the Croats towards the Serbs, who speak the same lan- guage, and are only divided from them in religion. The reign of terror that existed in these provinces during the war made it utterly impossible that the Austro-Hungarian rule could continue in the Slav and Rumanian provinces, except as the rule of the sword. Some people ask why, if the subject races of Austria- Hungary were thus alienated from the Government, they did not rise in insurrection. The answer is because all the young men were taken into the army by the modern sys- tem of military slavery, and all the leaders were in prison or exile. If that had been done in Italy and throughout Eu- rope in March, 1848, there would have been no year of revo- lutions. The modern militarist organization made revolu- Under-Secretary of State, who had been convicted in 1909 of having documents forged with a view to securing the judicial murder of South Slav leaders. The counter suggestion that the Austrian police connived at the murder of the Archduke is far more probable, if the very peculiar circumstances of the murder are closely studied——AutnHor’s Norte. 4See the official Memorandum and Report. Also the evidence of Dr. Reiss, of the University of Lausanne, given in lectures in London and in the Revue de Paris.tra Hl tae { ¥ ' ayy ¥, — ae. . 2 ee ee eo im ae” eta 4 1 } ' } € { — ee 186 AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS tions impossible; for it is young men who rise in revolt, and it was the young men who were drafted into the army, where the races kept watch over each other, and military discipline rendered mutiny the most hazardous and desperate act. Yet even so Austria’s great military weakness in this war was caused by the hatred of her subject populations, and the secret disloyalty of her soldier slaves. Large portions of her army were guarding other portions, or garrisoning dis- affected districts. When they take the field, the unwilling conscripts fight well for a while—they can do no less unless they are ready to be shot—but they take the first oppor- tunity to surrender. That is why the Serbians soon had 60,000 prisoners, most of whom, so far as I could judge by their words and conduct, were only anxious not to be caught by the Austrians and made to fight again. It is because she is not a nation that Austria-Hungary is so weak in war. From the opening of the year 1915 she was practically occupied by Kaiser William’s troops. It was the North Germans and Bavarians who came and saved Hungary, after the great defeat in Serbia in 1914; other- wise Hungary and probably Austria too would have been torn to pieces by an invasion of Russians and Rumanians coming over the Carpathian passes, which would probably have led to an Italian invasion as well. Hungary became a vassal State, protected by Germany. It is a mistake to think of Austria and Hungary, either singly or together, as a “nation” in the sense in which Rus- sia, Germany, France and England are nations. If we think so, we fail to understand one of the root causes of the pres- ent war. And when people suggest the restoration of the state of things before the war as the basis for a permanent peace, they forget Austria-Hungary. The Empire of Vi- enna and Buda-Pest was an anachronism, dependent for support upon the Prussian arms. It was the domination of two races, the Austrian-Germans and the Magyars, over half a dozen other races. And in one respect at least it was worse than the Old Turk rule of Abdul Hamid. The Old Turks, villainous as their rule was, left cultural, lin-AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS 187 guistic, and scholastic liberty to the subject races whom they pillaged and oppressed. They did not care what dirt the infidel ate in his own schools and churches. They had no wish to turn the Greek or the Bulgarian into a Turk. But the Magyars tried to suppress the language, schools, and culture of the subject races. The Magyars are vassals of the Prussian Kaiser by natural affinity. German victory would mean, in East and West alike, the continued attempt to suppress the cultural development of the smaller races. Indeed, the present war arose quite as much out of the question of Austria-Hungary and its subject nationalities as ‘t did out of the German ambition to dominate Europe. Even German love of domination would not alone have suf- ficed to set the whole world on fire, had not German Culture been in alliance with a force equally regardless of the rights of others, the determination of the Magyars of Hungary to “Magyarize” the Rumanians, Slovaks, and Croats who dwelt within the borders of their State. In theory the law of 1868 gave cultural liberty to the Slavs in Hungary, but in practice this law was a dead letter. The whole Govern- ment machinery was used to oppress any man who wished to remain a Slav or Rumanian, or to bring up his children as such. The policy of the Hungarian Premier, Count Tisza, represents this “will to oppress” on the part of the Magyars. The Magyars numbered only 45 per cent. of the population of Hungary. And Count Tisza’s policy was not even the policy of the Magyar nation, but of the Magyar oligarchy who deprived even their own race of all political power. This Magyar oligarchy was for years past the dominant force in the Austro-Hungarian partnership. Buda-Pest, knowing well what it wanted, had been able to dictate to the vacillating statesmanship of Vienna, which had occa- sional hankerings after a more Liberal treatment of the subject peoples. When the old Emperor Francis Joseph wanted to introduce universal suffrage throughout his wide dominions he was prevented by the Magyar politicians, who saw in it the doom of their race ascendancy. Their treat- ment of the subject races of Hungary became worse of re-188 AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS cent years. In 1912 they abolished the Constitution of Croa- tia, and seized the funds and charters of the Orthodox Serb Church in Hungary. This steadily increasing oppression of the South Slavs was unfortunately of more account in world politics than the more liberal treatment of the Poles of Ga- licia, to whom the Austrians allowed more liberty than was enjoyed in either Prussian or Russian Poland. The reason why the domestic system of the Magyars in Hungary proved so fatal to all Europe is not far to seek; this internal tyranny involved an aggressive foreign policy in the Balkans and towards Russia. For the tyranny exer- cised over the Croatian South Slavs in Hungary involved as a corollary the repression of the Serbian South Slavs in Bosnia (the Province abutting on Serbia, which is ruled by Austria and Hungary jointly). And the repression in Bos- nia in turn necessitated a hostile attitude on the part of Austria-Hungary towards Serbia. For Serbia and Bosnia were in reality one country divided in half—a free half to the east, and an enslaved half to the west of the Drina river. Since oppression was the order of the day, the op- pressed peoples naturally looked across the Drina to their brothers of free Serbia, especially after Serbia had shown herself redoubtable in war against the Turks and the Bul- gars in 1912-13. For the same reason it became more than ever essential to the Austrians to prevent the further de- velopment of Serbia, after her victory over the Turks, lest she should become the liberator of the South Slavs. Hence the fatal policy of Austria in making it a casus belh for all Europe if Serbia got a single port on the Adriatic. By Austrian decree the Serbians were condemned to remain for- ever a bucolic, inland people, with no seaport, though half the eastern Adriatic coast is inhabited by their co-nationals, the South Slavs. Austria had “tied Serbia up in a sack,” as the Serbs say. This artificial seclusion from the sea was the bane of Serbia. The Austrians cut her off from civilization and then called her uncivilized. She was prevented from enjoy- ing commercial and intellectual communication with the great European world, except by way of her enemy, Austria.AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS 189 She was shut in on all sides. No one visited Serbia, no one helped her to develop her resources, no one knew what manner of men inhabited her land. It was assumed that they were all “regicides,” dirty, idle keepers of pigs, as their enemies, the Viennese, reported. And, as so often happens, it was only their recent success in war which at length caused the world to remark the qualities which they have always displayed in peace. As one of the few Englishmen who visited Serbia both before and during the present war, I should like to record what the Serbians are really like. The Serbians have the virtues and the limitations of a peasant democracy. Eighty-six per cent. of the population belongs to the class of peasant proprietors, cultivating their own farms. There is no class of landlords taking rents. There is no feudalism, no squirearchy, and as yet no im- portant mercantile or industrial classes—no “‘middle class” or “working men.” There are yeomen, and nothing else. The contrast is strange, as compared to neighboring Hun- gary, where the Magyars, one of the most feudal of all Eu- ropean races, sacrifice the wealth and happiness of the cul- tivating peasant to the landlord patrician, who carries off everything politically, socially, and economically. Serbia, on the other hand, is democratic and equalitarian, far more so than either America or England. There are no class questions, because there is practically only one class. Pa- triotism is the sole political feeling of the average Serbian, because there is no “social problem” and consequently there can be no vital politics except foreign politics. It is due to the independent manliness of the free yeoman, and to the absence of all class division, that the Serbian army won redoubtable victories in the field over the larger forces that Austria-Hungary sent into Serbia on their errand of murder, pillage, and destruction. If ever there was a pure victory of freemen over slaves who had been sent by the tyrant to destroy them, it was the Serbian victory in 1914. A few talks with the poor Austrian prisoners, only too re- joiced to be out of the fighting and uninterested in the issues of the war, were enough to show why they had been beatenMat 7 ¥ } il | | 190 AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS by the sturdy peasant-soldiers of Serbia, united in one mood of heroism and devotion. There are, however, defects as well as merits in this very pure form of Democracy. There is no adequate class of men to lead the people. The administrators, politicians, and army officers are all peasants at one or two removes » from the soil. The leading class is an improvisation. There is no inherited tradition of leadership and administration as in the class of gentlemen or merchants in the countries with which we are familiar. It has followed that, while the peasants have been living excellent and happy lives on their farms, the improvised politicians whom they elected as their political stewards have often made a terrible mess of Serbian politics. The regicide of 1903, a vile way of ending an intolerable state of things, was the culminating point of this mismanagement. Since then things have im- proved rapidly, especially since 1908, when the Austrian annexation of Bosnia aroused Serbians to a sense of reality, and caused a real moral and national revival. In 1914 we had in Serbia the rule of the excellent M. Pashitch, who is about as likely as Mr. Asquith to have had a hand in the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand. Of course, not all Serbian administration is up to the standard of M. Pashitch. The standard of civil adminis- tration in Serbia is still very low, because, as I have said, there is no class with administrative traditions. This mat- ters the less in ordinary times in Serbia, because the ad- ministrative needs of a simple peasant community are com- paratively small. But when the Serbians had to administer a large part of Macedonia, won from the Turk and kept from the Bulgar in recent wars, the want of administrative experience was more serious. In Macedonia they had to govern not only fellow Serbs, but people of different races and religions, Greek, Albanian, Turk, Vlach, Bulgar, and Macedonian Slay. It is here that their deficiency in ad- ministrative experience came out. But the administrative weakness of the Serbians is much less marked in the army than in the civil service. The best elements of the improvised upper class go into the army.AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS IgI It is a very different service now from the army that sup- plied the regicides of 1903, and that suffered such easy de- feat at the hands of the Bulgarians in 1885. The Turks in 1912, the Bulgarians in 1913, and the Austrians in 1914 each in turn failed to realize until it was too late how far army reform had recently gone in Serbia. Without good officers not even a race of stalwart yeomen can triumph in modern warfare as the Serbians triumphed. These officers, of whom the chief have been educated in the Paris military schools, strike me as men of superior quality, good at their profession, but modest and kindly. There is nothing of the Prussian officer about them in their relations to the men they command. They are brothers-in- arms with their soldiers. Comradeship and discipline go together. For indeed the officer is in most cases only a peasant educated to command other peasants. The small civilian professional class—lawyers, doctors, clerks, etc.— is also found in the ranks of the officers in time of war. There is a great difference between Serbia proper and the Macedonian provinces which she recently acquired down South. Serbian Macedonia contains many races, European and Asiatic, and is still rotten with all the vices of a country but just released from Turkish rule. The inhabitants dwell in gigantic villages of five or ten thousand inhabitants each, whence they ride out every morning to till the distant fields. In this their custom resembles that of many of the Sicilians and South Italians. Indeed, the bare limestone mountains and backward civilization of Macedonia are curiously like some parts of South Italy or Sicily. But the change from South Italy to North Italy is not greater than the change from Serbian Macedonia to Northern Serbia. In Northern Serbia, which has been free of the Turks for a hundred years and where the entire population is Serbian, you have a landscape of gentle, undulating, fertile hills, cut up into fields by hedges after the English pattern. It is much more like Devonshire than the typical scenery of the Balkans or Medi- terranean. The white-walled, red-roofed farms are scat- tered widely about this pleasant countryside, for there is no need for the inhabitants to draw together for safety at192 AUSTRIA IN THE BALKANS nightfall, It is this country, the richest in Serbia, that the Austrian troops sacked so ruthlessly during their invasion. The Serbians are an emotional and mercurial people. The South Slav differs in many respects from the Russian Slav. He is less stolid, having been crossed with Greek and Italian blood, and modified by Italian influence in the course of the Middle Ages. Before the coming of the Turk, the Serbian Empire produced works of Italian art of high rank, like the wonderful fourteenth-century church of Det- chanic. The Serbian peasant is not, like the Russian peasant, de- voutly religious. He attends church very little, and he has not much of what we call “personal religion.” He is neither clerical nor anti-clerical, but indifferent to his clergy. On the other hand, he is profoundly poetical, and his national songs about Kossovo and Marco Kralyevitch are the food on which his youth is fed. The background of his mind is occupied by the history and legend of his country, as handed down in this poetical and musical form. The modern Press and modern literature have not reached him. In the battle of Prilep in 1912 the soldiers thought they saw Marco Kralyevitch on his horse Sharatz leading them on against the Turk, as the ancient Roman farmers thought that they saw the Twin Brethren at Lake Regillus. The Serbs are less patient in retreat than the Russian, but capable of more fierce attack and of sudden recovery of morale after all is apparently lost. Their retour offensif against the Austrians in December, 1914, when they stopped their hasty retreat, turned round and attacked the pursuing enemy and broke him to pieces, is one of the most extraordi- nary feats in war, and is also highly illustrative of the mer- curial character of Serbian heroism.THE BAGDAD RAILWAY AND THE LORDSHIP OF THE, EAST THE FIRST CLASH BETWEEN BRITISH AND GERMAN IMPERIALISM MORRIS JASTROW J. HOLLAND ROSE EVANS LEWIN While Austria, as we have seen, was prone to regard Teutonic in- terests in the Near East as being mainly Austrian interests, Germany as the world now knows, regarded Austria as being merely her tem- porary deputy, even in the Balkans. All that region, with all the Turk- ish Empire beyond, was one day to be German. The first great step toward accomplishing this mighty future was the building of the Bag- dad railway. This vast engineering project might well have changed the entire course of empire in the East. The scheme was only opened slowly to the eyes of the world; but early in this twentieth century it stood re- vealed as an opportunity for Germany to obtain control of all western Asia. The railroad began as a small affair back in the 1880's, a little German-owned road in a single district of Asia Minor. But soon it spread and spread. Its tracks climbed huge mountains and crossed barren deserts. It became one of the great railroads of the world, and followed the oldest, richest trade route of civilization, the route of prehistoric caravans between the East and the West, between India and Europe. From Berlin traffic could go straight to Constantinople, and from Constantinople straight to Bagdad. Even beyond Bagdad plans were begun for carrying the railroad to the Persian Gulf, that is, to the very doors of India. Merchandise by such a route would be far cheaper than by Britain’s roundabout ship road through the Suez Canal. The railway would make Germany the commercial master of the East, and by its facilities for transporting armies might easily make her the military lord as well. Britain, chief ruler of the old Mahometan world-empire, might lose control of Egypt and then of India and then of the farther East. Imperial Germany would supplant Imperial England. Germany of course insisted officially that she had no slightest thought of conquest, that the railway was purely a commercial enter- prise, a giant effort of her money kings to simplify the trade of the world. She even, with characteristic boldness, invited British, French and Russian capitalists to join in the building of the road, thus seeking to use their money, but keeping the control in German hands. No wonder Britain was alarmed! For years the tension increased between these great commercial rivals. Britain blocked the railway W., VOL. 1.—13. 