the policy of alliances bequeathed by Bismarck, since he realized all
the entanglements and dangers that they involved. How often, during
the Balkan crisis, was he seen to express his impatience with the
Cabinet of Vienna, when the latter turned a deaf ear to the good advice
telegraphed from Berlin! When I took leave of him, before returning to
my unhappy country, which had already been invaded by the advance-guard
of the German army, he said to me, in a tone of unfeigned regret: “Ah,
this war means the end of the policy of alliances!” What a world of
sorrow and disappointment lay in this avowal!

His constant relations with the directors of great companies, with
commercial and industrial magnates, who were invited to his bachelor
table together with foreign diplomats, led the latter to suppose that
their host shared the pacific ideas of their fellow-guests. A prolonged
era of peace was required, if the vigorous development of the national
resources was to continue. This is an incontestable truth, which cannot
be repeated too often. Moreover, a prolonged era of peace would have
enabled the Germans, by virtue of their genius for organizing, their
methodical ways, and their capacity for hard work, to become the
leading nation in almost every sphere of international competition,
owning the main sources of industrial production, and holding the
unquestioned economic supremacy of Europe. Yet they have been mad
enough to make a bid for this supremacy by a war that is utterly at
variance with the progress of civilization! It is difficult to see
how so enlightened a man as Herr Zimmermann, one so closely in touch
with the needs of industrial Germany, could have been anything but a
pacifist.

The principal task of those who direct foreign affairs is the same
in all great capitals. One must be a Bismarck to plan one war after
another a long time in advance, while conducting the foreign policy
of the State. Bismarck’s excuse lies in the fact that these wars were
essential for German unity. Once his end was gained, the all-powerful
minister put Prussia’s sword back in its sheath, and devoted himself
to consolidating the glory and the conquests that had been won. The
Berlin Foreign Office cannot really be suspected of having worked in
the dark against the maintenance of a peace policy, such as was pursued
during the last twenty years of the Iron Chancellor. To avoid needless
conflicts, to scatter the clouds as soon as they gathered at any
point on the horizon, to ward off the frightful perils of a European
conflagration—this has been the noble duty and the thankless task of
diplomats throughout the last few years, in the positions of watchmen
or pilots which they have held in foreign countries or at the head of
the home department. At the Wilhelmstrasse, as elsewhere, the officials
were faced with the duty of trying to fulfil these lofty moral
obligations; they did so with a mixture of civility and gruffness, and
their changes of mood were too obvious, but they undoubtedly meant well.

Here arises a difficult question. In view of the definite aspirations
of a large element in the German nation, with their manifest desire for
expansion, how did the Foreign Office propose to satisfy them? Was it
merely aiming at a vague peace policy, or had it any tangible schemes
in view?

A book and a pamphlet published in 1913, when a festival was held to
celebrate the twenty-fifth year of William II.’s reign, gives us the
key to the riddle. They throw a discreet but sufficient light upon the
policy of expansion recommended at the Wilhelmstrasse.

The book—_Imperial Germany_—is by Prince von Bülow, who thus broke the
silence he had observed since the day of his retirement. He reviews the
political history of the Empire for the past quarter of a century, and
points to the path which it ought to follow in the future both at home
and abroad.

According to the ex-Chancellor, the Germany of to-day can no longer
cling to Bismarck’s Continental policy or obey the precepts handed
down by him to his successors. She must open out for herself new
and broader tracks, corresponding to the progress achieved in the
last thirty years. During this period, the population has increased
by twenty million souls, and her industry, fostered by an enormous
growth in labour-power, has crossed the seas in order to distribute
over the entire globe those products which the home markets were no
longer capable of absorbing. This vast industrial output has made it
necessary to build a mercantile marine, to which more and more units
are added every year, and this commercial fleet has brought in its
train the construction of an imposing navy. The last-named enterprise
was fraught with difficulties; for we could not avoid exciting the
jealousy of England, and in order to succeed it was essential to beware
of arousing her hostility. England looks with no friendly eye on the
rise of a foreign naval power, which might seek one day to contend
with her the mastery of the seas. Germany has no intention of issuing
such a challenge to England, as the France of Louis XIV. and the
United Provinces did in days gone by. Although the German navy has
become, in the course of a few years, the second in the world, its sole
mission is to watch over German trade and German interests, to see that
they are not obstructed in any way. Just as German industry, after
being exclusively domestic and national not long since, has become
world-wide, so German statesmanship, which was exclusively European in
the days of Bismarck—for it then had no other object than to secure for
Germany her rightful place in the first rank of Continental Powers—has
likewise been raised to a world-wide plane. Prince von Bülow is careful
to insist upon the purely defensive rôle that the Imperial fleet has
marked out for itself, and, in order to reassure us as to the peaceful
aims of the new statesmanship, he quotes the following passage from a
speech made by him in the Reichstag on 6th November 1906: “It is the
duty of our generation to uphold our position on the Continent, which
is the basis of our international position; to protect our interests
abroad; and to pursue a sober, judicious, and far-sighted international
policy, limited in such a way that the safety of the German people
shall incur no risks and the future of the nation shall not be
jeopardized.”

Sage counsels these! But to our Latin mind, with its passion
for clearness, the phrases “international policy,” “transmarine
policy,” “world policy,” which are so plentifully sprinkled about
the ex-Chancellor’s pages, convey no very precise meaning. Was it
world-policy that involved, for instance, the sending of a few cruisers
to the Mexican coast to protect German trade and German residents
during the war between Huerta and Carranza? Was it the same policy
that brought about the dispatch of a squadron to the China Seas, in
order to seize Kiauchau and Tsingtau, and to obtain by main force from
the Chinese Government the concession of a naval station and a rich
mining territory, with the right of erecting formidable defence-works?
Prince von Bülow has himself felt the need of throwing a little light
for his readers upon the dark recesses of his thought. He gives us
to understand that Germany now possesses the means, not only of
safeguarding her interests, of resisting any attack, but also of
extending her influence everywhere, especially in Asia Minor and Africa.

The pamphlet entitled _Die Weltpolitik und kein Krieg_ (“A World-policy
without War”) is more explicit. It bears no signature, but according
to the view generally accepted in the best-informed political circles
in Berlin, it was issued under the auspices of the Foreign Office. The
latter has not denied its paternity.

The nameless author first of all sets forth the reasons why a
Continental war is apparently no longer to be feared. The Balkan League
has dissolved in blood, and, no less than Turkey, those allies of
yesterday who are implacable foes to-day will need time for healing
their wounds and recruiting their strength. France has her hands so
full with the pacification of Morocco that she does not wish to cause
any complications in Europe. Russia is turning her eyes more and more
towards Central Asia. Anglo-German relations are improving every day.
Germany is devoting herself to the expansion of her commercial and
industrial power; she has invested large sums of capital in her railway
enterprises in Asia Minor, but she must not extend these enterprises
indefinitely, since it might not be feasible for her to protect them
in the event of war. Germany is not yet a Mediterranean power; to
defend the concessions granted to her subjects in Syria and Asia Minor,
her fleet would have to pass under the guns of Gibraltar, Malta, and
Bizerta.

There remains Africa. Sir Edward Grey has stated in Parliament that
Britain will not oppose the advance of German colonization, for she
herself has no thought of acquiring fresh colonies. Portugal and
Belgium are not in a position to colonize their African territories:
the former, because of her financial weakness and her internal
dissensions; the latter, because she does not wish to spend the sums
needed for developing the Congo, which she annexed in the delusive
hope that it would cost her no sacrifices. German capital and the
aptitude of the German race for colonizing, its commercial ability,
and its spirit of enterprise, are the only factors capable of spreading
civilization in the heart of the Dark Continent and exploiting its
wealth. The co-operation of Germany, therefore, is essential both
for the Belgians and for the Portuguese. She might occupy a position
in their colonies similar to that of France in Tunis and Morocco, or
to that of Russia in Persia. It would be a peaceful penetration and
development, in which the Belgians, with their keen business instinct,
would be willing to take part, even if the Portuguese did not clearly
understand its necessity.

This is something definite to go upon. The international or world
policy, as conceived by the Wilhelmstrasse in 1913, was a colonial
expansion, proceeding on peaceful lines.

In the ensuing winter the Imperial Government opened negotiations with
the London Cabinet for the demarcation of British and German spheres
of influence in the African colonies of Portugal; the former was to
have comprised Mozambique, the latter Angola. Without waiting for the
conclusion of these negotiations, a committee of research was formed in
Hamburg, for the purpose of investigating the agricultural and mineral
wealth of Angola, and great German banks tried to obtain control of the
Lobito Bay railway, which runs from the coast of the Portuguese colony
to Katanga in the Belgian Congo.

In the foregoing pages, while sketching the portraits of those who
direct Germany’s foreign policy, I have tried to summarize the views of
each, as they appear to me in the light of their acts, their private
statements, and their occasional public declarations. We have seen how
the Chancellor nursed the hope of maintaining friendly relations with
England, come what might; how Herr von Jagow set little store by the
national life of small States; and how the more practical minds of
the Under-Secretary and the Foreign Office staff contented themselves
with immediate colonial expansion and the opening up of new fields for
the activities of the German race. All these individual aspirations,
however, were overshadowed by the will, as yet inscrutable, of the
Emperor. When that will was revealed in the tragic last days of July,
these men all hastened to obey its bidding with equal alacrity.

CHAPTER III.

THE ARMY AND NAVY—THE WAR PARTY.

I.

Prussia is before all else a military State, and since 1871 Prussian
militarism has laid its heavy hand upon Southern Germany, the
inhabitants of which were formerly noted for their peaceful ways. The
warlike spirit of the Prussians is the fruit of the statesmanship
pursued by their rulers, those Electors of Brandenburg who afterwards
became Kings of Prussia. The Elector of the Thirty Years’ War period,
George William, had played but a humble part in that struggle. His sole
desire was to keep his States independent, free from the grasp of the
Swedes and of the Imperial troops, and he trimmed ingloriously between
Gustavus Adolphus and Ferdinand II. The Great Elector, Frederick
William, was the first to embody the territorial ambitions of his
house. In order to realize them, he saw the necessity of a powerful
standing army, out of all proportion to the size and status of his
Electorate. These troops enabled him to figure among the adversaries
of Louis XIV., and, at the Battle of Fehrbellin, to strike a deadly
blow at the power and reputation of the Swedes in Germany. The Prussian
army had now vindicated itself as an effective fighting force. It was
the means by which this martial prince extended his territory and made
it large enough to be converted into a kingdom under his successor,
Frederick I., who obtained a royal crown from the Emperor Leopold as
the price of his military and financial support.

The second King of Prussia, Frederick William I., although not of an
enterprising nature, applied himself to enlarging and perfecting the
instrument which, in the hands of his son Frederick II. (the Great),
was destined to become the finest army in Europe and the model that
other nations did their best to copy. After fighting victoriously,
however, under the command of a great leader, against a coalition of
three powerful monarchies, and showing itself more than a match for
the best troops that Russia, Austria, and France could muster, the
Prussian army suddenly lost its pre-eminent position. The eclipse was
so complete that it seemed at first to be final.

The Prussians were repulsed at Valmy, and afterwards proved helpless
against the conscripts of the Republic. In spite of this, their
military prestige was not yet seriously impaired. Thanks to the genius
of Napoleon and the wonderful efficiency of his soldiers, it was
entirely shattered in the campaign of 1806. It was not only the battle
of Jena, but another humiliating defeat, inflicted the same day by one
of Napoleon’s subordinates on the King of Prussia’s troops, that proved
the decadence of the latter and the incapacity of their generals,
trained in the school of Frederick the Great. The disaster of Jena is
readily acknowledged in Berlin, but the German historians have little
to say about the day of Auerstädt, the true Nemesis for Rossbach.

Prussian militarism raised its head once more during the war of
liberation. It was the life and soul of the resistance to Napoleon,
and contributed its share towards the final deliverance. Still, we
must beware of overrating the part played by Blücher, Scharnhorst,
Gneisenau, Yorck, Bülow, and the other generals of Frederick William
III. in 1813 and 1814 The Corsican was vanquished by his own
blunders—the exhausting war in the Peninsula, where the best blood of
France was spilt to no purpose, and the ill-fated Russian campaign.
During the early summer of 1813, the Russians and the Prussians,
in several hard-fought battles, met with nothing but defeat. The
emancipation of Germany would have been far from assured, if Austria,
who had completed her preparations, had not joined hands with Russia
and Prussia to overwhelm Napoleon. During the wars of the French
Empire, it is the Archduke Charles and the Austrian troops, not the
Prussian armies, that can claim the honour of having offered the most
stubborn resistance to the great conqueror. In the same way, during
the Hundred Days, old Blücher—“Marshal Forward,” as the Germans call
him—is not entitled to the first place among the heroes of Waterloo.
The chief glory may fairly be assigned to Wellington and to the bulldog
tenacity of the British.

A long second period of decadence set in for Prussian militarism after
1815, under the peaceful reigns of Frederick William III. and William
IV. Its decline was particularly apparent at the time of the inglorious
Convention of Olmütz. To William I. fell the task of re-forging the
chain of great Hohenzollern warrior-princes, broken at the death of
Frederick the Great. Not that he himself was endowed with the talents
of a commander-in-chief; when it came to actual fighting he was merely
a soldier. But he had a faculty more precious in a king than the art
of leading an army: he was an excellent judge of men, and could choose
the most suitable tools for carrying out the plans he had sanctioned.
William I. made Bismarck head of the Prussian ministry, leaving him
a free hand for conducting the bold policy that was to establish the
greatness of the Prussian royal house on the basis of German unity, and
then gave him two indispensable fellow-workers—Roon, the reorganizer
of the army, and Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff. Strictly
speaking, the future Field-Marshal did not evolve any new system of
strategy, but he had absorbed the teachings of Frederick the Great and
the object lessons of Napoleon so thoroughly that he became in his turn
a master in the art of war.

As for Prussian militarism, or, in other words, the military caste,
the victories of 1866 and 1870 completely turned its head. It came to
regard itself as the very embodiment of the nation. Never had it been
more powerful or more domineering than in the generation preceding the
present war. Woe to the civilian who ventured to criticise the army, or
got in an officer’s way on the pavement, or did not cringe before the
fiat of a corps commander! The recent Zabern affair showed us that the
German military can allow themselves anything. On this occasion, public
opinion finally gave its verdict in their favour, notwithstanding the
protests (speedily silenced!) of the Reichstag.

II.

In striving to maintain the whole German army at the high level
attained by the Prussian, William II. has followed in the footsteps
of his grandfather. He has not, however, been so happy in his choice
of men; Moltkes and Roons are hard to find at any time. During his
reign, as during that of William I., the Great General Staff and the
War Office have worked in close unison. The former, to which officers
are appointed after a careful sifting, has to make elaborate plans
for strategical operations against whatever enemy the German army
may have to face; the latter’s task is to organize and improve the
forces, and to introduce and defend in the Reichstag the war budget
and any military measures that may be required. To these two bodies
we must add a third, more secret in its workings, less easy to trace,
but in certain cases a decisive factor—the Emperor’s war Cabinet. The
promotion and retirement of officers is one of its most formidable
functions. After the annual manœuvres, it carries out the sentences
passed by the sovereign upon those who have failed through incapacity,
illness, or bad luck. In the Emperor’s name it may intervene in any
question that concerns the service. Its influence is even extended to
foreign affairs, if the army is called upon to play a part in their
shaping.

Soon after the opening of the twentieth century there began to
appear, chiefly in Prussia, a steady drift of opinion in favour of
fresh European conflicts. The adherents of this creed were known
abroad under the comprehensive name of “war party.” They were drawn,
in the first place, from the field-marshals and “colonel-generals”
(_Generalobersten_), the generals on the active list, the aides-de-camp
of the Emperor, the hotheads of the Staff, and the more ambitious
officers of all grades. To these must be added the retired army
men, reactionary squireens who lived on their estates, and saw the
ever-growing taxation accompanied by a rise in the national wealth, in
the standard of comfort and luxury, while their own incomes could not
show a corresponding advance. These malcontents held that a little
blood-letting would be of great service in purifying and strengthening
the social body, and in restoring to the patrician caste that
preponderance which was its due, and which seemed likely to be usurped
by the self-made plutocrats of industry and commerce.

Apart from the military element, which naturally carried most weight,
the war party included a large number of civilians—the majority of the
high Prussian officials; the true-blue Conservatives in the Reichstag
and the “Conservative Imperialists,” together with the members of
other middle-class groups; and the patriotic writers, the journalists,
the intellectual cream of the universities and schools. All these
were obsessed with the vision of a Germany subjugating the world by
her arms, as she thought to have already conquered it by her superior
culture and her incomparable science. Their unhealthy ambitions were
encouraged by a cantankerous Press, jealous of the races that embody
the civilization of the past, and choosing to regard them as decadent
rivals of the noble Germanic stock, which was destined to give an
enslaved world the opportunity of enjoying the civilization of the
future.

The war party was faithfully supported by the _Wehrverein_ (Union of
Defence), a military league which in the space of a few years spread
its powerful roots over the whole of Germany. The _Wehrverein_ did not
confine itself to the task of defending the lawful interests of the
army. The proposals put forward at its periodical meetings dealt not
only with reforms that seemed desirable in the supply of munitions,
in the organization of troops, and in the technical departments, but
also with the political designs that the army would be called upon to
carry out. Finally, the warlike spirit was kept alive among the lower
classes by numerous associations of veterans, the _Kriegsvereine_ (War
Leagues). Their ominous name is enough to show that they strove their
hardest to counteract the growing force of pacific tendencies among a
nation in which the amazing development of its industry and commerce
had bred a feverish desire to amass wealth.

The demands of the war party found expression in a literature that was
half political, half military. The writers openly advocated a European
conflict as the only means of completing the work of Bismarck—that
is to say, of giving Germany her rightful place at the head of the
nations. A typical product of this school is the now celebrated book by
the retired cavalry general, Friedrich von Bernhardi, entitled _Germany
and the Next War_. In spite of the lofty moral and philosophical tone
that he often adopts, the author is more daring and outspoken than any
of his fellow-scribes. Among all that has been published in the last
few years regarding the crucial question of Germany’s future, this
book of Bernhardi’s has proved the most prophetic, for war has been
declared for the very reasons to which he drew attention and for the
very objects which he advocated. The foreign public was unwise in not
paying more attention at the time to these danger-signals. The work of
the military philosopher has become a text-book for German patriots;
his sophisms have poisoned the mind of the present generation.