193I ; by 194 THE BAGDAD RAILWAY beyond Bagdad. All the territory it was to cross, even to the Persian Gulf, was nominally Turkish; and Turkey had become a mere pawn in Germany’s hands. But Britain encouraged the local ruler along the gulf coast, the Sultan of Koweit, to claim independence; and in his name she stopped the road. Such however was the resolute will to peace of the British govern- ment in the last years before the War that her Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, managed to arrange terms of agreement even with Ger- many, and even over the Bagdad railway. The year 1913 saw a conven- tion or treaty by which Britain was to allow the railroad to reach the Gulf under restrictions planned to keep the road—at least in theory— a commercial one. The story of this long struggle is here told in its opening by Prof. Morris Jastrow of the University of Pennsylvania, America’s leading authority on the ancient Babylonian region of which Bagdad is the capital. Professor Jastrow is a loyal American of Germanic ancestry, and hence is not inclined to be prejudiced against Germany. His story is here followed by that of J. Holland Rose, a noted British historian ; and the account is then brought sharply up to 1914 by another British scholar, a notedly impartial one, Mr, Evans Lewin, Librarian of the Royal Colonial Institute of Britain. C. F. H. BY MORRIS JASTROW * HE Bagdad Railway has been a nightmare resting heav- ily on all Europe for eighteen years—ever since the announcement in 1899 of the concession granted to the Ana- tolian Railway Company. No step ever taken by any Eu- ropean power anywhere has caused so much trouble, given rise to so many complications, and has been such a constant menace to the peace of the world. No European states- man to whom the destinies of his country have been com- mitted has rested easily in the presence of this specter of the twentieth century. In the last analysis the Bagdad Railway will be found to be the largest single contributing factor in bringing on the war, because through it more than through any other cause the mutual distrust among Euro- pean powers has been nurtured until the entire atmosphere of international diplomacy became vitiated. The expla- nation of this remarkable phenomenon, transforming what appeared on the surface to be a magnificent commercial en- terprise, with untold possibilities for usefulness, into a ver- *Reprinted by permission. From “The War and the Bagdad Rail- way” by Dr. Jastrow. Copyright by J. B. Lippincott Co.THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 195 itable curse, an excrescence on the body politic of Europe, is to be sought in the history of the highway through which the railway passes. The control of this highway is the key to the East—the Near and the Farther East as well. Such has been its role in the past—such is its significance to- day. =. England’s influence at Constantinople, paramount till 1880, weakened then, largely through Giadstone’s opposition to the régime of Turkey, for which there was ample justi- fication. The Armenian massacres of 1894 shocked Eu- rope, and Gladstone was irreconcilable in his denunciation of the “unspeakable Turk,” as the Sultan and all Turkey came to be called. This, naturally, was not pleasing to Constanti- nople, at the time under the complete domination of Abdul Hamid. Germany was quick to seize upon the situation and under the leadership of her ambitious, restless and roman- tically inclined young Emperor, with his mind full of far- reaching schemes, obtained by a series of cleverly designed steps the position at the Turkish capital which England had once held. The convention of 1902-03 made it evident that Germany had stolen a march on England, and that France’s prestige at Constantinople had likewise suffered through the distinct advantage that Germany would have over her in the future exploitation of Asia Minor. The terms on which a German Syndicate obtained the concessions of the Bagdad Railroad were indeed most favor- able. The concession was to last for 99 years, and this in- cluded the two branches already built, Haidar-Pasha-An- gora and Eskishehr-Konia. It had been assumed that the concession would not go beyond a line to Bagdad, and Eng- land felt that as long as the Persian Gulf was not to be reached, the situation would not be serious for her, either from the commercial or the political point of view. The India trade would not be diverted to the Persian Gulf in favor of the short land route, because of the double loading involved and the water trip from the Gulf to Bagdad. When, however, the precise terms of the convention became known, it was seen that the extension not only included Basra, but also contemplated a branch from Zubeir (not far from196 THE BAGDAD RAILWAY Basra) to a terminus on the Persian Gulf “to be deter- mined,” together with the right of navigation on the Shatt- el-Arab and the Tigris—an exclusively English privilege— during the period of construction of the railway in this re- gion. That gave an entirely new interpretation to the con- vention as a whole and at once created a critical situation which steadily grew worse. The favor shown the German Syndicate was evident on the surface. Such terms had never been secured before. No wonder that there were great rejoicings in Germany when they were announced, and gnashing of teeth outside of Germany. The German Syndicate, to be sure, offered to English and French capitalists a share in the enterprise. Dr. Sie- mens and Dr. von Gwinner, the two leading spirits of the project, emphasized strongly the desire to give to the un- dertaking an international character ; but this move was gen- erally regarded as due to an anxiety on the part of the German Syndicate to obtain foreign capital to aid them. It was estimated that the cost of the Konia-Bagdad construc- tion would amount to 350 million francs, and this was more than Germany was supposed to be able to carry alone. The control of affairs was so arranged, it was claimed, that it would always remain in German hands. Five of the eleven directors were to be chosen practically by the Anatolian Company, and Germany would also be in a position to con- trol the vote of three Ottoman representatives provided for as members of the board, so that the Germans would always be certain of a majority over representatives of other share- holders. A storm of protest against the entire project arose in England and France, and the two governments were severely blamed in the press and in the legislative bodies for having permitted the convention to go through, the political significance of which when the terms of the convention be- came known entirely overshadowed the commercial aspects. England more particularly felt that not only were her in- terests in the Near East threatened through the trade and freight that would pass to the route of the railway, but that her domination in India was endangered. She had goodTHE BAGDAD RAILWAY 197 grounds for this fear, seeing the open manner in which ad- vocates of national expansion in Germany pointed out the possibilities involved in securing for Germany a continuous route from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf in seven or eight days only, with four additional days by steamer to reach India. The Pan-Germanists, whose voice had become blatant in Germany by this time, added coals to the fire by their equally open jubilation at the prospects of a complete Ger- man control of the Turkish possessions in Asia. German colonization in Asia Minor was to be encouraged, following in the wake of the commercial advantages to be gained by the railway, and thus the diplomatic supremacy of Germany in Constantinople was to be strengthened by the spread of German settlements throughout the East. It was felt in England that if, as Napoleon is said to have remarked, Antwerp in the hands of a great continental power was a pistol leveled at the English coast, Bagdad and the Persian Gulf in the hands of Germany (or any other strong power) would be a 42-centimeter gun pointed at India. BY J. HOLLAND ROSE The Bagdad Railway Question closely concerns the fu- ture of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. The scheme crystallized in 1898 at the time of the Kaiser’s visit to the Holy Land. Outwardly he appeared as a crusader, cham- pioning the interests of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, for whom he gained concessions from the Sultan.” But he also procured from the Sultan a verbal promise for the con- struction of the Bagdad Railway. This happened in the year succeeding the Armenian and Macedonian massacres. At the time of those outbreaks of calculating fanaticism strong remonstrances were made to the Sublime Porte by the West- ern Powers. They were fruitless. For many years past Germany had supported Turkey, in pursuance of the policy of Prussia traditional since the days of Frederick the Great; 2“Not splendor, not power, not glory, not honor, no earthly blessing is it that we seek here: we pine, we pray, we strive alone after the sole, the highest blessing, the salvation of our souls.” —KaAISER WILLIAM.198 THE BAGDAD RAILWAY and in 1897 Kaiser William emphasized the closeness of the political tie connecting the German and Ottoman Empires. Consequently poets and idealists in Western Europe raged in vain against the atrocities perpetrated by “Abdul Hamid the Damned.”’ The power behind his throne was the Kaiser, who found his reward for the great betrayal of 1897 in the bargain for the Bagdad Railway. In 1902 the Porte issued a firman authorizing that enterprise. Early in 1903 General von der Goltz delivered to the K6nigsberg Geographical Society a lecture in which he stated that the German Bagdad Syndicate had secured a concession for extending its line to Koweit on the Persian Gulf “after diplomatic negotiations with Great Britain.” He also foretold that British mails for India would soon go via Vienna, Constantinople, Bagdad, and Koweit. It was evident that British trade in the Persian Gulf, especially at Basra, would largely be diverted to this railway, especially if, as was contemplated, it was connected with European lines by a tunnel under the Bosphorus. In this case, there would be through communication from Ostend or Antwerp to the Persian Gulf, with serious results to British shipping interests. The promoters of the German Bagdad scheme showed clearly enough that political and military issues of great mo- ment were also at stake. This appeared in a work, “Die Bagdadbahn,” published in 1902 by Dr. P. Rohrbach, whose travels in Mesopotamia, originating in theological motives, had of late led him to take a decidedly militant tone. He stated frankly that it was not worth while spending a pfen- nig for a weak Turkey; but for a strong Turkey it might be worth while to spend many million marks. He pointed out how the Bagdad Railway would enable the Sublime Porte to bring up its Anatolian troops quickly to the Bosphorus, whereas in the Russo-Turkish War of 1876-7 seven months were wasted by the troops from Mesopotamia before arrival at the front. The new lines would double the military strength of the Ottoman Empire. Further, the prosperity of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor would revive, stimulated as it would be by the immigration of numbers of Germans.THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 199 Thus, both in a financial and military sense Turkey would soon be able to resist her redoubtable enemy, Russia. Rohr- bach also affirmed that agreements had been almost secured both with France and with Great Britain (this, too, in 1902). Nevertheless, in view of the unfriendly conduct of Ger- many in other quarters, the Bagdad scheme had to be scruti- nized closely. Her ambassador at Constantinople, Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, was openly hostile to Great Brit- ain, On the other hand, the British opposition to the Bag- dad scheme was finally declared by a German writer in the Nineteenth Century and After [June, 1909] to be due to Russian instigation. Clearly, the only way with so in- tricate and compromising a scheme was to let it alone, and allow the Germans to make the line if they could get the money for it. They failed to carry through the original scheme so far as concerned the Persian Gulf. To this ex- tension the British Government could not assent; for it would have enabled Turkey and Germany to send troops quickly to the confines of Persia, and a further extension of the line would threaten India. The design of Germany and Austria to control the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor appeared clearly in the years 1908-10. In 1908 Austria an- nexed Bosnia; and though for a time in that year the Young Turk Movement overthrew German influence at Constanti- nople, yet the intrigues of Baron Marschall brought about a complete revival of Teutonic ascendancy in April, 1909. Ever since that time the Young Turks have been the crea- tures of Berlin. All the more reason, then, had Britain for opposing the German scheme of “pacific penetration” to the Persian Gulf, where British merchants had long before built up an extremely valuable trade. Moreover, the terminus, Koweit, was the city of an independent Sheikh whom Eng- land had more than once supported against the coercion of Abdul Hamid. In 1911 Sir Edward Grey demanded that, if a railway were made to the Gulf, it must be a purely com- mercial undertaking. Herein he followed the lines laid down by Lord Lansdowne, who stated that he could nevera a Ni 200 THE BAGDAD RAILWAY allow another Power to obtain there a strong naval posi- tion “which might be used on the flank of our communica- tions with India.” Such an assertion was all the more needed because of a recent compact between Russia and Germany. In Novem- ber, 1910, the Czar visited the Kaiser at Potsdam and they conferred together on matters of State. Their meeting caused no little surprise in view of the rebuff which the Kaiser had dealt to the Czar in the winter of 1908-9 over the Bosnian Question. It now seemed that the Czar had accepted defeat and was willing to follow the lead of Ger- many. The meeting of the two Emperors therefore caused great concern at London and Paris; for it might betoken the break-up of the Triple Entente, lately severely strained by the death of H.M. Edward VII. The German account of the deliberations of the two Emperors is as follows: Russia agreed not to oppose the scheme, and even to link up that railway with her Persian lines; also to recognize Ger- many as an equal in matters commercial in that country. The Court of Berlin, on its side, recognized that Russia had spe- cial political and strategic interests in Northern Persia, as well as rights to construct railways, roads, and telegraphs. Thus, Germany said in effect, “Help me to build the Bagdad Railway through to the Persian Gulf, and I will hand over to you North Persia and as much of that land as you want.” But this was not all. The Russian and German Govern- ments also gave mutual assurances that each would enter into no engagement inimical to the other. The Potsdam Convention was a triumph for the diplo- macy of Germany. She had set back Russia’s interests at the time of the Bosnian crisis; and she pushed on the Bag- dad Railway until it promised to become a menace to Rus- sian Caucasia. Then she turned round and said, “Now that I have beaten you, will you not make a bargain? Let us virtually partition Persia between us, shutting out the Brit- ish; and, while we are about it, let us have a friendly un- derstanding all round. I will not attack you in any quarter, if you will not attack me.”THE BAGDAD RAILWAY 201 BY EVANS LEWIN So far as Great Britain was concerned, the Bagdad Rail- way negotiations of 1911 were carried on directly with the Porte and only at a later stage with Germany; but all the time it was apparent that German influence was directly be- hind the Turkish Foreign Office and that the Porte was only the intermediary between the two parties. Both Lord Mor- ley and Lord Haldane took part in the business, the former going to Germany in 1911, the latter spending a “holiday” there a little later—-when questions other than those con- nected with the Bagdad Railway were fully discussed. For two more years the long and tedious negotiations with the Turkish Government continued in their secret courses ; but matters began to move when, in February, 1913, Hakki Pasha arrived in London in order to expedite the discussion between Great Britain and the Porte. A number of con- ventions were prepared and on May 30 Sir Edward Grey made an important announcement as to the scope of draft agreements with the Turkish Government. The object of the Porte in thus hastening negotiations had been twofold —to remove British objections to the proposed increase in the Turkish customs duties, and to enable Germany to carry the railway as far as Basra. The increase of the customs dues, which directly or indirectly would be applied to the construction of the railway, had to be vetoed unless British interests were protected by some binding agreement. In the preparation of the new conventions the spirit of compromise came to the aid of the German financiers who were sheltering behind the skirts of the Turks. Great Brit- ain not only recognized the suzerainty of the Porte over Koweit, which was to be an autonomous district of the Otto- man Empire, but also definitely left to Germany the con- struction of the section as far as Basra. In return for these concessions, the Porte (a) engaged not to interfere with the internal affairs of Koweit, and explicitly recognized the va- lidity of the concessions concluded between the Sheikh and the British Government; (b) abandoned its pretensions to the suzerainty over the peninsula of Al Katr, the Bahrein202 THE BAGDAD RAILWAY Islands, Muscat, and the territories of the Trucial Chiefs in the Persian Gulf; (c) and recognized the right of Great Britain to undertake in the future, as in the past, the duty of policing, buoying, and lighting the Gulf. In addition there were to be two British directors on the Railway Board as a guarantee against differential rates. The agreement outlined by Sir Edward Grey also recog- nized that “the navigation of the river up to and beyond Bagdad is a substantial British interest which may be de- veloped and consolidated.” The preliminary agreement was heralded in Germany as a triumph for German diplomacy. The Berliner Tageblatt on December 29, 1913, stated that “for years this under- taking has threatened to become a bone of contention be- tween Russia, England, and Germany. The German Gov- ernment has now, through its cleverness and tenacity, suc- ceeded in removing all difficulties, and of bringing the line altogether into German possession.”” This is nothing more than a statement of fact. Without blaming our own diplo- macy in the matter unduly or emphasizing its want of con- tinuity and excess of vacillation, a measure of respect cannot be withheld from German statecraft which during the whole proceedings connected with the railway, financial and diplo- matic, displayed an adroitness in meeting and overcoming the opposition of Great Britain, France, and Russia that showed the Germans to be able, if not masterly, negotiators. The position was doubtless turned to their advantage in many ways by events in the larger sphere of world-politics, but nevertheless the difficulties in the way of the Germans were sufficiently pronounced to have turned aside any diplo- matists but the most tenacious and persistent. “Tn tracing the development of the German expansion in Asia,’’ states Mr. Sarolea in his book on Anglo-German relations, “we shall find one additional proof of the absurdity of the German grievance that England has pursued a policy systematically hostile to Germany. We shall see that in the case of the Bagdad Railway not only have the powers of the Entente Cordiale done nothing to oppose Germany, but that French statesmen have again and again promotedTHE BAGDAD RAILWAY 203 German claims and that England in her desire to concili- ate her neighbors has betrayed some vital imperial interests, and has allowed Germany to assume a formidable position, threatening both Egypt and India, a position from which she is not likely to retreat, and yet from which she will have to retreat if an armed conflict is to be avoided.” An ex- amination of the Bagdad negotiations reveals the justice of this contention. At the commencement of the Bagdad troubles Great Brit- ain, Russia, and France had almost equal claims to the par- ticipation in the enterprise, but each in turn abandoned these claims in favor of Germany, whose interests in reality bore no comparison with those of the Entente Powers. Russia, who in 1900 had been able to divert the line to the south- ward, withdrew all opposition ten years later. France, by the agreement of February 15, 1914, in exchange for the recognition of a railway “sphere of action” in the north and northwest of Anatolia and in Syria, definitely withdrew from participation in the Bagdad Railway, and Great Britain, as has been seen, withdrew all opposition in 1911, and only safeguarded her special