The hothouse atmosphere in which politics were carried on for three
years before the war was calculated to force the growth of the
war party, and these fanatics never ceased egging on the Imperial
Government towards the goal of their multifarious efforts. There is no
doubt, moreover, as to their sway over the mind of a monarch who lends
a willing ear to advice that chimes in with his own ambitions. Although
the party has no regular organization, although it has worked in the
dark, trying to disclaim all responsibility, it must be regarded, after
the Emperor, as one of the chief agents in the present catastrophe.

III.

Before the war, the Chief of the General Staff, after the retirement
of Count von Schlieffen, was General von Moltke, nephew of the great
Field-Marshal. Was it merely his professional merits that determined
the Emperor’s choice, or had he partly to thank the famous name that
he bears? Those who know him lean towards the latter view. Defects
and vices, however, are more often inherited than talents, and a
name is not a fetish that brings victory. Physically, General von
Moltke does not resemble his uncle, the spare old man of the most
familiar portraits. He is tall, massive, and powerfully built, with a
haughty face and a disdainful expression. Notwithstanding his chilly
politeness, the scorn that every typical Teuton feels for foreigners
can be read in his eyes.

As to the moral outlook of this leading figure in the military world,
a passage from a report by M. Jules Cambon, dated 6th May 1913, will
suffice to give an idea: “‘We must throw overboard,’ said General von
Moltke before some of his countrymen, ‘all the stock commonplaces about
the responsibility of the aggressor. As soon as there is a ten-to-one
chance in favour of war, we must forestall our opponent, commence
hostilities without more ado, and mercilessly crush all resistance.’”
It was not merely a rapid assault that the General recommended, but
a surprise attack before the declaration of war, as if, in a duel,
one were to strike one’s opponent before he had had time to assume a
posture of defence. The sudden violation of Belgian neutrality, after
our Government had been allowed one night to think matters over, was
one of these murderous blows approved by the Chief of the General Staff.

In the summer of 1913 General von Heeringen, who was far from popular
in Parliament, gave up his post as head of the War Office. His
successor, General von Falkenhayn, is exceptionally young for his
rank and position. Who would have foretold such a rapid rise for this
officer at the time when, heavily in debt and threatened with dismissal
from the army, he had the good fortune to become attached to the China
expeditionary force of 1900? His luck being backed by intelligence, he
came under the favourable notice of Marshal von Waldersee, the leader
of the expedition. Falkenhayn’s debts were paid, and he recovered
his place in the good books of the Emperor. A finely chiselled face,
brilliant but disconcerting eyes, great fluency of speech (as he showed
by getting a hearing in the Reichstag for his defence of the outrages
committed by officers at Zabern)—these are the most salient features of
this newcomer in the political world of Berlin. His restless ambition
and his rivalry with General von Moltke, who was apt to lord it over
him in his early days at the War Office, have only come to light since
the outbreak of the war.

On the evening of November 6, 1913, at a dinner given to King Albert at
Potsdam, the Chief of the General Staff said to the Belgian military
attaché: “War with France at an early date is inevitable, and the
victory of the German army is certain, even if it is purchased by
tremendous sacrifices and by a few preliminary set-backs. Nothing can
stop the _furor teutonicus_ once it has been let loose. The German
nation will rise as one man to take up the gauntlet which the French
people will have the insane foolhardiness to throw down.” The General
omitted to add—the remark was, from his point of view, too trite a one
to make—that the war of 1870, with its relatively small armies, would
be mere child’s play in comparison with the struggle which Germany was
preparing. He also forbore to speak of the ferocious methods which the
German generals would be ordered to employ.

It was not unknown abroad, however, at any rate among jurists familiar
with the work of the Hague Conferences, that there existed in Germany
a “Code for War on Land” (_Kriegsgebrauch im Landeskriege_), published
in Berlin by the Staff in 1902. The handbook, it was realized, had
been written in quite a different spirit from that which animated the
labours of the two Conferences. This special war-code for the use of
German officers openly condemned all humanitarian ideas, all tender
regard for persons or property, as incompatible with the nature and
object of war; it authorized every means of attaining that object,
and it left the choice and practice of those means to the entire
discretion of the corps commanders. Still, however uneasy the exponents
of international law may have felt as to the spread of such theories
in Germany, they were reassured by the Imperial Government’s solemn
acceptance of the 1907 Hague Convention and of the moral principles
laid down therein. Accordingly it is with feelings of surprise and
horror, shared by the whole civilized world, that they look on at the
war waged in the Emperor’s name.

The conduct of this war has indeed been ruthless in the extreme.
Almost from the very outset the invader has worked as much havoc
as possible, in order to terrorize the inhabitants and to reduce
them more quickly to submission. The Germans of 1870 had shown too
much tenderness towards the civilian, too much respect for historic
monuments, too much consideration for private property. Murder, arson,
and pillage have followed in the wake of their descendants. We have
learnt how detachments of soldiers, specially drafted for this purpose
from the engineers’ corps, used various incendiary appliances to
destroy unoffending little towns and villages—Louvain, Tamines, Rethy,
and other places in Belgium, and Orchies in France. Belgium was the
first victim of this _furor teutonicus_ of which General von Moltke
boasted—Belgium, who, after putting up a heroic fight against her
violators, expected to be treated as a conquered country, but not to be
flung as a prey to the disciplined brutes of the invading army. This is
one of the processes on which the General relied for winning an early
victory, that victory of which he spoke with the faith of a zealot.
It has turned out, however, that these abominable methods, instead of
forcing the Belgians to confess themselves beaten, have only steeled
them to a more vigorous resistance.

Were there not other secret processes, other revelations of
frightfulness, that the German General Staff had up its sleeve? Among
the hidden weapons that it has wielded with the greatest effect is
its vast network of spies, established among Germany’s neighbours,
among all her supposed enemies, at every point where it could be of
any service. The foresight displayed in this system, the perfection to
which it was brought, were marvellous. Even the level-headed English
were almost thrown off their balance, when they found out how well
these emissaries had done their work, not only round the coast of
Britain, but even at the uttermost ends of the Pacific, on the distant
shores of Chile.

IV.

But the advantages which, according to our opponents, were destined
to ensure their triumph, were the superiority of their strategy and
tactics, and the careful preparation of their army down to the last
detail, far beyond anything that their rivals had achieved.

“The idea is prevalent abroad,” said General von Moltke in 1910 to
General Jungbluth, the commander of King Albert’s household troops,
“that our General Staff is constantly preparing plans of campaign,
with an eye to all the possibilities of a European war. This is a
mistake. We occupy ourselves with the question of the transport,
concentration, and provisioning of our troops, and the employment of
the new means of communication. You would be astonished if you saw
the offices of our General Staff. They look like the head offices of
a railway.” The only conclusion to be drawn from these words is that
the plan of the 1914 campaign, the plan for an invasion of France and
a rapid onslaught, had long since been worked out, and was reposing
in a secret drawer somewhere in the Königsplatz building. We may even
surmise that the march on Paris, pursued across the central plains of
Belgium and the valley of the Meuse in order to turn the defences of
the French frontier, had been traced by the aging, but still steady,
hand of Marshal von Moltke. It is characterized by those wide-sweeping
movements that he loved; in fact, the whole scheme bears the impress of
his personality. Nevertheless, the methods by which it was carried out
and the idea of an ultimatum to an unsuspecting neutral country must
be ascribed to his nephew. I have good grounds for believing this, in
view of Herr Zimmermann’s last words to me on the 5th of August: “Since
the mobilization, all the power has been in the hands of the military
authorities; all the decisions issue from them.” By this statement he
implied that the responsibility for the invasion of Belgium lay with
the General Staff and with its chief.

The General Staff and the War College for the training of officers
had clung faithfully to the strategy which had led to the victories of
the past—that of bringing up superior forces with all speed to a given
point, and in this way breaking the enemy’s line of defence; or that of
outflanking and surrounding one of his wings, and thus overcoming his
resistance by a flank attack. This method of going to work presupposes
an offensive. Moltke, like Napoleon, held that merely by taking the
offensive one has gone halfway towards winning the battle. These maxims
were in harmony with the old Prussian traditions, as well as with
the qualities instilled into the Prussian or Prussianized soldier,
and, finally, with the speedy mobilization of the Imperial army. The
decisive victories which in the space of a fortnight had brought the
Bulgarians almost to the gates of Constantinople, once more bore
witness, so the Germans asserted, to the value of this strategy. Had
not the King of Greece, it was added, publicly paid a tribute to the
instruction received by him at the Berlin Staff College, on the day
when, like a good pupil at a prize-giving, he had been presented with a
field-marshal’s baton by the Emperor in person?

The Manchurian campaign, it is true, had warned the world—as was noted
at the time by military writers—that a revolution was taking place
in the art of war. It revealed a new system of strategy and tactics,
applied by the Russians and Japanese on a front of enormous length—long
parallel lines of trenches, where both sides burrowed themselves in
for weeks, before there was any possibility of striking a decisive
blow. The experts of Berlin, however, would not hear of this war of
moles. They were confident, even now, of making an attack on France
with a rapidity that nothing could withstand. They went on dreaming
only of whirlwind offensives, of whole armies forced to capitulate, of
fresh Sadowas and Sedans.

While the German strategy was still looked upon with general
admiration, the case was different as regards the tactics, particularly
the use of infantry, which was much discussed by foreign officers
resident in Berlin. One of them, on returning from the great manœuvres
of 1913, confessed to me his astonishment at the fighting methods to
which the infantry were trained. “They still go in for the assault
in close formation,” he said, “the _Sturmangriff_, which used to be
successful. But nowadays, on a battlefield swept by artillery and
machine-guns, these close formations would give the other side as good
a target as they could wish for. If an attack were led in this way
against an enemy who is under cover or is himself determined not to
give ground, there would soon be nothing left of it but a heap of dead
bodies.”

To judge by opinions that I heard on all sides in Berlin, German
strategy and tactics have made no advance since 1870; it would seem
that in the eyes of the General Staff they reached their acme at that
date. In the equipment and technical preparation of units, on the other
hand, Germany can point to a continuous record of progress.

V.

During the first years of William II.’s reign, the work of maintaining
Germany’s military superiority bore a twofold aspect—to preserve for
Germany her place in the front rank of European Powers, the place she
had won at the price of two great wars; and to ward off attack, to
keep all possible foes at bay. The army, apparently, was not looked
upon as an instrument of conquest. It did not seem in any real sense
to threaten the Empire’s neighbours, although, with its arrogant
demeanour, it had an air of openly defying them to make any aggressive
move. Has it been the same for the last ten years or so? A mere study
of the most recent military laws will dispel any such notion. The army
has been enlarged, equipped, and trained with a view to making war at
no distant date.

In 1871, it had a peace establishment of eighteen corps or 401,000
men, excluding commissioned and non-commissioned officers. This force
remained unchanged until 1880. Five army bills, passed between 1880
and 1889, aimed at increasing and perfecting its equipment, but the
advance in its numbers, slow at the outset, cannot be said to have kept
pace with the very rapid growth in the population. Before 1913, a
portion of the available contingent had received no military training.
Financial motives and the difficulty of raising new taxes prevented the
successive War Ministers—so the Government declared—from calling up as
many men as they would have liked, and from enlarging the cadres to a
greater extent. These motives suddenly disappeared, as soon as William
II.’s warlike designs took definite shape. Acting under the Emperor’s
orders, the Chancellor did not hesitate to resort to extraordinary
financial measures, such as no other country has ever adopted in time
of peace.

In 1905, the two years’ term of service, which had already been tried
experimentally, was made a permanent institution for the infantry,
and the establishment rose to 505,000 men. In 1911, the bill for the
military quinquennium anticipated only the small increase of 10,000 men
even by 1915, but it introduced important technical improvements in
machine-guns, artillery, supply and transport, and so forth. In 1912,
when the 1911 act had scarcely begun to take effect, a fresh army bill
was proposed. Public opinion was still in a ferment over the events
of the past summer and the aftermath of the Agadir episode. The new
act, taking advantage of this wave of patriotism, at once embodied,
for working purposes, the measures anticipated by the bill of 1911. It
created two new army corps, one for the western frontier, the other
for the eastern, and raised the peace establishment to 544,000 men.

The character of the 1911 and 1912 acts is different from that of the
preceding measures. Their primary object was to improve the quality
of the army. They both tended to make it a more effective instrument
for fighting, and one more ready for immediate use at the outbreak of
hostilities.

One might have supposed that after such marked progress the War
Office would have rested on its laurels. It did nothing of the kind.
Towards the end of 1912, when the Balkan League was winning its first
victories, there set in a current of opinion, strongly encouraged by
the Imperial Government, in favour of demanding reinforcements to fill
up the gaps that still existed. The _Wehrverein_ distinguished itself
by its frantic propaganda on behalf of new armaments. A Press campaign
was organized. The Emperor gave his sanction to the movement, and in a
speech at Königsberg declared that the principle of compulsory service
should be applied on a uniform basis. The Chancellor, following in
his master’s footsteps, announced in February, at the annual meeting
of landed proprietors, that the country must be prepared for fresh
military burdens.

After this official flourish of trumpets, the bill was laid on
the table of the Reichstag on March 18, 1913. It fixed the peace
establishment, officers and non-commissioned included, at 815,000;
the additions were estimated at 4,000 officers, 15,000 N.C.O.’s, and
117,000 men. The increase applied to every arm—infantry, cavalry,
artillery, engineers, and supply and transport corps. It was a mighty
leap! The measures anticipated by the law of 1912 were to come into
force by the end of 1913. Finally, the bill contained a clause trebling
the war treasure kept in reserve for the first requirements of a
mobilization: it was raised from 150,000,000 to 300,000,000 marks
(£15,000,000) in gold, besides 150,000,000 (£7,500,000) in silver.

Was the danger really so pressing? Was the storm already brewing on the
frontiers of the Empire? If not, it was hard to justify these hasty
measures, especially the financial part of the scheme, the forced levy,
to cover the enormous expenses, £50,000,000, which these measures would
entail. The explanatory statement, indeed, was far from convincing. It
confined itself to remarking that passing events in the Balkans had
altered the balance of power in Europe. In the war that she might be
compelled to wage, Germany would have only herself to rely upon, and
would have to guard, perhaps against several opponents, frontiers of
great length and largely unprovided with natural defences. Hence the
vital need of employing and organizing all the forces at her disposal.

The main ideas of the bill were: to introduce a uniform system of
military service, with numbers increasing at the same rate as the
population; to improve the quality of the first-line troops—in other
words, the younger section of the army; to arrange for a more speedy
mobilization; and—an object that had always been kept in view—to
perfect the technical equipment. In round numbers, an increase of
63,000 men each year was expected. The 1913 act is full of suggestive
references to telegraphs, telephones, balloons, aeroplanes, and
motor-cars; but it volunteers no information regarding the heavy
artillery and the siege-guns which were destined to startle the world
in 1914. This formidable addition to the destructive power of the
German army was carefully kept secret. The military authorities had for
a long time firmly believed that their army was invincible, and the
possession of such irresistible weapons must have served to strengthen
their confidence.

The Chancellor, in supporting the bill, dwelt more fully on the
ideas set forth in the explanatory statement. In vague phrases, he
hinted that peace was far from secure, raising up bogeys to frighten
his audience—the French jingoes, now more heated than ever, and the
Russian Pan-Slavists, with their ceaseless intrigues. The War Minister
maintained in all seriousness that the new law had no aggressive aim,
that it must be construed, not as a threat to other nations, but as a
guarantee of peace. General von Heeringen was asking us to swallow a
good deal!

As soon as the debate opened at the Budget Committee, it was evident
that the bill was certain to pass. A month later, the committee
approved it, without examining the financial side, and the Government
had to abandon all hope of seeing both parts of the bill, the military
and the financial, passed by the same majority. In the Reichstag, only
the Poles, the Socialists, and the Alsace-Lorrainers ventured to vote
against the military proposals.

The _Wehrverein_, however, was not satisfied. In a meeting held at
Leipzig on May 18, it suggested that two new army corps should be
formed, and recommended, “in order that no enemy should ever again set
his foot on the soil of the Fatherland,” that every care should be
taken to foster the martial and patriotic spirit of the community, the
spirit of the army being that of the nation.

However much we may wish to shut our eyes to the fact, we can hardly
fail to see in the 1913 act a preparation for making war at no
distant date. Its call to arms is as clear as the note of a bugle
that summons men to the fight. Yet Europe, with her eyes riveted on
other visions—the second Balkan War was imminent—paid far too little
attention to the Reichstag debates. Perhaps she was still misled by
the spurious pacifism of the Kaiser. The Triple Entente continued to
harbour the most peaceful intentions, as is attested by impartial
observers who were well-informed as to the state of public opinion
in the three countries and as to the ideals of their statesmen.
The desire to provoke a war, therefore, can only be imputed to that
Government and that nation which were arming to the teeth for battle
and for conquest.

VI.

When one met Grand Admiral von Tirpitz in some official drawing-room
in Berlin, and had a talk with him, one felt oneself in the presence
of an interesting personality—what in England is known as “a strong
man.” Among all the advisers of William II., there was no one who gave
such an impression of strength and authority. With his fan-shaped
beard, his broad forehead and thinning hair above it, his eyes, hard
and piercing even behind double eye-glasses, his imposing figure, that
showed a tendency to stoutness, he would have looked like a great
manufacturer or financial magnate rather than a sailor, but for the
numerous decorations pinned all over his chest. As a matter of fact, he
is an office man, an organizer who had never held any high command at
sea before he attracted the Emperor’s discerning eye and was appointed
head of the Admiralty. He was at the time director of the naval station
at Kiel, the first military port of the Empire. This station he had
entirely transformed, in the teeth of criticism and jobbery, dominating
all with his iron will, and making a clean sweep of disorder and red
tape. The German fleet owes to him the organization of its torpedoboat
section—which has not revealed its prowess during the war, although
its creator cannot be blamed for that—and of the quite recently formed
flotilla of submarines.