and unique position in the Persian Gulf.THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS THE MAD RACE FOR NAVAL SUPREMACY WHICH DROVE BRITAIN AND GERMANY TOWARD RUIN GEORGE GILBERT MURRAY ARTHUR BALFOUR KARL KAUTSKY GERHARD VON GAEVERNITZ It is not easy to speak with restrained judgment of the sharply con- flicting naval policies which had so large a part in causing the Great War and in driving the United States to enter it. When questions of the sea are raised, American interests become at once and seriously in- volved with those of Europe. Britain, long the chief sea-power of the world, had freed the ocean from Spanish monopoly and universal pi- racy, and gradually developed a “freedom of the seas” which was com- plete and satisfactory to every one in times of peace. In time of war when Britain was neutral, she naturally wanted to use her ships for trade; and when she fought she wanted to block neutral trading with her foes. Hence her view of the “freedom of the seas” in time of war differed decidedly from that of nations who could not withstand her. On this point the United States and Britain had frequent controver- sies; but even here a fairly equitable “international law” was gradually built up. To the growth of an American navy second only to her own, Britain never offered objection. She was thoroughly convinced of America’s “will to peace,” and while the United States navy might conceivably at some time oppose her own, it could never be with grim resolve at her complete destruction. When, however, Germany, the great mili- tary Power, began building a great naval fleet, Britain took alarm. She declared openly that she would never place herself at Germany’s mercy by allowing the German fleet to equal hers, while the German army so infinitely outranked her. Hence when the new German navy was begun in 1808, Britain accepted the challenge. For every new German ship, Britain built two similar ones, or thereabout. A race began, tremendously costly, terrible in its threat to all the world. That race could stir the blood even of an Oxford Professor of Greek, George Gilbert Murray. He, one of Britain’s most honored scholars, the recipient of endless learned degrees, tells here of the long race as he and his countrymen saw and feared it. He speaks carefully, honestly, and most anxiously, though with academic restraint. Then we give the general presentation of the entire subject which was offi- cially prepared for America by the ruler of the British navy, the “First Lord of the Admiralty,” Arthur Balfour. He had been a former Con- servative Prime Minister of Britain, and when the War came he joined the coalition ministry which united his country. In this powerful war ministry Balfour took charge of the navy. Later he was the leader of 204THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 205 the British mission to the United States when that country entered the War. The German Socialistic view of the subject is presented here by Karl Kautsky, and the German governmental view by official authority, This final article, in rather more extended form, was issued as Germany’s appeal and explanation to America upon this theme, in 1915. Its author, Professor von Schulze-Gaevernitz, was the Rector of the University of Freiburg, an established authority on political economy, and a member of the Reichstag. Unfortunately, in speaking for the Imperial Government, the learned von Gaevernitz speaks also as a “propagandist”; and that, according to the established Imperialist view, authorized him to distort facts, even to the extent of absurdity. It has therefore been necessary to add footnotes to inform the reader of such facts as the professor either ignores or forces into service upside down. Cor. oH. BY GEORGE GILBERT MURRAY Xe army stipreme in Europe; a power so great that no European state could move without consulting it: that was the achievement of Bismarck. But—here there is gen- eral agreement between military theorists like Bernhardi, well-informed Pan-Germans like Reventlow, and moderate and responsible Imperial Chancellors like Prince von Bulow —the position won by Bismarck was to be only a stepping- stone. Power in Europe was a means to Weltmacht, Power in the world. And the Kaiser, from the beginning of his reign, is said to have had the firm resolve to give Germany a fleet corresponding to her army. We need not look for the words of extremists. The policy is announced by von Bulow and by the Kaiser’s own speeches. “‘Sea-power is world-power.” “The future of Germany is on the sea.” “The trident shall pass into our hands.” Von Biilow and Reventlow repeatedly explain the practical difficulty of this policy. At present England is the strongest sea-power ; and the problem for Germany was not merely to build up a fleet capable of dealing with the British fleet, but to do so under England’s eyes and without England’s interference. ‘The fleet was to be built without our coming into conflict with England, whom we could not yet oppose at sea.” There were two great dangers: Eng- land’s enmity and England’s friendship. “England’s un- reserved and certain friendship could only have been bought at the price of those very international plans for the sake206 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS of which we should have sought British friendship.” “The alpha and omega of British policy has always been the at- tainment and maintenance of English naval supremacy.” (Naturally; since if Great Britain loses command of the sea, she dies of starvation in a few weeks; and owing to her ‘‘consistent egoism,” she does not wish this to occur.) Therefore the problem for Germany was, by long patience and concealment, to undermine Great Britain’s naval su- premacy without her knowing it. Then, it might be hoped, Great Britain would be wise enough to accept the new situ- ation. If not, the German fleet could strike. The German people would heave a long sigh and cry “At last!” The day would have come. It would be easy to multiply statements of this policy from the writings of Imperial Chancellors, of the Kaiser himself, and from Reventlow. It would be still easier to collect the sinister vaporings of various members of the German Navy League and the Pan-German League. But my object is not to make out a case against Germany; it is only to consider the disturbing effect of German ambitions upon British policy. This ideal of Seemacht und Weltmacht took shape, as is well known, in the German Navy Law of 1900. This law nearly doubled the existing Navy and provided for a steady increase year by year for some considerable time ahead with- out further consulting of the Reichstag. As a matter of fact, the Reichstag was consulted frequently, but only with the object of accelerating, not of questioning, the rate of in- crease. The officially avowed object of this naval policy was to give Germany so strong a fleet that “even the strong- est naval Power should not be able to challenge her with any confidence.” - In less official language it was that, as Germany had the strongest army in the world, so she must have the strongest navy in the world. The eagle wanted both its wings. Sir Edward Grey’s general comment on the situation is worth quoting. It is so characteristically gentle. “Now let me say this. German strength is by itself a guarantee that no other country will desire or seek a quarrel with Germany.THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 207 That is one side of the shield, and one of which Germans may well be proud. But there is another side of the shield, and that is: Ifa nation has the biggest army in the world, and if it has a very big navy, and is going on building a still bigger navy, then it must do all in its power to prevent the natural apprehensions in the minds of others, who have no aggressive intentions themselves, lest that Power, with its army and navy, should have aggressive intentions towards them. I do not believe in these aggressive designs (of Ger- many). I do not wish to have my words interpreted in that sense. But I think it must be realized that other nations will be apprehensive and sensitive, and on the lookout for any indications of aggression. All we or the other neigh- bors of Germany desire is to live with her on equal terms.” (Sir Edward Grey, in the House of Commons, November 175 LOLI) However much we might refuse to believe in the ex- istence of “aggressive intentions,” there was clearly in ex- istence a new political fact which Great Britain was bound in one way or another to meet. Three lines of policy, it seems, were possible. 1. A force-against-force policy: as Germany meant to increase her navy till it was strong enough to strike us down, our policy might be to provoke a quarrel and strike her down first. This was the policy of a “preventive war,” advocated occasionally by the more excitable ultra-imperialists in Eng- land, but essentially too immoral to be tolerated by the mass of the British people. Reventlow observes that if the Brit- ish Government had wished for a “preventive war” in the earlier years of the century, nothing would have been easier than to find an occasion for it. 2. A policy of mere submission. I have never seen this policy advocated by any serious person, unless perhaps Mr. Brailsford could be accused of doing so in a paradoxical passage of his brilliant book, “The War of Steel and Gold.” He tries there to argue that, even at the worst, suppose Ger- many completely conquered all opposition, nobody would really be a penny the worse, while at the same time he ex- presses his personal belief that “there will be no more wars‘> j f re ) 208 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS among the six great Powers.” The passage was written early in 1914, and I think we may perhaps assume that the author’s opinion of the comparative harmlessness of being conquered by Germany has been as much changed as his be- lief that there would be no more European wars. On the whole, I do not think it necessary to argue against the view that Great Britain should have said to Germany: “You want to have the biggest fleet in the world? Well, have it, and much good may it do you! We will not compete.” 3. A policy of reasonable and pacific common sense. This was the policy actually followed. We said to Ger- many: “If you have any grievance against us, tell us and we will try to remove it: but you must understand that the command of the sea is to us a matter of life and death, and we cannot afford to lose it. Our navy is a danger to nobody, certainly not to Germany; because we deliberately keep a very small army, so that it is utterly impossible for us to attack any first-class Power. But your navy appears to threaten us in a vital point.” This policy took two forms: an attempt to get into cor- dial and frank relations with Germany, so as to settle any reasonable grievance which she might feel; and an attempt to come to some agreement for a proportional reduction of armaments. The two lines overlap, but may for clear- ness’ sake be treated separately. Let us take first, as simplest and most definite, the ques- tion of armaments. Great Britain’s line was clear. “We wish for no aggression, no increase of the empire; we are ready for any treaties of conciliation or arbitration; but our national safety depends on the command of the sea. Therefore, if your intentions are peaceful, as we quite be- lieve they are, let us have an understanding about arma- ments. We will make no attempt whatever to rival your army, and we ask you not to try to outstrip our navy. Short of outstripping it, or putting our command of the sea in danger, tell us what arrangement will suit you, and we can reduce our fleets together. And meantime we will give you any security you like that we will not attack you or enter any combination which aims at attacking you. But, weTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 209 warn you, if you insist on building faster and faster, we shall build too and endeavor to keep up our full superiority. That means that we must both continue ruining ourselves on naval armaments until the race is checked either by a European war or a domestic revolution.” Our record on the disarmament question is above re- proach. In 1898 the Czar brought the matter forward and proposed an International Conference for the reduction of armaments. Mr. Goschen, as First Lord of the Admiralty, agreed to accept a reduction if other Powers would frame a scheme. By the time of the Second Hague Conference, in 1907, Sir Edward Grey being then Foreign Secretary, we had gone further. We risked taking the initial step, and announced beforehand, in July, 1906, a large reduction of our Navy, in the hope that other Powers might be induced to follow our example. We reduced our program twenty- five per cent. in battleships, sixty per cent. in large destroy- ers, and thirty-eight per cent. in submarines. This step was all the bolder since the Germans had, immediately before, amended their program by the addition of six large cruis- ers. Next month Lord Haldane, then Secretary for War, went to Berlin as the Kaiser’s guest. He was told that Germany would not discuss the reduction of armaments, and would not attend the Hague Conference at all if that subject was to be there considered. Another attempt was made at Cronberg by King Edward himself, in conjunction with Lord Hardinge. It was rejected no less summarily. Other nations, they were told, might feel the burden of armaments too much for them. Germany did not, and meant to have both her army and navy as large as she thought fit. The British Prime Minister, Sir H. Campbell-Banner- man, still persevered. It might be that the peace-feeling in Europe would be strong enough even to influence Ger- many. The Social Democrats and the remains of the Lib- eral parties would surely respond. He wrote himself an article in the Nation (March 2, 1907), urging the cause of disarmament, and expressing his willingness to make fur- ther reductions in the British fleet if the other Powers would W.. VOL. I.—14ee 210 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS cooperate. He made this proposal officially to the seven chief naval Powers. The Russian jurist, Professor Maar- tens, visited the Courts of Europe with the same object. But Germany’s official answer was given by the Chancel- lor in April, 1907: “The German Government refused to participate in any such discussion.” The whole subject had to be ruled out of the Hague Conference. There was a further increase of the German fleet this year. In the next King Edward again visited Cronberg, and approached the subject of reduction of armaments. The Kaiser’s answer was that no discussion of naval armaments with a foreign Government could be tolerated by Germany. His tone seems to have been just that of Reventlow: the proposal itself was an insult. The blood of the latter boils to recount the story how an English midshipman once said to a German cadet, “We have the fleet, and you have the army.” Where the insult lies is a little difficult for an out- sider to see; but an insult it is, and one which, Reventlow thanks God, can never be repeated. It is this feeling which explains a speech of Prince von Bitlow in December, 1908, where he denies that definite pro- posals for the limitation of armaments had ever been made to the German Government. They had not been made, because, as soon as the subject was opened, Germany re- fused to listen and cut the speaker short. As a matter of fact, there were great suspicions of secret shipbuilding in this year and the next, and in 1909 facts which came to the knowledge of Mr. McKenna, then First Lord of the Ad- miralty, made him demand an unusual increase of the British program. His fears were, as a matter of fact, not realized, though the statements of fact which he made were quite accurate. But the great strain produced both here and in Germany by these suspicions made the situation even more dangerous than before. Sir Edward Grey therefore made a very characteristic proposal. He suggested, since Ger- many would not agree to any limitation, that at least both countries should prove their good faith by letting one an- other see what they were building. He proposed that the naval attachés in London and Berlin should be allowed fromTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 2 time to time to see the actual stage of construction reached by the capital ships in dock. Arrangements could be made for preventing the disclosure of any details which were par- ticularly secret, and the-step would obviously allay anxiety and prevent groundless panics. The German Government refused. They did not wish, it seems, to allay the strain. It is important to understand German feeling on this point. It is doubtless in origin a theory conjured up to justify the policy which Germany’s instinctive ambition craved, the Calvary, in Reventlow’s words, which she had irrevocably set herself to climb. But from whatever cause it arose, it has been for many years a genuine feeling. To the German Imperialist the true ideal is to put forth the ex- treme of human effort in the service of the Fatherland; peace, arbitration, honest treaties, rules of war, everything that in any way limits the need of effort and slackens the tensity of the struggle, is in itself contemptible, and is only sought by nations who are decadent and slack in moral fiber. Reventlow remarks how the German-Americans lose their true Deutschtum. They even “lose their comprehension of Germany” to such an extent that a deputation of them once came to Berlin to plead the cause of the Taft Arbitration Treaty! “But that bubble is long burst!” The British overtures for the reduction of armaments continued unabated down to Mr. Churchill’s proposal in 1912 for a “naval holiday.’”’ All were refused, and the two na- tions were thrown back on undisguised and unmitigated competition in shipbuilding. But after 1907 the naval ques- tion begins to merge into the larger question of friendship with Germany. We will therefore go back to that subject. Up to 1902 or 1903, as Reventlow repeatedly emphasizes, Great Britain was frequently in the position of suing for German friendship. But Germany regarded such friendship as a trap. Her aim was “World-power by means of Sea- power”; and friendship of a sincere or permanent kind with Great Britain could only be obtained by the sacrifice of this policy. After 1903 Great Britain began gradually to realize that her difficulties with Germany were due not to any particular points in dispute. Such points as there once212 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS were had practically all been settled long before, especially in the period of “graceful concessions” about 1890, when Lord Salisbury carried through the peaceful partition of dis- puted territories in Africa and gave Germany the island of Heligoland. The present difficulties were due to some settled resolve of Germany’s. We began gradually to see what that resolve was: never quite to quarrel till the Day came, yet never to come to terms; but it was long before we realized the enormous force with which it was held. Not all Germans, it was justly argued, agreed with the Kaiser and the ma- jority of the Reichstag; and even the Kaiser might change his mind. In 1906, when the Campbell-Bannerman Gov- ernment took office, it showed the spirit of its policy by its very first acts. It made a determined move at the Hague Conference towards an agreement for disarmament and pacification, and at the same time it opened confidential con- versations with Germany to see in what way the two Powers could reéstablish cordial relations. Lord Edmond Fitz- maurice, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, is de- scribed as “making entreaties to Germany.” But, “fortu- nately, Germany succeeded in foiling any such discussion.” (Reventlow). Meantime the efforts for a good understanding continued outside the course of formal diplomacy. In 1906 and 1908 came the two visits of King Edward with Lord Hardinge to the Kaiser, in 1906 and 1912 the two special missions of Lord Haldane, while in humbler spheres exchanges of visits were organized between municipal bodies, societies of work- ing men and the like. Much was hoped on both occasions from Lord Haldane’s visits. He was a man universally respected in England and known to be persona grata in Ger- many. Though he afterwards showed himself a great War Minister, he was an earnest friend of peace. But, as a mat- ter of fact, he was simply baffled at the outset. The great men whom he met in Berlin had other aims, and aims which were not compatible with friendship for Great Britain. At one time indeed the proposals for something like friendship seemed much nearer to accomplishment, and inTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 213 this case the first move came from Germany. In 1909, after von Biilow’s fall, the present Chancellor, Bethmann-Holl- weg, came into power, and one of his earliest acts was an attempt to form an understanding with Great Britain. It is not clear whether he was in part sincere, but thwarted by another influence, or whether he was merely scheming to break up the Triple Entente. He suggested in general terms that there might be some understanding about the two navies, if it could be based on a general political friendship. Brit- ish hopes rose high, but of course by this time the hopes were accompanied by suspicions. Bethmann-Hollweg’s naval proposal, the one side of the agreement which could be practically tested, amounted to nothing at all. He refused even to consider any reduction or any modification of the Navy Law; at most he was will- ing to discuss “retardation” of shipbuilding, provided that the total number of ships already arranged for 1918 were built by that year. Ata later stage in the negotiations, how- ever, even “retardation”? was ruled out. The Kaiser in- formed the British Ambassador that he personally would on no account agree to any arrangement by which Germany was debarred from increasing her naval program as she chose. Thus the naval proposal came to nothing. The Chancellor’s general proposal of cooperation cen- tered in an engagement that, in the event of either Power being attacked by a third Power or group of Powers, the Power not attacked should remain neutral. This sounds moderate in itself; but one observes at once its utterly dif- ferent character from that of the two Ententes at which Great Britain had arrived. The Ententes were based on a full and sincere discussion of all the points at issue between Britain and France or Britain and Russia, and on the friendly relation which arose out of the loyal settlement of those differences. There was a promise of diplomatic sup- port in certain cases, and a general understanding that neither Power would do anything behind the back of the other. But there was no mention of war, and no obligation to any particular attitude in the event of war. Where such a question subsequently arose, as in the Morocco crisis, iti 214 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS arose from new events in European politics: there was no military agreement in the Ententes. But German diplomacy, characteristically, puts war in the forefront. We were to promise neutrality in case Germany was ever, under any circumstances, attacked. Of course we had no faintest intention of joining in an attack on Germany, and we offered clear undertakings to that effect. But the danger was that, by intrigue or by the interplay of alliances, Germany might maneuver some Power into making the first formal attack. As the summer of 1914 showed, it was always easy for Germany, by declaring war on Russia, to compel France to “attack” her; and indeed she did then, though in a half-hearted manner, accuse France of making the first attack. The proposed treaty would in these circumstances have bound us to be neutral. True, we might have taken the line which Italy took, and argued that the war was really an aggressive war on the part of Ger- many, not an attack by France, and that our treaty did not hold. But one great end would in the meantime have been attained by Germany. The confidence between France and Great Britain would have been sapped. France knew that we would not back her in any aggression, she knew that she herself contemplated no aggression. But she would have been justly suspicious if we concluded a treaty with her one great enemy, binding us to be neutral in certain contin- gencies. As Sir Edward Grey said to the German Ambassador, the way for the German Government to get into friendly relations with us was to improve its own relations with France; not to make arrangements for fighting France while we stood aside. We had indeed no obligations with any Power which interfered with the formation of new ties. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had expressed it: “Our stock of good feeling and international goodwill is not exhausted by France. Let us hope that this wise policy will be ex- tended. There is the great Empire of Russia. Then again there is Germany.’ But it appeared that the German pro- posals in this case involved exactly what we could not ac- cept. “One does not make new friendships worth havingTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 215 by deserting old ones. New friendships by all means let us make, but not at the expense of those we have.” (Grey, Nov. 27, I9II.) After prolonged negotiations the proposals of 1909 fell through. They achieved certain minor ends, facilitating, for instance, the ultimate codperation of Great Britain in the amended scheme for the Bagdad Railway, but in the main they left an unsatisfactory impression. In August, 1910, however, the British Government returned to the charge. They agreed not to bother Germany any more about the reduction of her naval program, and proposed an under- standing on the basis of three stipulations: (1) A “tem- porary retardation” of the shipbuilding; (2) meantime no increase in the program and no building in secret: free ex- change of information about the actual progress of work in the dockyards; (3) assurances that we had no hostile intentions towards Germany and had made no agreement with any Power which contained in it anything directed against Germany. Germany refused both (1) and? ()); the Kaiser himself explaining that under no circumstances would he consent to any arrangement which bound Germany not to increase her naval program as and when she chose. As for the third offer, Germany proposed further discus- sion, and the British Government at length, with much dis- appointment, assented to the plan of discussing a political agreement without any cessation or slackening of the naval rivalry. The sort of agreement contemplated by the German Chancellor is described in Sir E. Grey’s speech of March 13, 1911. It amounted to an arrangement “more compre- hensive, far-reaching, and intimate than any arrangement, short of actual alliance, that England had with any other Power. Such an arrangement was likely to cause misun- derstanding in France and Russia. The British agreements with France and Russia were not based on a general political formula. They were settlements of specific questions, and the settlements had transformed relations of friction into relations of friendship. There was nothing exclusive in these friendships ; the British Government had seen with un- { 4 | i216 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS mixed satisfaction the settlement of some disputes between France and Germany and between Russia and Germany. Why should not the same thing be attempted between Ger- many and England?” Thus Grey’s policy is to reject a special and close treaty with Germany, specifically contemplating war, which might prove inconsistent with Great Britain’s friendly relations with France and Russia, and would certainly leave Germany able to wage war upon those Powers with a freer hand. He pressed instead for a general settlement of disputes, which would bring Germany into harmony with the other Powers. In other words, we would cooperate with Germany in the maintenance of peace and the existing order; we would not cooperate with her, nor promise her a free hand, in any at- tempt to overthrow the existing order and assert her su- premacy over Europe. This was not what Germany desired. As Reventlow puts it, Germany had already in 1905 stood at the parting of the ways. At that time Great Britain had first appealed to Germany for a reduction of armaments or a naval under- standing, and, being refused, had replied by building the Dreadnought and establishing a naval base on the North Sea. British friendship, says Reventlow, could easily have been secured. The ways of Germany’s foreign policy would have been made smooth, but she would have had to accept British naval supremacy. She preferred, with full con- sciousness, “‘to build for her foreign politics and diplomacy a Calvary which must, nolens volens, be climbed.” In 1912 Lord Haldane again visited Berlin and attempted to negotiate the terms of friendship. He pleaded the cause of naval retrenchment. What was the use of the two Powers entering into a solemn agreement of amity, if both were immediately to increase their battle-fleets as a measure of precaution against their new friends? The pleading was useless. As a matter of fact, Germany chose the moment of Lord Haldane’s visit to announce very large increases in both Navy and Army. There remained the possibility of a political agreement, apart from any reduction of the navies. But Germany’sTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 217 terms by now were more explicit and sweeping. She wanted an unconditional pledge that Great Britain would maintain neutrality in the event of Germany being engaged in war. She wanted to climb her Hill of Skulls more untrammeled ; to be able to make war, it may be, on France or Russia, or to annex Belgium or Holland or Denmark, with the security that Great Britain was bought off beforehand. One is sur- prised that a responsible Minister could have expected us to accept such a proposal. He may have thought that our naval burden was even more crushing to us than it really was, and that we would abandon everything, including our honor and our future safety, for the sake of a breathing space and Germany’s temporary friendship. And in any case, one is reminded of a saying of Bismarck’s, quoted by von Biilow: ‘If Mr. X makes you a proposal which is obvi- ously advantageous to him and ruinous to you, it by no means follows that Mr. X isa fool. It only follows that you will be one if you accept.”” We would do nothing to make Germany’s path towards war easier. But we continued to the last moment to make proposals for extending our friendly relations to the Powers not in the Entente. BY ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR The phrase “freedom of the seas” is naturally attractive to British and American ears, For the extension of freedom into all departments of life and over the whole world has been one of the chief aspirations of the English-speaking peoples, and efforts toward that end have formed no small part of their contribution to civilization. But freedom is a word of many meanings, and we shall do well to consider in what meaning the Germans use it when they ask for it, not (it may be safely said) because they love freedom but because they hate Britain. About the “freedom of the seas,” in one sense, we are all agreed. England and Holland fought for it in times gone by. To their success the United States may be said to owe its very existence. For if, three hundred years ago, the maritime claims of Spain and Portugal had been admitted, whatever else North218 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS America might have been, it would not have been English- speaking. It neither would have employed the language, nor obeyed the laws, nor enjoyed the institutions, which, in the last analysis, are of British origin. But the “freedom of the seas” desired by the modern German is a very different thing from the freedom for which our forefathers fought in days of old. How, indeed, can it be otherwise? The most simple-minded must feel suspicious when they find that these missionaries of maritime freedom are the very same persons who preach and who practice upon the land the extremest doctrines of military abso- lutism. Ever since the genius of Bismarck created the German Empire by Prussian rifles, welding the German people into a great unity by military means, on a military basis, German ambitions have been a cause of unrest to the entire world. Commercial and political domination, depending upon a gi- gantic. army autocratically governed, has been and is the German ideal. If, then, Germany wants what she calls the freedom of the seas, it is solely as a means whereby this ideal may re- ceive worldwide extension. The power of Napoleon never extended beyond the coast line of Europe. Further progress was barred by the British fleets and by them alone. Ger- many is determined to endure no such limitations ; and if she cannot defeat her enemies at sea, at least she will paralyze their sea power. There is a characteristic simplicity in the methods by which she sets about attaining this object. She poses as a reformer of international law, though international law has never bound her for an hour. She objects to “economic pres- sure” when it is exercised by a fleet, though she sets no limit to the brutal completeness with which economic pressure may be imposed by an army. She sighs over the suffering which war imposes upon peaceful commerce, though her own methods of dealing with peaceful commerce would have wrung the conscience of Captain Kidd. She denounces the maritime methods of the Allies, though in her efforts toTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 219 defeat them she is deterred neither by the rules of war, the appeal of humanity, nor the rights of neutrals. It must be admitted, therefore, that it is not the cause of peace, of progress, or of liberty which preoccupies her when, in the name of freedom, she urges fundamental changes in maritime practice. Her manifest object is to shat- ter an obstacle which now stands in her way, as more than a hundred years ago it stood in the way of the masterful genius who was her oppressor and is her model. Not along this path are peace and liberty to be obtained. To paralyze naval power and leave military power uncon- trolled is surely the worst injury which international law can inflict upon mankind. Let me confirm this truth by dwelling for a moment on an aspect of it which is, I think, too often forgotten. It should be observed that even if the German proposal were carried out in its entirety it would do nothing to relieve the world from the burden of armaments. Fleets would still be indispensable. But their relative value would suffer change. They could no longer be used to exercise pressure upon an enemy except in conjunction with an army. The gainers by the change would therefore be the nations who possessed armies—the military monar- chies. Interference with trade would be stopped, but over- sea invasion would be permitted. The proposed change would therefore not merely diminish the importance of sea power, but it would diminish it most in the case of non- military States, like America and Britain. Suppose, for example, that Germany, in her desire to appropriate some Germanized portions of South America, came into conflict with the United States over the Monroe Doctrine. The United States, bound by the doctrine of “freedom of the seas,” could aim no blow at her enemy until she herself had created a large army and become for the time being a military community. Her sea power would be useless, or nearly so. Her land power would not exist. But more than this might happen. Let us suppose the desired change had been effected. Let us suppose that the maritime nations, accepting the new situation, thought them-~Fe . nee - arte es i Ree + i: 7 i 4 i ; oth ( , 5 fe) a 1 =a 220 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS selves relieved from all necessity of protecting their sea- borne commerce and arranged their program of naval ship- building accordingly. For some time it would probably proceed on legal lines. Commerce, even hostile commerce, would be unhampered. But a change might happen. Some unforeseen circumstance might make the German General Staff think it to be to the interest of its nation to cast to the winds the “freedom of the seas” and, in defiance of the new law, to destroy the trade of its enemies. Could anybody suggest after our experience in this war, after reading German histories and German theories of politics, that Germany would be prevented from taking such a step by the mere fact that it was a breach of international treaties to which she was a party? She would never hesi- tate—and the only result of the cession by the pacific powers of their maritime rights would be that the military powers would seize the weapon for their own purpose and turn it against those who had too hastily abandoned it. BY KARL KAUTSKY In the eighteenth century England was a grain export- ing country. In the beginning of the nineteenth century she produced wheat in nearly sufficient abundance to sup- ply her home demand. In the year 1850 she was importing nearly four million quarters of wheat, and that import had been increased tenfold in 1909, as against a home production of only seven millions. Shortly before the outbreak of the war, 84 per cent. of England’s wheat supply was drawn from overseas. . . . Thus England in case of war would be delivered over to famine if she did not possess command of the sea. Her control of the sea, which in the early years of the nineteenth century was little more than a weapon for the development and pro- tection of her Colonial Empire, and so, in modern language, served imperialistic ends, became in course of time indispensable for maintaining the independence of the country. Control of the sea thus changed, for the British people, from an imperialistic to a democratic necessity, at any rate for so long as it was not possible to effect generalTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 221 disarmament and the supersession of war. Its objects were pacific and, by reason of the perilous position of the coun- try in time of war, very popular with the mass of the Eng- lish people, even with Liberals, except the pure Socialists. The idea of sea control being thus embraced not merely by the imperialistic but also by the democratic sections of the community received not a protectionist or monopolist but a very liberal development in accordance with the basis of the open door. Thus it happened that during the whole nineteenth century no nation made any attempt to chal- lenge England’s control of the sea. Only Germany, and at the end of the century, adopted the policy of threatening that control when England’s vital interests were much more decisively bound up with it than in the time of the first Napoleon. BY GERHARD VON SCHULZE-GAEVERNITZ The “freedom of the seas,” which has been formally in- corporated in the law of the nations, is valid for England only in so far as it is based upon a tacit acceptance of British naval supremacy. Even “Manchester” men and laissez- faire politicians have helped to build up the British Navy. Mr. Stead, the pacifist, had been agitating in Germany in the cause of peace. When he returned to England from his peace propaganda in Germany he advocated the construc- tion of two British men-of-war for each German keel. This apostle of universal peace was, at the same time, an apostle of British naval supremacy. To the same end England blocked the development of the right of private property on the sea, and upheld the right to capture, in order to kill the trade of her enemies. In this direction she has gone still further in the present conflict by extending the scope of the meaning of contraband to an extent which has paralyzed the commerce even of neutrals.” In the London Declaration of 1909 the rules of interna- tional maritime law as established by custom were formu- 1 When this statement was written, late in 1915, all the neutral mari- time nations were conducting a commerce more extensive and much more remunerative than in peace times. The main menace to their ships was the German submarine,222 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS lated. Under that declaration ore, raw cotton, agricultural and mining machinery were included in the “free list,” that is, among the articles which, under all circumstances, could be dealt in freely with neutral countries. Grain is defined as “relative contraband,” which is not subject to seizure if it is discharged at neutral ports and then conveyed to the en- emy’s territory. At present, however, England is seizing both conditional contraband and non-contraband as she pleases. British inspectors supervise Dutch trade in Hol- land. England forbids neutral countries to export to Ger- many under the threat of cutting off all supplies. On account of the growing interdependence of nations British naval dominion now weighs on mankind far more heavily than a hundred years ago. In 1880 only the coast lines of oversea continents were opened up. Islands like the West Indies were the basis of the then existing colonial system. Oversea trade was made up of the more valuable articles of luxury, such as tobacco, coffee, sugar, and spices, which could be dispensed with. In case of need every Euro- pean country could become a self-sustained State without serious inconvenience. Since then the oversea countries have been thoroughly settled and opened up. A division of functions has taken place among the nations, and their economic life has become thoroughly interwoven by the vast increase in the volume of international trade. The commerce of the world now consists, not of the luxuries for the rich, but of the necessities of life for the masses. To-day the weal and woe of every nation, as of every individual, depends to a large extent on the inter- national trade, which is mostly ocean-borne. Hence man- kind has been delivered to the good-will or ill-will of Great Britain, the mistress of the seas.” 2TIn the year 1913 Germany was still 80 per cent. self-supporting, and could easily have been wholly so. Moreover she depended for ith- ported food supplies far more on Russia and the East than on the West. To the closing of trade routes on land Germany never ob- jected—possibly because she could do more of it than any other Power. In the one place where Germany could control the sea trade—at the Dardanelles—she induced Turkey, even before Turkey was openly atTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 223 By cutting off oversea communications, including the cables, Britain can bring the delicate machinery of the world’s industry to a complete stop. By closing the sea- ways to industrial Europe England condemns the million- headed armies of workmen to unemployment and cracks her whip of hunger in the huts of the poor. European agriculture is also dependent upon exportation of farming products and the importation of necessary sup- plies. By cutting cottonseed meal and fodder, England stops the supply of milk in cities and treads upon the bodies of infants.8 In oversea countries which export raw material the pro- ducer is on principle the credit taker, and in the end pays off his interest with goods. An epidemic of bankruptcies threatens these new countries. The storm of a commercial crisis sweeps over South America and the economic ex- istence of thousands of debtors and creditors alike has been war, to bar all traffic. This step was largely responsible for Russia’s ruin. In other words Germany shut other “masses” from the very freedom she demands for her own. Her own masses never wholly lacked the “necessities of life” through all the War, and when these grew scant the cause was primarily because Germany set all her own masses to fighting instead of farming. The second cause was the ruin of the East by Germany herself and her allies. Britain’s sea-power was only the third and smallest factor in Germany’s privations. *Surely German propaganda reaches in such a phrase its most astounding heights of impudent pretense. This was written, remem- ber, before the full British blockade of later years. German military officials were at this time deliberately and directly stopping the food of infants in Belgium and Poland and northern France; and learned German professors were upholding this real starvation in patriotic and enthusiastic manifestoes. Totally ignoring this damning fact, this Ger- man professor here works out an involved accusation against Britain to the effect that, by cutting down the importation of some farm sup- plies, Britain lessened the product of milk in some sections, and hence —since German adults apparently insisted on drinking their full milk ration—German infants were being “trodden” on, not by their grasping elders, but by Britain. Apparently Germany’s theory is that she will put her babies in the first line of attack. Then her men, sheltered behind the babes and feeding on the babes’ supplies, can massacre the rest of the human race. Meanwhile the Herr Professors are to raise a howl of horror against any opponent who, in seeking to resist her men, touches the barricade of infants. This is a fair sample of the working of the German mind, even the supposedly educated mind, during the War.224 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS ruined. The exportation of goods, the investment of new capital stops when British political interest demands that the world’s industrial machinery be stopped, and yet British political interests have nothing in common with South America. The British sea blockade of 1914 shook the industrial structure of the United States “hardly less than if the States themselves had been participants in the war.” Evidence of this is the closing of the Stock Exchange, the decrease of the exportation of goods, and the levy of “war taxes: Last of all, all real coast countries whose cities and eco- nomic centers lie within range of the British guns are un- conditional vassals of the ruling sea power. If the Briton bids them, the Portuguese must risk their lives for a mat- ter that does not concern them at all. Even Italy is unable to take part in any political combination which is not ac- ceptable to England. To-day, in a much larger measure than in the age of Napoleon, the “freedom of the seas” must be the political goal of all non-Britons. But only two States are independent enough to profess openly that they want to reach that goal of humanity. They alone possess the economic means to oppose the Briton as equals on the sea. These countries are the United States and Germany. The United States has definitely outstripped the British mother country because of the enormous natural resources and vast geographical extent, a gigantic production of raw materials, and the population twice that of England. To- day the United States is the world’s largest producer of gold and silver, mineral oil, cotton, steel, and coal. Pos- sessed of the most efficient industrial machinery, it could, if it wished, easily match or surpass British sea power. But the sentiment of the United States is against “militarism” and “navalism.” The United States is a colonial country abounding in strong individuals, but with a decentralized Government. Flattered and deftly lulled to sleep by British influence, " public opinion in the United States will not wake up untilTHE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 225 the “yellow New England’ of the Orient, nurtured and deflected from Australia by England herself, knocks at the gates of the New World. Not a patient and meek China but a warlike and conquest-bound Japan will be the ag- gressor when that day comes. Then America will be forced to fight under unfavorable conditions. In the meantime, England’s suicidal policy has sacrificed the foremost ad- vanced-post of the white race and culture, German Tsing- tao. Hereby Britain has laid the north of China open to at- tack, while Japan, with a cold logic, has assailed Germany, the strongest white power in the Orient, has encircled the Philippines, reaches out for island bases and sea control of the Pacific, and bids fair to emerge from the war as the only sure ‘“‘winner.”’ Thus the work of the liberation of mankind is left to Germany, and to Germany alone. On Noy. 11, 1870, Car- lyle wrote to the London Times: “Patient, pious, and plod- ding Germany has coalesced into a nation, and has taken over the hegemony of the European Continent. That seems to me the most hopeful international fact which has hap- pened in my lifetime.” Germany, the late-comer! While the Briton was con- quering the world, Germany has been pushed out since the Thirty Years’ War to the outer line of the world’s affairs. The customary ballast of ships that were returning from Germany was sand—the “produce of Germany” (le produit de l Allemagne), as the French sarcastically put it. The Hansa merchants were like so many roosters that picked a few grains in the stable of a noble steed and were kicked out when they became a nuisance. But in that qui- escent life old Germany gathered a new youth—that mys- terious strength which Carlyle foreshadows in depicting Frederick William I. and his surroundings. Then, toward the end of the eighteenth century, under the protection of Prussian neutrality in the revolutionary wars, that classical * Consult also in a later volume the more direct efforts of the German government to involve the United States in a war with both Japan and Mexico. W., VOL. L—15.226 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS age arose when Germany was crowned with the wreath of ‘ntellectual achievement. Kant is the mighty figure that marks the boundary. How much philosophical thought 1s pre-Kantean even to-day and even with us. Oswald in Ger- many and English “pragmatism” are cases in point. As long as the Germans were content to live in the clouds the Briton ceded to them the legion of intellectual empire, “the cuckoo house” and fools’ paradise of philo- sophic speculation. He feared neither Fichte’s virile “Talks to the German Nation,” nor Hegel's world-embracing sys- tem of thought. But wrongly so, because that culture which seemed so remote from the world was in reality intently practical. The German culture was a new spring of inex- haustible strength which was to inspire the German idealist to a reshaping of the visible world. With the alliance between historic Prussia and the “ideal nation” —‘“the German Nation’”—as Fichte had visualized it—a great power arose in Europe on a thorough national foundation, This new German Empire, in the opinion of Bismarck, its founder, appeared to be “satiated in Europe,” so lacking in tendencies of expansion that Great Britain ceded to it the rock island of Heligoland in 1892 without a shadow of misgiving. But the finger of economic necessi- ties—a yearly increase of 800,000 in population on a small area—pointed beyond Europe. By the merger of the historic Prussian customs union, principally with the West German ideas of Fr. List, Ger- many raised herself to the position of an economic world power, which by the restriction imposed upon a smaller Germany prepared the way for a greater Germany. List’s final goal was also a political one; wealth was but the means, the end was the liberation of humanity from the mountain of British pressure. To this end List accepted Napoleon’s Continental system as well as “Fichte’s national idea.” “But do you,” he appealed to his countrymen, “who are struggling to prevent the restoration of Gallic supremacy, find it more endurable and honorable to yield your rivers and harbors, your shores and your seas, to the sway of the British from now on?”THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 227 Step by step Germany caught up with the British model economic state, and overtook Britain first in iron and steel production, and then in chemical and electrical industries. Germany now became the seat of modern high finance; her aggregations of capital, accompanied by an even distribution of national wealth, outgrew all British proportions and be- gan to approach American dimensions; with this difference, that the German system is more systematic and more closely coordinated with the State than the somewhat accidental, and still half colonial, capitalism of the United States. The new German activity impinged with painful effect upon some of the old and firmly established British indus- tries. Witness the single example of coal-tar dyes, which completely superseded the British dyestuff industry, espe- cially indigo, which Great Britain previously produced from vegetable sources in India for the supply of the entire world. All this became the more acutely felt when German economic life, turning like that of England toward the seas, reached out mightily for the oceans of the world. Our Kaiser’s word that Germany’s future lies on the sea is more than true; for our present is on the water. In all zones German wares, ships, banks, and enterprises of all sorts came into contact with those of,England. But, more important still, the challenge to British industrial dominion seemed to bring into question also the political supremacy of Britain. From this source came the ominous clouds which dark- ened our political sky for so many years. The question was forced upon us, Would not the Briton attempt at the eleventh hour to destroy by political means the rival who had out- stripped him in the economic race? ® *“Outstripped” is here a mere word for boastfulness. In 1913 Brit- ain’s manufacturing and commercial interests were still the largest in the world, and seemed likely long to continue so. Germany and the United States were following Britain as good seconds, but neither had equaled her. As for war as a means of restoring British ascendancy, the fact was obvious then as now that war between Germany and Britain would give the United States an easy supremacy over both.GERMANY REACHES THE BREAKING POINT THE BURDENS WHICH MADE WAR A NECESSITY DAVID STARR JORDAN GENERAL VON BERNHARDI JULES CAMBON COLONEL PELLE Looking back over the previously depicted causes of the War, the reader will feel strongly, as not a few men had grown to feel in 1914, that war was inevitable. Germany had carefully taught her people that this was so, that only by war could they escape the constant threat of their foes’ “encirclement,” and escape also the staggering burdens, both financial and personal, laid upon Germany by the ever enlarging army and navy. Our general introduction has pointed out why the German government itself selected 1914 rather than an earlier or a later year for its moment of attack. Delay would have meant the strengthening of all her foes, a larger French army built up by the law increasing the service period, a far more mobile and effective Russian army developed from nearly completed railroad and transportation plans, and an ever mightier British fleet. Delay might also have meant a complete inter- nal breakdown, from the resistance both of the poor socialists who paid most of the taxes, and of the rich aristocrats who objected to paying any. Germany had to strike at once or never. Read the following evidences of her state of mind. The first is a brief statement by one of the most noted American scholars, Dr. Jor- dan, for many years the active head of the great California university of Leland Stanford. He visited Germany in 1913 and foresaw the coming storm. The next is from General Bernhardi, a high German authority already quoted. In the fall of 1913, he added to his latest book on war an extra chapter from which we translate. To him the Balkan war of 1913 meant intolerable interference with German plans; for its closing treaty gave to Serbia a new lease of life, however feeble. Did not Serbia block the Mittel-Europa empire by which Ger- man rule was to extend through Austria to Turkey and the East? Germany must act immediately! Bernhardi’s tone changes. He had always urged war in the future. Now he urges it as a matter of the immediate present. Next come the official reports of M. Jules Cambon, the French Ambassador in Berlin at the fateful hour. Twice in 1913 did M. Cam- bon send solemn warning to his government of the dark change in German temper. Of especial historic note is his account of the inter- view between the Belgian king, Albert, and the new-spirited Kaiser, grown reckless by the pressure behind him, and the arrogant confi- dence of strength. To M. Cambon’s reports are added two secret diplomatic reports made public by the French Government after the War had begun. They 228GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT 229 show how careful, how shrewd and how anxious was the watch being kept on Germany by the State which had most to fear from German ambition and malevolence. CGF. H. BY DAVID STARR JORDAN N the summer of 1913 I learned of a meeting of the Friedensfreunde, to be held in Nuremberg in July. I at- tended the meeting and became acquainted with a number of leading Democrats, and with a good many others in- terested in peace, though not on a democratic basis. I was invited to come back to speak in the German cities, and I found time in December to give lectures in Frankfort, Wiesbaden, Mannheim, Stuttgart, and Munich. Through my friends I learned a good deal of the plans of the Pan- Germanists and especially of the German General Staff. In brief, they hoped to bring on war in 1914. Presum- ably, at that time, through disturbances to be created in Alsace-Lorraine. They were then proposing to take Bel- gium and Holland—Holland for the sake of making Ant- werp the center for the coming attack upon England. They wished especially to take the two departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais from France. They proposed to make of Boulogne the great seaport of Germany, surrounding its broad flat bay with breakwaters, doing all this before Eng- land would enter the war, and removing the German fleet to Boulogne. They had a new German name for Boulogne, but I do not find it in my notes and do not recollect it. They were also to take Paris and exact an indemnity that would pay the expenses of the war; 25,000,000,000 marks was the figure I heard mentioned. After this, they were to treat France with great leniency, relieving her of all necessity for maintaining an army and navy and defending her from her great arch-enemy Great Britain. It was thought that France, being wholly degenerate, would not resist, and she could then devote herself to commerce and to the continuing of loans of money to finance German industry. .. . I suppose that the Zabern incident and the arrest of “Oncle Hansi’ [ Jean Jacques Waltz] were moves in the di- rection of inciting trouble in Alsace, getting a protest from230 GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT France to be followed by a sudden ultimatum. The death of the Archduke, whether planned in Budapest or not, served to make the way to war easier, by beginning it in the southeast. BY GENERAL VON BERNHARDI The European situation has chiefly changed, because Germany, which formerly was politically quite unimportant, has become by far the foremost Power on the Continent. A new factor has arisen. It can really not reasonably be expected that Germany, with her 65,000,000 inhabitants and her world-wide trade, should allow herself to be treated on a footing of equality with France, with her 40,000,000 inhabitants. It can really not be expected that Germany should allow 45,000,000 in- habitants of Great Britain (Celtic Scotchmen, Welshmen, and Irishmen side by side with Germanic Englishmen) to act as arbiters to the States of the Old World, and to ex- ercise an absolute supremacy on the sea. It can really not be expected that Germany, with her constantly growing pop- ulation, should renounce her claims to become a great co- lonial Power and to acquire territories suitable for settle- ment, while States with a decreasing or an insufficient population, such as France and England, share the posses- sion of the Old World with Russia, which in the main is an Asiatic Power. Germany, though she has become a world-Power only lately, is entitled to claim an important increase of her sway, corresponding to her economic and cultural importance. Cir- cumstances compel her to strive for such expansion. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Germany's desire, even if she acts with the greatest modesty, is one of the reasons of the present tension. Germany’s national competitors fully recognize the power of expansion possessed by the German nation, and its necessity. They therefore conclude that Germany will, notwithstanding her proved love of peace, be at last compelled to enter upon a policy of expansion. Eng- land, France, and Russia will never be induced to believe that Germany will for all time resign herself to her presentGERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT 231 position. Therefore these countries strive to keep down Germany, and to re-create the convenient conditions which prevailed when a weak Germany occupied Central Europe. Before all, France will not, under any circumstances, abandon her claim to a position of political equality with Germany. She feels particularly entitled to claim equality, because her colonies are greater than ours. . . The position in the Balkan Peninsula has completely changed. The Turks have suffered a crushing defeat, and none of the European Powers have come to their aid. A terrible awakening has taken place. The Great Pow- ers did not for a moment think of enforcing their peace program. The States of the Triple Alliance could not find the necessary energy actively to defend their interests, while the Triple Entente desired to see Turkey weakened, if not broken. To the Entente Powers the victory of the Balkan States could be only advantageous whilst it would most seri- ously damage the States of the Triple Alliance. The Entente Powers would certainly have been ready to interfere in case of a Turkish victory, but they did not feel called upon to work for the preservation of that State. The Triple Al- liance Powers have received their lesson, and they will find it difficult, if not impossible, now to secure for themselves the advantages which they might easily have obtained had they interfered at the right moment. Turkey has been in a state of decay for a long time. Still, it was absolutely in the interests of the Triple Alliance to delay the expulsion of the Turks from Europe until the great European war, which will decide the fate of the Cen- tral European States, has been fought. Owing to the course of events, the Triple Alliance will now have to fight such a war under far less favorable conditions. Before Turkey’s defeat Germany could calculate upon the cooperation of Turkey and Rumania. To-day all this has changed, and a state of affairs has arisen which brings with it the greatest perils for Germany and her allies. It is clear that Turkey cannot hope to reconquer her lost provinces, and that the partition of her European ter- ritories has commenced. However this will be effected, Aus-. } = aaa 5k i lange y n>), ae ees tr re io tg =e nem Eure ene el Lad te _ pada ee i Ka a - 232 GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT tria and Rumania, and therefore the Triple Alliance, too, will lose by it. If Austria agrees to the enlargement of the Balkan States, hoping to place them under her influence, she will collide with Russia, which follows the same policy. It cannot be assumed that in a competition with Russia for the favor of the Balkan Slavs Austria will be successful. It is, of course, possible that the Balkan States, supposing they remain united, will try to shake off Russia’s influence and support Austria. Still, one cannot calculate upon the lasting unity of the Balkan States, as they pursue opposing interests. Serbia will be hostile to Austria as long as several million Serbs remain under Austrian rule and desire reunion with the Serbians of the kingdom, and these will remain hostile to Austria until they have obtained an outlet on the Adriatic. We must, therefore, reckon with the possibility that, in case of a great European war, the Balkan States will be found on the side of the Triple Entente, hoping to expand at Austria’s expense. Thus the Triple Alliance will lose its secure route through Turkey, by which it could receive sup- plies in case of a war against the Entente Powers. The neutralization of that route would be of little value in view of the insecurity of paper guarantees. The superiority against which we have to fight has in- creased, and Germany’s strategical war preparations must be changed accordingly. In consequence of the Balkan war, Germany’s prestige throughout the world has suffered, though without justifica- tion. Turkey’s defeat is celebrated by our enemies as a German defeat. The fact that the Turkish army had Krupp guns and German instructors induces them to depreciate the German army. All England is triumphant at Turkey's defeat, which is attributed to German military training. Be- sides, the English clearly recognize that the Triple Alliance has lost power by that defeat. In France similar sentiments prevail. Formerly only the French army was eager for war. Now the whole nation shares these feelings. The people are sure of victory, and armaments are secretly increased in expectation of war. In Russia the Pan-Slavists are gain-GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT 233 ing ground and are attacking Austria. Even little Belgium has found that she has a French heart, and she is jubilant at the defeat of the Turks and the lost labor of the German in- structors. The peril of a general war has come nearer. The strained relations between Austria and Serbia may lead to war. Even if the present quarrel should be settled, the Austro-Serbian differences remain. We cannot expect that the Powers of the Triple Entente will not make use of their improved po- sition. Urged on by public opinion, they may try to en- force their will upon Germany. That would be logical and natural. Hence a wise and farseeing policy must calculate with the possibility of war. France and Russia seemed hitherto not to consider the moment favorable for striking. The unexpected events in the Balkan Peninsula have com- pletely changed the position forthem. The German Govern- ment must be on its guard. All the pusillanimous supporters of a policy of surrender who do not wish to embark upon a real world-policy, and who desire that Germany should continue to exist in its nar- row Continental confines, will, under the circumstances, cer- tainly loudly assert that Germany has no vital interest in the Balkans, and protest against energetic action. Never dare and never strive! That is the motto of those Philistines to whom peace is the most precious good, even if the great- ness and the future of the Fatherland are at stake. They will energetically point out the dangers of a war against superior forces, and demand that the Government should avoid war by its moderation, instead of preparing for it by energetic action. These German pessimists and men of little faith must be told again and again that it is the strongest and most vital interest of Germany that the position of Austria-Hungary in the Balkan Peninsula should remain intact, and that Italy’s claims in the Mediterranean should be supported; that not- withstanding the altered position of affairs, Germany’s own advantage requires that Constantinople and as much ter- ritory in Europe as possible should remain Turkish, as long as Russia belongs to the Triple Entente; that Germany234 GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT should defend Turkey’s Asiatic possessions with all means in her power, and that a “hands off” should be addressed to the French and English if they should desire to interfere with Turkey. And again, and ever again, it must be pointed out that we have no reason to be afraid of war if we act with our whole armed strength, if we do everything to be as strong as possible on the field of battle, and if we are de- termined to act before Germany's opponents are ready if it becomes clear to us that an honorable peace cannot be main- tained. Our enemies envy us not only our position and our world-wide trade, which increases our national wealth from year to year, and which we have conquered by two victori- ous wars. Exactly as they envied Frederick the Great Silesia, they desire now to crush us. It would be unworthy of our past and of our German name if we should bow down before their hostility without a struggle. Our claim to a great position in the world may certainly lead to a war simi- lar to the Seven Years’ War. Still, we shall be as victorious as was Prussia’s hero king. That is my absolute and joyous conviction. A great war will unify and elevate the people and destroy the diseases which threaten the national health. The latent forces within our armies require arousing. They will make it unconquerable in hard times. Besides, it is not yet too late to complete our armaments. In very little time the cadres and the number of horses can be increased, the machine guns procured, and the cycling battalions be raised. The Army Service Corps can be reénforced with motor vehi- cles. Germany’s highly developed industry will satisfy the highest requirements. Besides, it is necessary, in view of the changed situation, to strengthen and modernize the for- tresses on the eastern frontier. The war readiness of the German navy and the strength of the coast fortifications can very greatly be increased in a short time. A strong will can achieve all this as if by witchcraft. Our future lies in our own hands, Small men will talk finance and whine that we cannot afford it. We can find the necessary funds easily, in case of need, by loan. Goethe has told us that the character of a nation may be seen by theGERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT 235 quality of its armies and law courts, and that finances are comparatively unimportant. The truth of this has been proved in the War of Liberation, when impoverished Prussia raised 200,000 soldiers and crushed Napoleon, although she had only 5,000,000 inhabitants. In view of Germany’s tremendous wealth, and in view of the fact that the future of State and nation are at stake, it seems criminal to speak of financial difficulties. Germany does not lack money. What we want is a firm will to great- ness. Then only shall we obtain greatness. Every one must do his best. All true Germans must gather round the Emperor, ready to give their blood and their treasure for the honor, the greatness, and the future of the German na- tion. “Through war to victory!” BY JULES CAMBON Berlin, March 17, 1913. Our naval and military attachés are sending to their re- spective Ministers reports on the new German military law. I take this opportunity of drawing the attention of your Ex- cellency to these important documents. The consideration of the financial expedients by which Germany intends to provide for these military measures is the sole cause of the delay in the publication of the definite proposals of the Government. Jn spite of the patriotism with which the rich classes affect to accept the sacrifices asked of them, they are none the less, particularly the busi- ness circles, dissatisfied with the financial measures which have been announced, and they feel that a compulsory levy imposed in times of peace creates a formidable precedent for the future. On the other hand, the Federal Govern- ments have strongly opposed an innovation which grants to the Empire resources derived from direct taxation. Hitherto, taxation of this kind has been reserved to the Fed- eral States, and the latter see in the surrender of this prin- ciple a new declaration of the corporate unity (personalité) of the Empire, constituting a distinct diminution of their own sovereign power. However this may be, in increasing the strength of the236 GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT German army the Empire desires to leave nothing to chance in the event of a possible crisis. The German changes have produced a result unexpected by that country, viz., the proposal of the Government of France to reéstablish the three years’ service, and the manly determination with which this proposal has been welcomed in France. The surprise occasioned by these proposals has been utilized by the Imperial Government for the purpose of insisting on the absolute necessity of an increase of Ger- man military strength; the German proposals are repre- sented as a reply to our own. The reverse is the case, since the immense military effort which France is undertaking is but the consequence of German initiative. The Imperial Government is constantly rousing patriotic sentiment. Every day the Emperor delights to revive memo- ries of 1813. Yesterday evening a military tattoo went through the streets of Berlin, and speeches were delivered in which the present situation was compared to that of a hundred years ago. The trend of public opinion will find an echo in the speeches which will be delivered next month in the Reichstag, and I have reason to fear that the Chan- cellor himself will be forced to allude in his statements to the relations of France and Germany. It was of course to be expected that national patriotism would be worked up just when fresh sacrifices are being required, but to com~ pare the present time to 1813 is to misuse an historical analogy. If, to-day, there is anything corresponding to the movement which a hundred years ago roused Germans to fight the man of genius who aspired to universal dominion, it is in France that such a counterpart would have to be sought, since the French nation seeks but to protect itself against the domination of force. Nevertheless, it is true that the state of public opinion in both countries makes the situation grave. Berlin, November 22, 1913. I have received from an absolutely reliable source an account of a conversation which took place a fortnight ago between the Emperor and the King of the Belgians, in theGERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT 237 presence of the Chief of the General Staff—General von Moltke. This conversation, it appears, has made a profound impression on King Albert. I am in no way surprised at the impression he gathered, which corresponds with what I have myself felt for some time. Enmity against us is increasing, and the Emperor has ceased to be the friend of peace. The person addressed by the Emperor had thought up till then, as did all the world, that William II., whose per- sonal influence had been exerted on many critical occasions in support of peace, was still in the same state of mind. He found him this time completely changed. The German Em- peror is no longer in his eyes the champion of peace against the warlike tendencies of certain parties in Germany. Will- iam II. has come to think that war with France is inevitable, and that it must come sooner or later. Naturally he believes in the crushing superiority of the German army and in its certain success. General von Moltke spoke exactly in the same strain as his sovereign. He, too, declared war to be necessary and in- evitable, but he showed himself still more assured of suc- cess, “for,” he said to the King, “this time the matter must be settled, and your Majesty can have no conception of the irresistible enthusiasm with which the whole German peo- ple will be carried away when that day comes.”’ The King of the Belgians protested that it was a trav- esty of the intentions of the French Government to interpret them in that sense; and to let oneself be misled as to the sentiments of the French nation by the ebullitions of a few irresponsible spirits or the intrigues of unscrupulous agi- tators. The Emperor and his Chief of the General Staff never- theless persisted in their point of view. During the course of this conversation the Emperor moreover seemed overstrained and irritable. As William II. advances in years, family traditions, the reactionary ten- dencies of the court, and especially the impatience of the soldiers, obtain a greater empire over his mind. Perhaps he feels some slight jealousy of the popularity acquired by his son, who flatters the passions of the Pan-Germans, andi i | y \ } 4 \ 238 GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT who does not regard the position occupied by the Empire in the world as commensurate with its power. Perhaps the reply of France to the last increase of the German army, the object of which was to establish the incontestable su- premacy of Germany is, to a certain extent, responsible for his bitterness, for, whatever may be said, it is realized that Germany cannot go much further. One may well ponder over the significance of this con- versation. The Emperor and his Chief of the General Staff may have wished to impress the King of the Belgians and induce him not to make any opposition in the event of a con- flict between us. Perhaps Germany would be glad to see Bel- gium less hostile to certain aspirations lately manifested here with regard to the Belgian Congo, but this last hypothesis does not seem to me to fit in with the interposition of General von Moltke. For the rest, the Emperor William is less master of his impatience than is usually supposed. I have known him more than once to allow his real thoughts escape him. What- ever may have been the object of the conversation related to me, the revelation is none the less of extreme gravity. It tallies with the precariousness of the general situation and with the state of a certain shade of public opinion in France and Germany. If I may be allowed to draw a conclusion, I would sub- mit that it would be well to take account of this new factor, namely, that the Emperor is becoming used to an order of ideas which were formerly repugnant to him, and that, to borrow from him a phrase which he likes to use, ““We must keep our powder dry.” SECRET DIPLOMATIC REPORT OF COLONEL PELLE, FRENCH MILITARY ATTACHE AT BERLIN IN IQI2 We are discovering every day how deep and lasting are the feelings of injured pride and revenge provoked against us by the events of last year. The Treaty of November 4, 1911, has proved a complete disillusion. The feeling is the same in all parties. All Germans,GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT 239 even the Socialists, bear us a grudge for having taken away their share in Morocco. It seemed, a year or so ago, as if the Germans had set out to conquer the world. They considered themselves so strong that no one would dare to oppose them. Limitless possibilities were opening out for German manufacturers, German trade, German expansion. Needless to say, these ideas and ambitions have not dis- appeared to-day. Germany always requires outlets for com- mercial and colonial expansion. They consider that they are entitled to them, because their population is increasing every day, because the future belongs to them. They con- sider us, with our forty million inhabitants, as a second rate power. In the crisis of 1911, however, this second rate power successfully withstood them, and the Emperor and the Gov- ernment gave way. Public opinion has forgiven neither them nor us. People are determined that such a thing shall never happen again. SECRET DIPLOMATIC REPORT OF FRENCH FOREIGN OFFICE IN JULY, 1913 From observations which our agents in Germany have been able to collect from persons having access to the most diverse circles, it is possible to draw the conclusion that two feelings sway and irritate men’s minds :— (1) The Treaty of November 4, 1911, is considered a disappointment for Germany. (2) France—a new France—undreamed of prior to the summer of IgII, is considered to be a warlike country, and to want war. Members of all the parties in the Reichstag, from the Conservatives to the Socialists, representing the most dif- ferent districts of Germany, university people from Berlin, Halle, Jena, and Marburg, students, elementary school teach- ers, commercial clerks, bank clerks, bankers, artisans, mer- chants, manufacturers, doctors, lawyers, editors of Demo- cratic and Socialistic newspapers, Jewish publicists, mem- bers of trade unions, clergymen and shopkeepers from the| | ~— 240 GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT Mark of Brandenburg, country squires from Pomerania and shoemakers from Stettin celebrating the 505th anniversary of their association, country gentlemen, officials, priests, and large farmers from Westphalia, are unanimous on these two points, with very slight differences corresponding to their position in society or their political party. The events of 1911 caused a profound disillusionment in Germany. A new France, united, determined, resolved not to be intimidated any longer, has emerged from the shroud in which she had been seen burying herself for the last ten years. Public opinion in Germany, from December to May, from the columns of the press of all parties, which re- proached the Imperial Government for their incapacity and cowardice, has discovered with surprise mingled with irri- tation that the country conquered in 1870 had never ceased since then to carry on war, to float her flag and maintain the prestige of her arms in Asia and Africa, and to con- quer vast territories ; that Germany, on the other hand, had lived on her reputation, that Turkey is the only country in which during the reign of William II. she had made moral conquests, and these were now compromised by the disgrace of the Morocco solution. Each time that France made a colonial conquest this consolation was offered :—“Yes, but that does not prevent the decadence, anarchy, and dismem- berment of France at home.’ The public were mistaken and public opinion was misled. Given this German public opinion that considers France as longing for war, what can be augured for the future as regards the possibility and proximity of war? . . People sometimes speak of a military party in Ger- many. The expression is inaccurate, even if it is intended to convey the idea that Germany is the country where mili- tary power is supreme, as it is said of France that it is the country where the civil power is supreme. ‘There exists a state of mind which is more worthy of attention than this historical fact, because it constitutes a danger more evi- dent and more recent. There is a war party, with leaders and followers, a press either convinced or subsidized for the purpose of creating public opinion; it has means bothFO ame apt SS - ~- —— ba we ee: » aell ns . i i pal A fi § rt i +} 4 Bi 5 y i ‘ 1 54h } 6 x > uw : ‘ + i k Ae, f ng te Sager nian geet! e ee a : mt er et rad eras AIT ~ ee a THE SPIRIT OF PAN-SLAVISM “Russia promises to leap straight from the Carpathians to Berlin.” Leon Bakst, the celebrated Russian artist, furnishes this Russian car- toon. In it he proclaims that his country will not be content merely to hold back Austria in a defensive war. When called on to defend the Serbian Slavs, she will cross the Carpathian Mountains, will overrun Austria, and is even able if necessary to fight Germany also. The Rus- sian cartoons contain nothing of the keen insight of Dyson nor of the high spirituality of Raemaekers; they are savage, direct threats, meeting the similar German cartoons blow for blow.Sears Nel pF DY ; ee dy , : , 4 “te ~ we bay GA Ce “Ls \ Sa AL ro. ; 4 . ¢ -~ S Ping fy 15,2 aN CURSED BY HIS ANCESTORS “Stupid blunderer! Foolish pupil!” Among neutral cartoonists of the War, the most noted after Rae- maekers has been the Spanish artist Robida. This is perhaps his most striking cartoon. His designs are like those of the Russians, straight- forward, obvious and unaided by suggestion. From a gas-filled and malodorous heaven Frederick the Great looks down in fury, and Bis- marck, now become a winged cherub, glares in disgust. Both curse the blunderer who is ruining their work by stupidly misapplying their crafty falsehoods. While William II raises the crown of world empire to his own head, his son plays frivolously with the world, balancing it on a finger, and Bulgarian, Turkish and Austrian leaders smile ingratiatingly above the flames and ruin they have caused. But the World’s bayonets are coming! Bismarck and Frederick see them, though the others do not.GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT 241 varied and formidable for the intimidation of the Govern- ment. It goes to work in the country with clear ideas, burn- ing aspirations, and a determination that is at once thrilling and fixed. Those in favor of war are divided into several cate- gories; each of these derives from its social caste, its class, its intellectual and moral education, its interests, its hates, special arguments which create a general attitude of mind and increase the strength and rapidity of the stream of war- like desire. Some want war because in the present circumstances they think it is inevitable. And, as far as Germany is concerned, the sooner the better. Others regard war as necessary for economic reasons based on overpopulation, overproduction, the need for markets and outlets; or for social reasons, i.¢., to provide the outside interests that alone can prevent or retard the rise to power of the democratic and socialist masses. Others, uneasy for the safety of the Empire, and beliey- ing that time is on the side of France, think that events should be brought to an immediate head. It is not unusual to meet, in the course of conversation or in the pages of patriotic pamphlets, the vague but deeply rooted conviction that a free Germany and a regenerated France are two his- torical facts mutually incompatible. Others are bellicose from “‘Bismarckism’” as it may be termed. They feel themselves humiliated at having to enter into discussions with France, at being obliged to talk in terms of law and right in negotiations and conferences where they have not always found it easy to get right on their side, even when they have a preponderating force. From their still recent past they derive a sense of pride ever fed by personal memories of former exploits, by oral tra- ditions, and by books, and irritated by the events of recent years. Angry disappointment is the unifying force of the W ehrvereine, and other associations of Young Germany. Others again want war from a mystic hatred of revolu- tionary France; others finally from a feeling of rancor. These last are the people who heap up pretexts for war, W., VOL. 1—16.i . | } \ \ en 242 GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT Coming to actual facts, these feelings take concrete form as follows:—The country squires represented in the Reichstag by the Conservative party want ai all costs to escape the death duties, which are bound to come if peace continues. In the last sitting of the session which has just closed, the Reichstag agreed to these duties in principle. It is a serious attack on the interests and privileges of the landed gentry. On the other hand, this aristocracy is mili- tary in character, and it is instructive to compare the Army List with the year book of the nobility. War alone can prolong its prestige and support its family interest. During the discussions on the Army Bill, a Conservative speaker put forward the need for promotion among officers as an argument in its favor. Finally, this social class which forms a hierarchy with the King of Prussia as its supreme head, realizes with dread the democratization of Germany and the increasing power of the Socialist party, and considers its own days numbered. Not only does a formidable move- ment hostile to agrarian protection threaten its material interests, but in addition, the number of its political repre- sentatives decreases with each legislative period. In the Reichstag of 1878, out of 397 members, 162 belonged to the aristocracy ; in 1898, 83; in 1912, 57. Out of this num- ber, 27 alone belong to the Right, 14 to the Center, 7 to the Left, and one sits among the Socialists. The higher bourgeoisie, represented by the National Lib- eral Party, the party of the contented spirits, have not the same reasons as the squires for wanting war. With a few exceptions, however, they are bellicose. They have their reasons, social in character. The higher bourgeoisie is no less troubled than the aris- tocracy at the democratization of Germany. In 1871 they had 125 members in the Reichstag; in 1874, 155; in 1887, 99; in 1912, 45. They do not forget that in the years suc- ceeding the war they played the leading role in parliament, helping Bismarck in his schemes against the country squires. Uneasily balanced to-day between Conservative instincts and Liberal ideas, they look to war to settle problems which their parliamentary representatives are painfully incapableGERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT 243 of solving. In addition, doctrinaire manufacturers declare that the difficulties between themselves and their workmen originate in France, the home of revolutionary ideas of freedom—without France industrial unrest would be un- known. Lastly, there are the manufacturers of guns and armor plate, big merchants who demand bigger markets, bankers who are speculating on the coming of the golden age and the next war indemnity—all these regard war as good busi- ness. Amongst the “Bismarckians” must be reckoned officials of all kinds, represented fairly closely in the Reichstag by the Free Conservatives or Imperial Party. This is the party of the “pensioned,” whose impetuous sentiments are poured out in the Post. They find disciples and political sympa- thizers in the various groups of young men whose minds have been trained and formed in the public schools and uni- versities. | The universities, if we except a few distinguished spirits, develop a warlike philosophy. Economists demonstrate by statistics Germany’s need for a colonial and commercial em- pire commensurate with the industrial output of the Empire. There are sociological fanatics who go even further. The armed peace, so they say, is a crushing burden on the nations, it checks improvement in the lot of the masses, and assists the growth of socialism. France, by clinging obstinately to her desire for revenge, opposes disarmament. Once for all, she must be reduced, for a century, to a state of impotence; that is the best and speediest way of solving the social problem. Historians, philosophers, political pamphleteers and other apologists of German Kultur wish to impose upon the world a way of thinking and feeling specifically German. They wish to wrest from France that intellectual supremacy which, according to the clearest thinkers, is still her posses- sion, From this source is derived the phraseology of the Pan-Germans and the ideas and adherents of the Kriegs- vereine, Wehrvereine, and other similar associations. We come finally to those whose support of the war\ ) \ | | 244 GERMANY AT THE BREAKING POINT policy is inspired by rancor and resentment. These are the most dangerous. They are recruited chiefly among diplo- matists. German diplomatists are now in very bad odor in public opinion. The most bitter are those who since 1905 have been engaged in the negotiations between France and Germany ; they are heaping together and reckoning up their grievances against us, and one day they will present their accounts in the war press. It seems as if they were looking for grievances chiefly in Morocco, though an incident is always possible in any part of the globe where France and Germany are in contact. They must have their revenge, for they complain that they have been duped. During the discussion on the Army Bill one of these warlike diplomatists exclaimed, “Germany will not be able to have any serious conversation with France until she has every sound man under arms.” In what terms will this conversation be couched? The opinion is fairly widely spread, even in Pan-German circles, that Germany will not declare war in view of the system of defensive alliances and the tendencies of the Emperor. But when the moment comes, she will have to try in every possible way to force France to attack her. Offense will be given if necessary. That is the Prussian tradition. Must war then be considered as inevitable? It is hardly likely that Germany will take the risk, if France can make it clear to the world that the Entente Cor- diale and the Russian alliance are not mere diplomatic fic- tions but realities which exist and will make themselves felt. The British fleet inspires a wholesome terror. It is well known, however, that victory on sea will leave every- thing in suspense. On land alone can a decisive issue be obtained. As for Russia, even though she carries greater weight in political and military circles than was the case three or four years ago, it is not believed that her cooperation will be sufficiently rapid and energetic to be effective. People’s minds are thus getting used to consider the next war as a duel between France and Germany.THE ASSASSINATION OF THE AUSTRIAN CROWN PRINCE WHOSE VICTIM, AND WHOSE OPPORTUNITY? JUNE 28, 1914 AUSTRIAN OFFICIAL REPORT a CRAWFURD PRICE SIGMUND MUNZ The incidents which led up to the death of the Austrian Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand have been carefully wrapped in obscurity. Briefly outlined, what we know is that the prince paid a visit of state to Serajevo, the capital of the discontented province of Bosnia. Prince Ferdinand was a strong, hard, seemingly cold man in permanent dis- favor at the Hapsburg court because he had defied the family tradition and insisted on wedding “beneath” him. Moreover his bride, perhaps the only person in the world who was deeply devoted to him, was of the despised Slavic race. The aged emperor, Franz Josef, unwillingly created the lady a duchess, but she never received full recognition in the royal court. She was that peculiar fantasy of monarchial pomp, a “morganatic” wife, wedded to the man but not to the prince. Her children could never succeed their father on the Hapsburg throne. For this and other reasons there was a breach between Franz Ferdi- nand and the other Hapsburgs, and he dwelt mainly at his country. home of Konopischt with his wife and children. Here he was visited early in 1914 by Emperor William of Germany. After that, all is vague. There have been persistent rumors that William and Franz Ferdinand formed an alliance, and that thereafter the other Hapsburgs were determined to destroy Franz Ferdinand before he succeeded his aged father on the throne and drove them all from power. The gist of these rumors has been concentrated into two tales, two speeches. Emperor William is reported to have said on learning of Ferdinand’s death, “Now, I shall have to begin my work all over again.” More probable is the other bitterly natural tale that Ferdinand himself in dying said of his assassin, “Vienna will give him a decoration for this.” Before the prince went to Serajevo, the region was known to be in a ferment of discontent; and he was repeatedly advised not to risk his life by venturing there. Rumor again enters here with a tale of his unwillingness to go and of his being driven to it by Hapsburg taunts of cowardice. If these tales are false in spirit or in fact, the Austrian court has only itself to blame; for they have been bred by its policy of secrecy. What is undeniable in fact and most impressive is that, in a country long accustomed to elaborate police control, the heir of the throne was sent into an openly rebellious district and was 245246 ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE given a police protection utterly inefficient, glaringly inadequate. As he and his wife droye through the town in procession, a man, Cabrino- vic, found it easy to step close to the royal carriage and hurl at it a bomb which barely missed the doomed couple. Here again steps in rumor to picture events at the Mayor’s reception after this first assault. On one hand the prince is represented as haughtily lecturing his city hosts for their insufficient protection, and as refusing their entreaties that he would not venture on a similar ride back to his hotel. On the other, he is represented as foreseeing the result, hesitating to go out, and being urged to his fate by crafty enemies. At any rate, he rode forth again, and a young Bosnian student, Gavrilo Princip, found it easy to step close up to the royal carriage with a revolver. The poor “duchess” wife, Slavic, morganatic, but a lover of her husband, threw herself in front of the revolver. Princip fired twice. The first shot slew the wife, and the second the husband. Each died almost imme- diately. The burial of the royal pair was hurried, poor and unhonored by any of the dignity of royal pomp. Some desolating fear hung over it; and all of good that can be seen in the disaster is that at least if the unbefriended couple had to go, they were happy in that they went together. Both Princip and Cabrinovic were seized by the surrounding people immediately after their attacks. They were tried secretly and con- demned to secret imprisonment, their trials being under the super- vision of the Austrian Under-Secretary of State Forgach. This wretch, Forgach, had previously been convicted of forging documents to convict Slavic victims in previous political trials, a crime for which he had been pardoned and promoted. Despite our natural repudiation of any statement issued under For- gach, there seems little doubt as to Princip’s personality, his purpose and his fate. He was a Slavic youth inflamed by the wrongs of his race; and he is reported to have been consumptive and to have died in prison. Cabrinovic, however, remains vague, as does the whole affair. He is reported to have been an Austrian, the son of a former official and himself a spy in the police service. His crime could thus have had no patriotic motive, no moral dignity. What became of him we do not know. Darkness has swallowed him up again, just as dark- riess spewed him forth, the one utterly sordid, soulless, ineffective creature in the world’s great tragedy. We give here the official statement of the Austrian court which first classes the two attacks as one, which they probably were not, and then traces them, not by evidence but by a mere chain of argument, to the Serbian Government. In contrast to this we quote a general survey of the Serajevo affair from “The Dawn of Armageddon” by Craw- furd Price, a British authority on Serbian affairs. Then follows a frank estimate of the Crown Prince and of his fate by the promi- nent Austrian diplomat and liberal thinker, Sigmund Miunz. GrRy osASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE 247 THE AUSTRIAN OFFICIAL REPORT Record of the District Court at Serajevo, touching the pro- ceedings there instituted against Gavrilo Princip and confederates on account of the crime of assassination perpetrated on June 28, 1914, on His Imperial and Royal Highness the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este and Her Highness the Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg. AVRILO PRINCIP, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, Trifko Grabez, Vaso Cubrilovic and Cetres Popovic confess that in common with the fugitive Mehemed Mehmedbasic they contrived a plot for the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and, armed with bombs and in the case of some of them with Browning pistols, laid wait for him on June 28, 1914, on his progress through Serajevo for the pur- pose of carrying out the planned attack. Nedeljko Cabrinovic confesses that he was the first of the conspirators to hurl a bomb against the Archduke’s car- riage, which missed its mark and which on exploding injured only the occupants of the carriage following the Archducal motor car. Gavrilo Princip confesses that he fired two shots from a Browning pistol against the Archducal motor car, by which the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg received fatal wounds. Both perpetrators confess that the act was done with intent to murder. These confessions have been fully verified by means of the investigations which have taken place, and it is estab- lished that the deceased Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the deceased Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg died as a result of the revolver shots fired at them by Gavrilo Princip. The accused have made the following declarations, which are essentially consistent, before the examining magis- Late In April, 1914, Princip, during his stay at Belgrade, where he associated with a number of Serbian students in the cafés of the town, conceived the plan for the executionss Se aL cl aa a ggg Kinin 248 ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE of an attempt on the life of the late Archduke Franz Ferdi- nand. He communicated this intention to his acquaintance, Cabrinovic, who also was in Belgrade at the time. The latter had already conceived a similar idea and was ready at once to participate in the attempt. The execution of an attempt on the Archduke’s life was a frequent topic of con- versation in the circle in which Princip and Cabrinovic moved, because the Archduke was considered to be a dan- gerous enemy of the Serbian people. Princip and Cabrinovic desired at first to procure the bombs and weapons necessary for the execution of the deed from the Serbian Major Milan Pribicevic or from the Na- rodna Odbrana,! as they themselves did not possess the means for their purchase. As, however, Major Pribicevic and the authoritative member of the said association, Zivojin Dacic, were absent from Belgrade at that time, they de- cided to try to obtain the weapons from their acquaintance Milan Ciganovic, who had formerly been a Komitadji and was at that time in the employment of the State railways. Princip, through the instrumentality of an intimate friend of Ciganovic, now got into communication with the latter. Thereupon Ciganovic called on Princip and dis- cussed the planned attempt with him. He entirely approved it, and thereupon declared that he would like to consider further whether he should provide the weapons for the at- tempt. Cabrinovic also talked with Ciganovic on the subject of the weapons. | At Easter Princip took Trifko Grabez, who also was in Belgrade, into his confidence. The latter is also shown by his own confession to have declared himself ready to take part in the attempt. In the following weeks Princip had repeated conversa- tions with Ciganovic about the execution of the attempt. Meanwhile Ciganovic had reached an understanding on the subject of the planned attack with the Serbian Major Voja Tankosic, who was a close friend of his and who then placed at his disposal for this object the Browning pistols. 