Tirpitz has been head of the Admiralty for eighteen years, a
ministerial length of life that no Chancellor or Secretary of State
has yet reached under William II. In order to remain so long in the
Imperial favour, he has had to show an unusual degree of tact and
intelligence. The Emperor was intensely eager to possess a most
powerful fleet. He had put his own lips to the foghorn; by his speeches
and by an incessant personal propaganda, he had made the public
interested in the development of the navy, in the idea of acquiring the
mastery of the seas. (“Our future lies on the water.”) But the man who
had to carry out the Sovereign’s will was doomed to encounter several
obstacles. The first difficulty for an Admiralty chief was to put his
schemes before the Sovereign in such a way that the latter should
regard himself as their author. In this respect, Tirpitz displayed
more skill than any of his civilian or military colleagues. In the
second place, he had to overcome the opposition that the Reichstag,
always anxious to save the public money, had hitherto raised against
any increase in the naval estimates. With singular adroitness Admiral
von Tirpitz, profiting by various incidents abroad and by the wave of
patriotic feeling they produced in the nation, worked upon public
opinion, and won over many restive or wavering minds in Parliament. Nor
was this all. The bills that he introduced would not have emerged safe
and sound, without any mutilations, from the clutches of the Budget
Committee, had not their framer been gifted with eloquence, with a
power of clear and persuasive speech, which found a responsive audience
in the middle-class parties. No minister has ever been so successful
in winning the ear of the Reichstag, while managing to retain the
confidence of the Emperor.

But why did Germany need so large a navy? Prince von Bülow says in
his book, _Imperial Germany_: “The sea has become a more important
factor in our national life than at any previous period, not excepting
the great days of the Hanseatic League; it has become a vital nerve,
which we must never lose, if the young German nation, which is still
growing vigorously, is to be kept from suddenly lapsing into a decrepit
old age. We should have been exposed to this danger as long as our
foreign trade and our mercantile marine had no State protection at sea
against the stronger fleets of other nations.” True, but it would seem
that this end might have been attained by building a few divisions of
cruisers, strong enough to protect German shipping and at the same time
to threaten the commerce of the enemy.

From the earliest years of his reign, as is well known, William II.’s
first thought has been for his fleet. The navy is his own creation,
his favourite child. Nevertheless, the tremendous growth of Germany’s
naval power coincides, in point of fact, with the entry of Bülow and
Tirpitz on the scene, and with the inauguration of that “world-policy”
for which the former of these two men—according to his own confession,
at any rate—must be regarded as primarily responsible. I have already
pointed out how elastic is the sense of this term “world-policy.” For
the most peacefully inclined of Germans it meant a policy of colonial
expansion. But the formation of a great navy gave the phrase a more
sinister force: it now meant intervention in every part of the globe,
acquisitions and settlements in distant regions, without recoiling from
bloody encounters, such as could not be avoided in European waters.
It is from the year 1897, when both Prince von Bülow and Admiral von
Tirpitz took up office, that we may date these first ambitious schemes
of conquest, which were embodied in the rapid construction of a
formidable naval force, and reached their inevitable climax in the war
of 1914.

Fifteen years were enough for Tirpitz to make the German navy the
second in the world. He advanced by several stages, by successive
leaps and bounds. The bill that was brought in on November 27, 1897,
demanded that seven new ships of the line, two first-class and seven
second- and third-class cruisers should be put on the stocks, and
fixed the end of the financial year as the date by which these units
should be completed. While limiting the period for which ships should
be kept on the effective list, and determining the number and strength
of the squadrons that were to remain on permanent service, the bill
ensured the construction, within a given time-limit, of units to
replace the vessels that were scrapped. In the autumn of 1899, during
the South African War, the seizure of a German mail-boat by a British
warship, and the resentment that this action aroused in Germany, were
exploited in masterly fashion by Tirpitz in order to introduce a new
navy bill. The patriotic furore of the nation enabled this bill to
triumph over all financial obstacles. The explanatory statement called
for the creation of a fleet so strong that the greatest naval Power of
the world might feel uncertain as to the outcome of a struggle with
Germany. This was a palpable thrust at Great Britain. In 1906, after
Germany had met with such disappointment at the Algeciras Conference,
the Reichstag, cleverly manipulated by the Admiral, and with the
pressure of national sentiment behind it, passed the supplementary
navy bill, raising the number of cruisers and providing for the
construction of vessels of the Dreadnought type. The two first German
Dreadnoughts, the _Nassau_ and the _Westphalen_, were laid down in July
1907, launched in 1908, and completed within three and a half years.
Their three successors were built with still greater speed, being
finished within two years. The naval estimates, which in 1898 amounted
to £6,250,000, in 1913 reached the sum of £23,350,000. The honours
and decorations showered upon the fortunate Admiral after each of his
parliamentary triumphs bore striking witness to the gratitude of his
Sovereign.

Prince von Bülow indicates in his book the difficulty of carrying out
such a programme and at the same time avoiding a rupture with England.
The most critical moment came in 1908. It had been shown in the House
of Commons, with figures to support the statement, that Germany, by
virtue of her last navy bill, would by the end of 1916 have thirty-six
vessels of the Dreadnought type. This, it was remarked, would compel
England to build forty-four Dreadnoughts within that period. In 1911,
Germany would have thirteen and England only twelve. The German menace
to England’s naval supremacy excited serious alarm in the Island
Kingdom. The Emperor thought he was making a very skilful move in
writing a letter to Lord Tweedmouth, First Lord of the Admiralty, a
personal letter, half private, half open in character, in which he
insisted on the purely defensive nature of the German programme, and
tried to remove British apprehensions in regard to the development of
the Imperial navy. But the shot missed its mark. By taking part in
the discussion, by endeavouring to banish from the minds of English
sailors the spectre of the German danger, William II., as soon as
his unconventional step came to light through its disclosure in the
_Times_, only added fuel to the fire of public feeling, and drove the
British Parliament to get ships built all the faster, in reply to the
German challenge.

The members of the Asquith Cabinet, seeing the approach of the
Dreadnought era, which would involve an enormous maritime outlay at
the very moment when they wished to devote all their available surplus
to social reform, made an ineffectual attempt to check this frenzied
competition. Their public speeches and their private efforts did not
induce Admiral von Tirpitz to deviate for a single instant from the
steady course he had marked out for the execution of his programme. If
for a brief interval in 1913 he seemed to look with favour on the “two
to three standard” (_i.e._, two German to three British Dreadnoughts)
proposed by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill,
he turned a deaf ear to the suggestion that the two countries should
suspend the construction of ships (“a naval holiday”) for the space
of a year. The haughty spirit of the German Admiral would make no
concessions, and those who pleaded for a limitation of armaments, that
vanished dream of the British taxpayer, found that they were dashing
themselves against a wall of granite.

No one in Germany was louder in his praises of the English sailors.
He declared that they were his masters and his models. But, like the
good German he was, he concealed, under the mask of admiration, a
stubborn resolve to conquer them, to strip them of their insufferable
superiority. The fleet that he was mustering was beyond all doubt an
offensive weapon, an instrument fashioned with elaborate care for
inflicting a deadly wound. Hostilities, however, have broken out sooner
than he had foreseen or desired, and before he was ready for the attack.

A few years more, and Tirpitz would assuredly have surprised his
opponent with a war quite different from anything that the latter
expected—a treacherous war of aeroplanes and submarines, which would
have made up for his inferiority in numbers. The blockade of England,
which he has tried to carry out to-day with inadequate means, enables
us to gauge his audacity, as well as his utter lack of humanitarian
scruples. What would have been the result of such a struggle under the
sea, if the German effort had been backed by a patient and methodical
preparation?

Still, even if England had been vanquished, Germany would have been
drawn into other naval wars. In the process of establishing her
world-power, she would have had to force other rivals to lower their
flag. It would have been essential for her to destroy the United States
navy, in order to confine the Americans to the northern half of their
continent, and to keep the markets of South America open exclusively to
her own trade. After this, would she have been content to leave to the
Japanese the mastery of the Pacific, and to be thwarted or driven out
by them in the Far East? What a vista of conflicts for the organizer
of the German navy, what a task for his own tireless energies and for
those of his successors! Such are the inevitable results of the first
step on the endless track of _Weltpolitik_.

Admiral von Tirpitz has been helped in his labours by a host of
nameless fellow-workers, grouped together under the title of “German
Navy League” (_Deutscher Flottenverein_). This society of 1,250,000
members, with branches all over Germany, forms a loyal and well-trained
army, acting under the orders of Admiral von Koester, a former
Commander-in-Chief of the fleet. By its manifold propaganda, its public
meetings, its periodicals, its pamphlets, its cinematograph films, its
arrangements for pleasure-trips to naval ports, the League has spread
among the people, in great towns and tiny villages alike, from the
sandy plains of Brandenburg to the picturesque valleys of the Hartz
Mountains, a knowledge and appreciation of the work that William II.
and Admiral von Tirpitz have achieved. During the darkest hours of the
Moroccan crisis, the League’s overflowing patriotism expressed itself
in scurrilous pamphlets and shameless lies, scattered broadcast, at the
expense of England and France. It is therefore among the elements that
have served to kindle a wrath and foment a hatred for which war alone
could provide an outlet.

CHAPTER IV.

THE REICHSTAG AND POLITICAL PARTIES.

I.

It is difficult for a foreigner to form any proper notion of the
political groups represented in the Reichstag, if he yields to the
temptation of looking for parallels with the party-system of his own
country, and if he confuses the political institutions of Germany with
those of a nation possessing a parliamentary government.

In the first place, perhaps, it will be desirable briefly to sketch
the mechanism of the 1871 constitution, which, apart from slight
changes needed for the Imperial framework, is merely a replica of the
constitution drawn up by Bismarck for the North German Confederation.