2 The chief Serbian society devoted to the cause of freedom for the Slavs in every land.ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE 249 Grabez confesses in conformity with the depositions of Princip and Cabrinovic that on the 24th of May he, accom- panied by Ciganovic, visited Major Tankosic at the latter’s request at his rooms. He says that after he had been in- troduced Tankosic said to him: “Are youthe man? Are you determined?’ Whereupon Grabez answered: “I am.” Tankosic next asked: ‘Do you know how to shoot with a revolver?” and when Grabez answered in the negative Tan- kosic said to Ciganovic: “I will give you a revolver, go and teach them how to shoot.” Hereupon Ciganovic conducted Princip and Grabez to the military rifle range at Topcider and instructed them in a wood adjoining the range in shooting with a Browning pistol at a target. Princip proved himself the better shot of the two. Ciganovic also familiarized Princip, Grabez and Cabrinovic with the use of bombs which were given them. On the 27th of May, 1914, Ciganovic handed over to Princip, Cabrinovic and Grabez, as their confessions agree in stating, six bombs, four Browning revolvers and a suffi- cient quantity of ammunition as well as a glass tube of cyanide of potassium with which to poison themselves after the accomplishment of the deed in order that the secret might be kept. Moreover, Ciganovic gave them some money. Princip had previously informed Danilo Ilic, at Easter, of his plan of assassination. He now begged the latter on his return to Serajevo to enlist certain additional persons, in order to ensure the success of the attempt. Hereupon Ilic according to his confession enlisted Jaso Cubrilovic, Cetro Popovic and Mehemed Mehmedbasic in the plot. Only one of the bombs was made use of in the execution of the attempt. The remaining five bombs came later into the possession of the police at Serajevo. In the opinion of the judicial experts these bombs are Serbian hand-grenades which were factory-made and in- tended for military purposes. They are identical with the 21 bombs which were found in the Save at Brcko in the year 1913 and which were partly in their original packing, which proved without a doubt that they came from the Serbian arsenal of Kragujevatz.250 ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE It is thus proved that the grenades which were used in the attempt against the Archduke Franz Ferdinand also came from the stores of the Army Depot at Kragujevatz. Grabez quite spontaneously calls the grenades which were handed over to him and his accomplices “Kragujevatz bombs.” It is clear how far the criminal agitation of the Narodna Odbrana and those who shared in its views, has of late been primarily directed against the person of the hereditary Archduke. From these facts, the conclusion may be drawn that the Narodna Odbrana, as well as the associations hos- tile to the Monarchy in Serbia, which were grouped round it, recently decided that the hour had struck to translate theory into practice. It is noteworthy, however, that the Narodna limits it- self in this way to inciting, and where the incitement has fallen on fertile soil to providing means of material assist- ance for the realization of its plans, but that it has confided the only dangerous part of this propaganda of action to the youth of the Monarchy, which it has excited and cor- rupted, and which alone has to bear the burden of this miserable “heroism.” All the characteristics of this procedure are found in the history and origin of the profoundly regrettable outrage of the 28th of June. Princip and Grabez are characteristic examples of young men who have been poisoned from their school days by the doctrines of the Narodna Odbrana. At Belgrade, where he frequented the society of students :mbued with these ideas, Princip busied himself with crimi- nal plans against the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, against whom the hatred of the Serbian element hostile to the Monarchy was particularly acute on the occasion of his tour in the annexed territories. He was joined by Cabrinovic, who moved in the same circles, and whose shifting and radically revolutionary views, as he himself admits, as well as the influence of his sur- roundings in Belgrade and the reading of the Serbian papers,ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE 281 inspired him with the same sense of hostility to the Mon- archy, and brought him into the propaganda of action. Thanks to the state of mind in which he already was, Grabez succumbed very quickly to this milieu, which he now entered. But however far this plot may have prospered, and how- ever determined the conspirators may have been to carry out the attempt, it would never have been effected, if people had not been found, as in the case of Jukic, to provide the accomplices with means of committing their crime. For, as Princip and Cabrinovic have expressly admitted, they lacked the necessary arms, as well as the money to purchase them. It is interesting to see where the accomplices tried to procure their arms. Milan Pribicevic and Zivojin Dacic, the two principal men in the Narodna Odbrana, were the first accomplices thought of as a sure source of help in their need, doubtless because it had already become a tradition amongst those ready to commit crimes that they could obtain instru- ments for murder from these representatives of the Narodna Odbrana. The accidental circumstance that these two men were not at Belgrade at the critical moment doubtless balked this plan. However, Princip and Cabrinovic were not at a loss in finding other help, that of Milan Ciganovic, an ex- komitadji, and now a railway official at Belgrade, and at the same time an active member of the Narodna Odbrana, who, in 1909, first appeared as a pupil at the school at Cuprija. Princip and Cabrinovic were not deceived in their expectations, as they at once received the necessary help from Ciganovic. BY CRAWFURD PRICE During the first six months of 1914 a remarkable series of Conferences between various European crowned heads and statesmen—notably those of the Triple Alliance—were the outward sign of a troubled diplomatic situation; and principal among them stood out the meeting between the Kaiser and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Konopischt, where it is probable that an aggressive program was ar- ranged between the Central Powers. During the whole252 ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE of this period the Balkan situation was in a very unsettled state. The Albanian régime under Prince William of Wied had proved a conspicuous failure, and Turkey, who was in close collaboration with Germany, evidenced a desire to regain the sovereignty of the 7Egean Islands, which had been allotted to Greece, and further provoked Athens by atro- ciously persecuting the Hellenes in Asia Minor. What was the nature of the program elaborated at Konopischt we shall probably never learn. That it con- cerned a deliberate attempt to upset the Bucharest settle- ment and exploit the recently arranged rapprochement be- tween Bulgaria and Turkey (together with, perhaps, the unsatisfactory situation in Albania) to the profit of Austria as the advance guard of Pan-Germanism in the Balkans, is obvious from the trend of Teuton-Magyar diplomacy and the bleatings of the officially-inspired Press. But into the prevailing unrest was suddenly thrown the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Serajevo on June 28, 1914. On the morning of that fatal day the Austrian heir- apparent was driving in the town when a man named Cabri- novic threw two bombs, which fell short. A natural indis- position to take further risks appears to have been over- ridden by official determination, and during the afternoon’s procession the assassin Princip murdered the Archduke and his consort by means of two well-aimed shots from an au- tomatic pistol. The Administration naturally alleged the existence of a widespread plot, directed, of course, from Bel- grade; but the two principals had little in common, and it is more logical to suggest that no understanding existed between them. Cabrinovic was a known anarchist and the son of an Austrian spy, while Princip was a student, re- markable for his industry and application, who had been exiled from his home and politically persecuted by the au- thorities. The one alleged outside instigation; the other proclaimed his individual responsibility. Both were Aus- trian subjects. In effect, the Archduke was the victim of a régime which had held Bosnia in bondage for more than thirtyASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE 253 years, and which all but openly declared that its object was to exterminate the individuality of the Serbian race. Such methods as had been employed invariably breed their own reward. While for lack of definite proof we pass over the possibility that the crime was deliberately planned by the Pan-Germanists, there is surely little occasion for surprise that some spirit more highly strung, more emotional than its fellows, should have provoked outrage in order to call the attention of Europe to conditions of existence that were fast becoming intolerable to an enslaved people. Disraeli once said that “Assassination never yet changed the history of the world,” and in this instance it would have served only for an increase of repression in Bosnia, had not Austria-Hungary, and with her Germany, been ready to utilize any and every excuse for accomplishing their desire to annihilate Serbia as a step in the direction of world hegemony. Despite the anxiety of the Vienna and Budapest newspapers to fasten the responsibility upon Serbia, there were no immediate developments. As a mat- ter of fact, it would seem that the crime at first upset some deeply-laid German plan, for the Kaiser, on learning the news, is alleged to have remarked significantly ; “All my work must be recommenced.” But the Austro-Hungarian diplomats were quick to recognize the new and unlooked- for opportunity of carrying through their ne farious schemes. “We must settle our account with Serbia,” wrote Baron von Giesl from Belgrade to his Government. “Both in order that our Monarchy may preserve its position as a Great Power, and even in order that it may continue to exist as a Great Power, a war is inevitable. If we hesitate to place our relations with our neighbor on a clear basis, we must share the responsibility for the difficulties and unfavorable con- ditions of the conflict which must necessarily be engaged, sooner or later, in the future. If we are resolved to pre- sent formidable demands, together with a demand for a real control—for only a control of this kind will succeed in cleaning out the Augean stables of Pan-Slav agitation—we must take into consideration all the possible consequences of our action and possess, from the very commencement, the254 ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE firm will to obtain our requirements. Half-measures and protracted negotiations, resulting in a mixed compromise, would be the hardest blow that could be dealt at the credit of Austria in Serbia and the situation in Europe.” In short, the Baron saw that the long-awaited occasion to secure that real control of Serbia for which Austria had so persistently striven had at length arrived. His advice obviously accorded with the opinion prevalent in Vienna and Berlin. Moreover, the situation in Europe seemed favor- able. England had her Irish crisis, France her Caillaux scandal, and Russia her labor troubles. The military posi- tion was likewise propitious for the Central Powers. The Vienna Militaerische Rundschau declared: “The moment is yet favorable for us. If we do not decide upon war now, we shall have to fight in two or three years at the latest in less favorable circumstances. At present the initiative lies with us: Russia is not ready, the moral factors are with us, as also is the force. As we must fight some day, let us provoke the conflict immediately.” Despite the bellicose attitude of the major part of the Austro-Hungarian press and the general effort to convey to Europe the impression that the assassination was the re- sult of a plot prepared in Serbia, the exchange of views occa- sioned in diplomatic circles justified a hope that there would be no untoward development. Serbia took early steps to make her position clear. On June 3oth, M. Yovanovitch ” advised Baron Macchio that ‘“The Serbian Government most energetically disapproves of the Serajevo murder and on its part will loyally do everything possible to demonstrate that it will not tolerate on its territory any agitation or enter- prise calculated to jeopardize our relations with Austria- Hungary, already so delicate.” The following day M. Pas- hitch notified his Ministers accredited to European Courts that the crime had met with the reprobation of all classes in Serbia, where it was recognized that it might have a most unfavorable repercussion upon relations with the Monarchy. He protested, however, against the endeavor of the Austro- Hungarian press to saddle Serbia with the responsibility for 2The Serbian Minister at Vienna.ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE 255 an act of madness committed by an Austrian subject which it was in the vital interest of Serbia herself to avert. This spirit seems at first to have been reflected or as- sumed by Austro-Hungarian diplomacy. On June 3oth the Austrian Ambassador at Constantinople assured the Serbian chargé d'affaires that he need have no fear lest the event should endanger the more satisfactory relations existing be- tween the two States, and on July 3rd Baron Macchio told M. Yovanovitch at Vienna that Austria-Hungary accused neither the Serbian people nor their Government, but “‘cer- tain agitators.’ Finally, the aged Emperor himself, in ad- dressing the Austrian and Hungarian Presidents of Council, declared that he was “convinced that the murder is only the work of a small group of misguided persons.” It was scarcely necessary for M. Pashitch to assure the world through his Ministers that the incident was regarded with unmixed disapproval by King Peter’s Cabinet, for, apart from the obvious fact that the State had pressing need of a prolonged peace in which to repair the wastage of the recent campaigns and consolidate her conquests, the Govern- ment had striven to guard against any aggravation of their relations with the neighboring monarchy. Any anarchistic tendency in Belgrade had been carefully watched, and, in- deed, the Belgrade police had actually warned their Vienna confréres against Cabrinovic—to no purpose—and on June 21st M. Pashitch himself had advised the Ballplatz of his suspicions that a plot was being organized in Bosnia. It is evidences such as these, added to the unpopularity of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in certain Viennese circles, the Emperor’s preference for the Archduke Karl, and the fact that in the alleged presence of a widespread conspiracy (sig- naled by the Serajevo police the following day, and of which, if it existed, they must have been well aware previ- ously) the victim was driven into public again after Cabrino- vic’s abortive attempt on his life, which lent weight to the suggestion that the crime was actually abetted by the Austro- Hungarian authorities themselves. When this has been said, however, it must be admitted that the suspicions that some of the principal actors in theeT ne ae a Locale Fla 256 ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE Serajevo drama were in close relation with persons at Bel- grade were too strong to be passed over in silence by the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Under the circumstances, the Monarchy very properly might have acquainted the Serbian Government with the facts and the names of those compromised by the evidence and called upon them: (1) To hold answerable those judged who were in Serbian terri- tory, and (2) To give guarantees for a more effective con- trol of the Pan-Serbian movement. Had this very logical course been adopted, it is evident from the declaration made by M. Pashitch and the reply subsequently sent by Serbia to the Austrian ultimatum that the matter could have been arranged in a manner appar- ently satisfactory to all parties. That the possibility of such an equitable arrangement was not overlooked in the early days following the tragedy is obvious from the assur- ances given to the Entente in Vienna that the conditions imposed upon Serbia would be most acceptable and such as would permit them to count upon a pacific solution of the crisis. Further, on July 8th, the Pester Lloyd (Budapest) declared that—‘‘Nothing will be demanded from the Serbian Government that can affect their natural self-consciousness or the national dignity entrusted to their care.” BY SIGMUND MUNZ During the last decade of Francis Joseph’s reign, there were many believers who, at the time of prayer, turned their faces in the direction of Konopischt. The Crown Prince’s ideas were interpreted, it was generally believed, by the Reichspost—a newspaper whose programme in- cluded clericalism, anti-Semitism, militarism, war, hatred of Serbia, and detestation of everything Italian. The old Emperor showed a far more sympathetic understanding for Italy and the Italians than his heir. Despite his sur- name, d’Este, his mother’s descent from the house of Bourbon-Sicily, his Este estates in Upper Italy and the neighborhood of Rome, his knowledge of fine arts, Francis Ferdinand was no favorable critic of Italy. When I visited Luzzatti—then President of the Council—in Rome in May,WHAT BELGIUM FACED This is one of the series of terrible pictures with which the Belgian artist Jean Domergue illustrated the Official Belgian Report of deeds actually perpetrated by the Germans in Belgium. Only deeds sworn to by a sufferer or some eye-witness are recorded in this awful report book The picture here is of five farmers who were driven into Lebbeke bound arm to arm, and there had their eyes put out with sharp irons. Afterward, while bound and blinded, they were beaten.ee ¥ a.