The Empire is a federal and constitutional State, with a sovereign who
not merely reigns, but governs, his status being a modern evolution
from the old absolute monarchy of Prussia. The Emperor is the war-lord,
he commands the army and regulates its organization; he has the supreme
direction of foreign affairs, both diplomatic and commercial, and, at
home, appoints the Imperial functionaries; he sanctions the bills
approved by the Bundesrat (or Federal Council) and passed by the
Reichstag. He dispenses the executive power, and imposes his sovereign
will, through the medium of a Chancellor.

This ministerial figure represents the Emperor in the Reichstag and
assumes the responsibility for the acts of the Government. This nominal
responsibility is entirely unlike that of a minister in a parliamentary
country; for it does not bind him at all in relation to Parliament,
but only in relation to his master, and also, in a certain measure
(whatever some may allege), to public opinion. The Chancellor, however,
holds a plurality of dignities and functions. He is Jack-of-all-trades
to the monarchy: President of the Prussian Ministry, President of the
Bundesrat, and Imperial Minister for Foreign Affairs. These complex
duties might well prove too exacting for a genuine statesman; how
much more so for a mere politician! Owing to the difference of spirit
between the Prussian Chamber of Deputies and the Reichstag, he has to
appear before the former in the stern guise of a rigid Conservative,
while in the latter his face wears a more attractive mask, being set
off with a tinge of Liberalism. The Chancellor is thus compelled, by
the very nature of his functions, to be an opportunist in internal
politics.

The Bundesrat, composed of representatives sent to it by the individual
States, is a pliable tool in the hands of the Emperor and the other
German rulers, who themselves obey the Imperial will. It shares the
legislative power with the head of the Empire and with the Reichstag.

Bismarck held that the best way of uprooting the particularism of
the small States and clearing the ground for final unification was
to invite all citizens of twenty-five years and upwards to elect
representatives for the central Parliament. The Reichstag, chosen
by universal suffrage, is the popular assembly, the real mouthpiece
of public opinion. Its powers are limited to voting upon the budget
and upon laws for the Empire, which must be taken as meaning laws of
national interest.[6] This democratic Parliament, however, controls, so
far as it can, the administration of public affairs. Its best weapon of
defence against the arbitrary power of the Crown is the opposition it
can raise to any Government proposals for expenditure or taxation. It
has often used this weapon; but if it presses its opposition too far,
it runs the risk of being dissolved by a mere decree of the Emperor’s,
to make room for an assembly that will prove more open to compromise.

By the side of the Empire are the federal States and the three free
cities, which possess local executives and Diets. In order to furnish
these States with the means of a separate existence, Bismarck, while
instituting a special budget for the Empire, left to them the revenue
obtained from direct taxes. The Imperial budget draws its nutriment
from the customs, the excise, and the postal service. The amount
derived from these sources being insufficient, it also receives the
“matricular contributions” (_Matrikularbeiträge_), paid by each State
on a scale that keeps the balance of the budget properly adjusted.

II.

Prince von Bülow, in his _Imperial Germany_, asserts that the German
race, although richly endowed with great qualities, has no talent for
politics. This charge is quite unfair, the real motive for it being
the dread with which a Prussian statesman views the prospect of a
parliamentary system. The Germans are late-comers in the field of
political life. Those of the South entered it much earlier than the
Prussians; Bavaria received a written constitution from its ruler in
1818, Baden in the same year, Würtemberg in 1819, and Hesse-Darmstadt
in 1820. It was not till 1850 that Frederick William IV., impelled by
the sanguinary riots in Berlin two years earlier, granted his people
the constitution promised by his father a few weeks before Waterloo.
Even to-day, popular representation as it exists among the Germans
is in many ways incomplete. In this respect they are a backward
people—they, who pride themselves on marching in the forefront of
civilization. They look from afar at the little nations, which they
despise, boldly advancing on the road of parliamentarism, of progress
in the sphere of political institutions, the road that England, as
pioneer, has opened up for other countries. Yet there is nothing to
prove that, if they were given the chance, they would not shake off
their political torpor and set out upon that road with admirable
results.

Under the present constitution, the political parties in the Reichstag
have no hope of ever securing the reins of power. The Chancellor
and his underlings, the Secretaries of State, are functionaries who
cannot be removed, so long as it pleases the Emperor to keep them
in office. When the popular assembly formally records its lack of
confidence in them, the vote is like a harmless shower of rain, from
which they can shelter themselves under the cloak of the constitution.
If these hostile downpours came very often, indeed, the Emperor
would have to take notice of them and to effect a change in the high
executive staff, but he would not on that account draw his ministers
from the parliamentary majority. The party chiefs, never having the
responsibility of power, are far less keen for the interests of the
State than for those of their party. In a theoretical, doctrinaire
fashion, they defend the political programme comprising all the
demands which they and their predecessors have artistically put
together, a nosegay with whose delusive fragrance they charm their
electors from time to time; but they know perfectly well that this
ideal programme can never be carried out. Some, as skilled tacticians
and leaders of men, like Windthorst and Bebel, have displayed talents
of the first order. Why should it be impossible to find, among the
various party leaders, the stuff of which good parliamentary ministers
are made? We have never seen them put to the test, but we can very well
imagine Herr Bassermann at the head of a Liberal Ministry or Herr Spahn
in a coalition Conservative Cabinet, a “blue and black”[7] Cabinet,
such as has been tried in Holland.

A remark one cannot help making is that the Imperial Parliament
does not contain a Prussian majority, a fact which increases the
difficulties of the Government’s task in no small degree. Prussia
achieved German unity by the sword; it is by far the most populous of
the German States, for in 1913 its inhabitants numbered 40,000,000 out
of a total of 67,000,000. Nevertheless, Prussia proper is confined to
the right bank of the Elbe. The rest of the mighty Hohenzollern kingdom
is merely Prussianized, a group of provinces incorporated by conquest,
and in each province the old particularist spirit still survives. A
great national Prussian party will probably never come into being. It
has been said with justice that in the Reichstag the parties, generally
speaking, have remained separatist, in so far as they are identified
with separate regions. The Conservatives embody the reactionary
tendencies inherent in the Protestant population of the eastern
marches; the deputies of the Centre represent the Catholic masses of
the west, the Liberals the commercial and manufacturing towns. The
Socialists alone succeed in spreading, like a sheet of oil, all over
the domains of the older parties.

Other reflections occur to the mind of one who is confronted with
this motley Diet of federal partners. First of all, this: that the
Government, in its relations with the Reichstag, would gain in
prestige, in influence, and in freedom of action, if it were not so
liable to confuse the Imperial Diet with that of Prussia, if the
Prussian minister were not constantly peeping out behind the mask of
the Imperial Chancellor. Secondly, that the Reichstag seems inevitably
destined to play a more important part on a stage that is really
parliamentary. The structure reared by Bismarck, although it has been
in existence for forty-four years, still has a look of incompleteness.
It seems to need finishing touches from the hand of a workman more
Liberal than the Iron Chancellor, one who can adapt himself better to
modern requirements.

As regards the responsibility for the events of 1914, the Reichstag
must be saddled with its share. The spirit of Prussian militarism,
with its ideas of European domination, had made unmistakable headway
in that body during recent years. Whether this was primarily due to
the dispute with France over Morocco, or to colonial aspirations, or
to the world-policy inaugurated by Prince von Bülow, is of little
consequence. Up to 1907 the increases in the army had met with so
stubborn a resistance in Parliament that, in order to secure a majority
for each fresh army bill, the Imperial Government had to make prolonged
strategical efforts, like a general who tries to capture a fortress
with ill-disciplined troops under his command. But the opposition to
the army bill of 1913 was of a negligible character; it consisted only
of the nationalist malcontents and the Socialists, the former being
anti-German, the latter anti-militarist.

The Reichstag includes not less than ten parties and groups, each
having a special designation. The most sharply defined political
conceptions are to be found among the Conservatives, to whom we
must add—while regarding it as distinct, in view of its religious
character—the Catholic Centre; the Liberals; and the Socialists.
Thus we have three great monarchical or middle-class parties, and a
Social-Democratic party of apparently republican tendencies.

III.

I will not linger over the Conservative Imperialists, a group of great
manufacturers, landowners, and officials, all being, by their very
nature, supporters of the Government.

The Conservative party proper, consisting of only forty-three
members in the present Reichstag, is drawn almost entirely from the
agricultural population of the provinces to the east of the Elbe; it
is under the iron rule of the landed gentry. This is the genuinely
national Prussian party, indissolubly attached to the principles
inscribed on its flag: loyalty to the throne, to the Protestant faith,
and to monarchical institutions, the chief of which is the army. To
this we may add a rooted aversion for nations which Prussia and Germany
regarded with distrust, above all for France. I am speaking here of the
feelings prevalent among the Conservatives before the war; to-day the
first place in their hatred is presumably filled by England or by Italy.

The Prussian aristocrats who direct this party have behind them a long
past history of glory and devotion. Their ancestors played their part,
no less than Frederick the Great, in building up the greatness of the
monarchy. In no European country have the nobles rendered such splendid
services to the reigning dynasty or shed more blood to cement the
fabric of its power.

In the Prussian Diet, from 1862 to 1866, the Conservative party stood
alone in supporting the adventurous and unconstitutional policy of
Bismarck. It has never ceased supplying the Government with officers
and civil servants in such large numbers that it constitutes one
of the great driving forces of the German army and administration.
Its leaders, although inveterate foes of Socialism, have realized
the timeliness of the social legislation begun under William I. and
completed under William II. Accordingly they have voted for these laws
in docile fashion, though without enthusiasm. The weak joint in the
otherwise flawless armour of their patriotism is that they are apt to
put the interests of the agrarian section before those of the country
as a whole. The protection of agriculture, one of the vital sources
of a nation’s prosperity, ought to be, according to the Conservative
doctrines, the first duty of the Imperial Government.

The loyalty to the throne displayed by the Prussian squires, those
Junkers who are the real nobles in a kingdom where the feudal
aristocracy is almost extinct save in Silesia and on the banks of
the Rhine, shows no trace of servility. More royalist than the King,
they think fit to dictate to him the policy that he ought to pursue.
A satirical version of the Prussian national anthem “for the use of
Conservatives” contains the following distich:

  “Unser König absolut,
  Wenn er unseren Willen tut!”

“Let our King be absolute, if only he does what we want!”

The leader of the Conservative party, both in the Prussian Diet and in
the Reichstag, is Herr von Heydebrand, often called “the uncrowned King
of Prussia.” He is no Teuton giant, like some of the rough and boorish
gentleman-farmers of the eastern provinces, but a little old man, very
simple and retiring, whose usual posture is one of silent attention.
The Conservative chief does not speak very often: when he does, his
incisive eloquence and his terse, logical way of putting things produce
a sensational effect. His speech against the Convention of 4th November
1911 and the policy of an accommodation with France, is still fresh
in the memory of every German. In the caustic questions he addressed
to the Chancellor—asking what was the use of the colossal land and
sea armaments of the Empire, if Germany was forced to beat a retreat
at the critical moment, and why the German sword had been flourished
at Agadir, only to be ignominiously put back in its sheath from fear
of perfidious Albion—Herr von Heydebrand revealed to us the swelling
chorus that the war-song of his party had reached. After this speech
the Conservative party clamoured incessantly, both with tongue and with
pen, for revenge on France and her accomplices.

IV.

The Centre has almost as much claim as the Conservative party to be
ranged with the Right. It was formed in the Rhine provinces, where
many prince-bishops once held their court, in Bavaria, in Baden, and
in Silesia, with the object of counteracting, in the name of the
Catholic minority, the intolerant spirit of the Protestant majority,
and of securing for the Church the liberty that is her due. Although
some official party-writers have tried hard to make us believe the
contrary, the Centre is a religious party. It regards the interests of
the Church as paramount. Still, like the rest, it has been won over
to the nationalist idea, and it works towards maintaining the federal
character of the Empire.

The deputies of the Centre number eighty-nine. This figure is low, if
we consider that in 1911 Germany contained about 24,000,000 Catholics
as against 40,000,000 Lutherans and Evangelicals. The way in which the
electoral districts have been parcelled out is no doubt the reason
why this party has fewer representatives than it might fairly expect.
For all that, it seems to have reached its zenith, and while for the
time being it does not lose its principal seats at the battles of the
polls, on the other hand it no longer gains any from its rivals. Among
the working-classes its great enemy is Socialism. Hence, in order to
retain its adherents in the manufacturing centres, the Catholic Right
has considerably broadened its Conservative programme. It is feeling
the influence of that Christian Democracy which reigns supreme in
the southern States. As the Protestant journals have taken good care
to point out, it is quite obvious to-day that the party contains two
opposite currents, and that a certain antagonism exists between the
controlling bodies in Cologne and in Breslau, the latter being more
conservative and more amenable to the dictates of Rome, while the
former tries to shake off the Vatican leading-strings in internal
politics. This cleavage came to light in the discussion that arose
among German Catholics over the setting-up of mixed labour syndicates,
composed of Catholic and Protestant workmen.

For seventeen years, from 1890 to 1907, the Centre in the Reichstag
laid down its conditions and even issued its commands, as the price
of letting those bills pass which the Government considered of vital
importance. Defeated by Prince von Bülow’s _bloc_,[8] it took its
revenge two years later, by wrecking the Chancellor’s scheme for
financial reform. If after this the Centre did not hold undisputed sway
in divisions, it remained a doubtful ally for the Government, and in
momentous conflicts its desertion could still affect the issue.

No one can deny that the German Centre and the Belgian Catholic party
have many points in common. Both acknowledge the same ideal, and fight
with the same energy to protect the consciences of the faithful from
the inroads of advanced teachings and the ravages of free thought.
The electoral successes of the Belgian Clericals were greeted by the
Catholic Press of Germany with no less enthusiasm than their own. The
Belgians, who for the most part cling to the same beliefs as the German
Catholics, might have expected some sympathy from their brethren in
the faith, when their country was outraged in such dastardly fashion.
Yet no cry of Christian pity went up from the deputies of the Centre
when their Protestant Emperor pounced upon his victim; no plea for
mercy was uttered by them on behalf of our stricken people; no protest
against the murder of our priests or against the destruction of our old
churches, where many of them had knelt in pious reverence when they
came to visit our land. If they spoke of Belgium at all, it was only to
propose annexation as was done by the deputy Erzberger, one of their
leading men in the Reichstag, in a manifesto that was eagerly recorded
by the whole German Press. In vindicating his hateful suggestion,
this good Catholic appealed to no right but the brutal right of the
conqueror, to no interest but the interest which the German Empire
has in possessing the seaboard of Flanders with its splendid port on
the Scheldt. He thought to cover the nakedness of his greed by means
of those lying charges with which, like his Protestant colleagues, he
tried to sully the heroic resistance of the Belgians.

V.

As in most countries, the Liberal party falls into two divisions:
the moderate or “national” Liberals, and the progressive or “ultra”
Liberals. Their forces are of about equal strength in the Reichstag.
The former section stands for the manufacturing interests, the latter
for the commercial, and both for the monarchist middle class, which is
opposed to any interference by a religious authority, whatever creed it
may represent.

The National Liberals can point to a glorious past, for during the
first years of the Empire they formed the solid kernel of the majority
which faithfully voted for all the bills brought in by Bismarck.
Notwithstanding some passing fits of ill-humour and sulkiness, they
have continued to register their votes for laws of national interest
and for world-policy, for the increase of armaments and for colonial
expenditure. One might have imagined that a certain affinity of
thought, a similar leaning towards a secular régime which would
entirely prevent the clergy from directing moral education, a like
distaste for aristocratic influences, would have made them look with
a less unfriendly eye upon a foreign Liberal Government such as that
of the French Republic. One might have been tempted to believe that
they would make some effort, now and then, to bridge the gulf of hatred
that kept the two countries apart. As a matter of fact, they have bent
their energies towards widening that gulf. The German suspicions as to
the revengeful designs of the French Republic were never more strongly
encouraged than by the speeches of the National Liberal leader, Herr
Bassermann, on foreign affairs, a subject on which he was one of the
most popular speakers in the Reichstag. These utterances were a series
of indictments, no less unjust than spiteful, against a nation which he
had never taken the trouble to study, or which he had only seen through
the spectacles of an aggravated Germanism. Thus the war must have
satisfied the heartfelt desires of Herr Bassermann and his followers.

For a long time the Progressive Democrats, who opposed the spread
of militarism, voted against any increase of military burdens. It
was the triumph of Prince von Bülow’s tactical skill that he induced
these extremist representatives of the middle classes to change front
and to swell the ranks of the Conservatives and National Liberals,
so as to form a Governmental and militarist majority. Henceforth
the Progressives were always meek supporters of any increase in
the Imperial forces. That they adopted this course at first in the
interests of national defence is fairly obvious; but they cannot have
been blind to the aggressive character of the 1913 army bill. They
accepted in advance all the consequences of this measure, because they
too had rallied to the cause of world-policy and colonial expansion.
These ideas were floating in the atmosphere of the Reichstag, as well
as in the air that all who were concerned with statecraft breathed in
Berlin.

VI.

In 1884 the Socialist party comprised, in round numbers, 550,000
electors; in 1912 it had 4,250,000 out of a total of nearly 12,000,000
for the whole country. In 1884 the party was represented in the
Reichstag by 24 deputies, in 1912 by 110 out of 397. These figures tell
their own tale as to the progress made by Socialism in Germany.

Every German statesman looked upon the Socialists as a great danger,
and, taking his cue from the Emperor, expressed his fears somewhat
too loudly in speech and writing. What was the use of sounding the
fire-alarm, as if the house were already in flames, when as a matter of
fact it was not even threatened? Why all this scare, which seems to us
rather absurd to-day? German political science had tried every remedy
against the Socialist taint and found it wanting, from the repressive
system of Bismarck to the social reform policy of Posadowsky. In
reality, however, the microbe of Social Democracy was perfectly
harmless. Prince von Bülow, in his book, comes to the conclusion that
the danger would become serious if Socialism, after making havoc
among the proletariate, wormed its way into the middle classes, those
steadfast bulwarks against all change. In point of fact it had already
made considerable advance in this direction, and it drew its leaders
from the intellectuals of the struggling bourgeoisie. I have heard it
prophesied in Berlin that the Empire would be lost on the day that the
Socialist propaganda pierced the chain-armour of Prussian discipline
and found its way into the army. But some fifty per cent. of the
young soldiers were adherents of Socialism; have they fought any the
less sturdily on that account? This exaggerated fear, or rather this
annoyance, felt by the Emperor was surely due to the unceremonious
behaviour of Socialist deputies in the Reichstag and their refusal to
shout the traditional “Hoch!” in his honour—a mere piece of schoolboy
impertinence.

It needed no profound study of the movement to realize that Social
Democracy was becoming transformed from day to day. It had passed
through several phases since those heroic times when, in spite of the
threat of imprisonment, it had boldly declared war upon capitalist
society and the imperialist system. The generation of veteran
revolutionaries, of Liebknecht, Bebel, and Engels, had passed away.
Those who took their place, men like Franck, Bernstein, Heine, and
Sudekum, became opportunists or “revisionists.”[9] The change grew
more perceptible than ever when Bebel, the last apostle of the Marxian
gospel, was snatched away by a heart-attack from the benches of the
Reichstag and the leadership of the party. It was he who had been
its patient organizer, finding an invaluable ally in that spirit of
discipline for which the Germans are peculiarly noted. The heirs of
this great speaker and great fighter ostensibly retained the teachings
of Karl Marx: the class struggle, the acquisition of political power
in order to bring about a social revolution and establish a collective
ownership of the means of production. But their actual programme aimed
at more practical reforms, especially in the way of guarantees for the
worker against the employer, and of rates and taxes.

Social Democracy had become a wealthy middle-class institution, with
funds amounting to £5,000,000, several powerful unions, and 4,216 local
committees, paying subsidies, not merely to its numerous children, but
even to foreigners, on condition that they accepted its edicts. With
such resources, the battle against the rich employer class was far
from unequal, and the propaganda went on apace. No revolutionary step
was taken, no general strike was declared, no attack was made on the
sacrosanct person of the Emperor. The Socialist tactics consisted in
penetrating further and further into parliamentary life, not in order
to raise a futile opposition to the Government, but in order to use
the effective sounding-board of the Reichstag as a means of obtaining
a wider audience for the Socialist message. The uninterrupted climb
of Social Democracy, its remarkable gains at each general election,
gave its leaders every right to anticipate a glorious future. They saw
themselves, at no distant date, heading a parliamentary majority and
forcing the Imperial Government to come to terms.

Their conduct at the declaration of war, which they had done nothing
to prevent, was a source of profound amazement to the world outside
Germany. Not the least indignant were those foreign Socialists who
had been accustomed to revere their German colleagues as unfailing
oracles. Had not the latter held undisputed sway at all the
international congresses, imposing their theories and their decrees
with that masterful and uncompromising spirit that they showed in no
less degree than the capitalist classes whom they were fighting? As a
matter of fact, there was no reason to feel surprise or indignation.
The Reichstag deputies, like their electors, are Germans first and
Socialists afterwards. Before leaving school, they are fully convinced
that theirs is a superior race. Moreover, for the labouring masses of
Germany the war—a brief and triumphant war, such as they confidently
expected—was a good stroke of business, just as it was for their
masters. It would enable the products of German industry to flow more
abundantly into the conquered countries, it would win rich colonies for
the Empire, it would ensure the final supremacy of the German Labour
party in the sphere of international Socialism. It might have been
remembered that the disciples and successors of Marx had always turned
a deaf ear to the proposal of foreign comrades, that a declaration of
war should be answered by a general strike; and that when charged by
their opponents in the Reichstag with lack of patriotism, they had
replied that, if Germany were attacked, every German Socialist would
put a rifle to his shoulder as readily as his middle-class countryman.

It was quite in the nature of things, then, that the body of Socialist
deputies, instead of raising an outcry against the war, should have
voted as one man for the military credits demanded by the Chancellor on
the 4th of August, and that it should have accepted without a murmur
the Government’s statements as to an attack by Russia and by France.
In spite of some individual protests, it will continue to grant the
necessary milliards of marks, just as its electors, enrolled under the
Imperial banner, will continue to shed their proletarian blood like
water, in order to secure the triumph of imperialism and aristocracy.
Still, we have a right to be astonished when we read the pronouncements
made at Stuttgart last winter by one of the prominent Socialist members
of the Reichstag, Herr Wolfgang Heine. They reveal a new trend in the
party, a rallying to the Empire and to those great centralizing forces,
the clamps of the mighty German framework—the army and the monarchy.
Conservative writers had given us to understand that a yawning chasm
had always existed and always would exist between kingship and social
democracy. The Imperial Government would not disarm until its enemy
surrendered and swore allegiance to the monarchy and to the order of
things for which the monarchy stands. And now, through the agency of
war, the miracle has come to pass! Social democracy will no longer sap
the dynastic and military foundations of the State; it has declared
itself imperialistic.

Will the miracle last long? Will the old revolutionary demon never
again seize the soul of the new convert? When peace returns—we shall
see. There is every reason to think that the truce between the two
inveterate foes rests on an uncertain basis. As the price of its
assistance in the European conflict, Socialism will exact concessions
in the shape of political reforms, involving a change in the Imperial
constitution and in that of the Prussian State. The grant of universal
suffrage to Prussia is the least that it can ask for. Then will come
the day of reckoning for the Hohenzollern autocrat. Let us suppose
that William II., his position weakened by a disappointing war, should
find no strength to resist the clamours of the German proletariate.
The power would pass from his enfeebled hands to those of a Reichstag
brimming over with enthusiasm and consumed with ambition. And if, in
spite of the failure of his bold enterprises, he should reject the
popular demands, what a struggle we can foresee between a shrunken
Cæsar and a party swollen in numbers through all the mistakes, all the
suffering, all the ruin that the war has accumulated! Victory alone
(and even that for how long, and by what compromises?) could seal the
reconciliation between two such rivals as autocracy and Socialism.
Defeat, or merely a profitless peace, would have prolonged effects upon
the internal situation in Germany.

VII.

Since the creation of the Empire, the Chancellors have had to
govern the Reichstag with coalition majorities. This system has
great advantages, but still greater drawbacks. On the one hand, the
Government does not commit itself to the policy of any one party; on
the other hand, to carry the bills which it regards as important, it
is compelled to be eternally bargaining with parties and groups.

Bismarck at first relied upon the National Liberals, who were the
most numerous in the earlier assemblies of his ministry; they were
his allies in his campaign against Rome. After a time he became
dissatisfied with the Liberals, who were considerably reduced in
numbers at the general election following upon the attempts to
assassinate William I., and made overtures to the Conservatives, both
Protestant and Catholic. The latter having been defeated, together with
the Progressives, over the so-called “act for the military septennium,”
the Chancellor, with an eye to the 1887 elections, formed the famous
_Kartell_,[10] composed of Conservatives and National Liberals. This
was the first attempt to arrange a marriage of convenience between the
two opposite principles of government, immobility and progress. The
experiment was as quickly dropped in Germany as elsewhere.

Twenty years later Prince von Bülow, faced with the same difficulties,
and always compelled to reckon with the Centre, came to grief through
the latter’s stubborn refusal to grant the necessary credits for
additions to the colonial forces. He thought it a master-stroke to
confront the Centre and the Socialists with a majority composed this
time of Conservatives, National Liberals, and Progressives. This
combination was invested with the French name of “_bloc_.” The 1907
elections gave him a short-lived triumph over the Socialists alone,
for the Centre came out unscathed from the ordeal of the polls. But
the team of three which the Chancellor hoped to drive with a sure hand
was too ill-assorted to keep together for very long. The horse on the
right, summoned by the neigh of his stable-companion, the Centre, on
the Opposition meadows, was the first to kick over the traces and
escape. Protestant and Catholic Conservatives then formed a new _bloc_,
“blue” and “black,” against the financial reforms of the Government. It
was essential for Prince von Bülow to carry his bill in the Reichstag,
for this was the only way in which he could make himself appear
indispensable to the Emperor, whose feelings towards him were anything
but friendly after the affair of the _Daily Telegraph_ interview.
Accordingly, he treated the matter as a test case, as if he had been
a mere parliamentary minister, threatening to resign if his bill were
thrown out. The result of the voting made this threat a reality. He
handed in his resignation to the Emperor, who was graciously pleased to
accept it.

If the Centre, in accordance with its conventions, has so far been
the factor most capable of shifting the balance in the Reichstag, the
party which has had most influence on the trend of the Government’s
home policy is the Conservative party. A study of German history since
Bismarck’s dismissal teaches us that a Chancellor cannot retain his
power very long in the teeth of the agrarians, although they are less
numerous than the other parliamentary groups. Caprivi and Bülow, each
in his turn, attempted the impossible. The former injured the interests
of the eastern landowners by his concessions to foreign States, in that
he lowered the import duties on cereals, with a view to concluding
with them commercial treaties that would favour the development of
national industries. The latter tried to saddle the agrarians with a
proportional share of the burdens involved in his financial reforms—a
perfectly equitable scheme, supported by all the Liberal elements.

On the other hand, as we have seen, a Chancellor who is backed by the
Conservatives can defy public opinion and parliamentary opposition.
Such was the experience of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg in the debate
over the Zabern affair, in which he championed (not very eloquently,
by the way) the inalienable right of the army to take the law into
its own hands. He received an overwhelming vote of censure with
philosophic calm, telling the majority that its vote did not affect
him, because he was responsible for his acts, not to Parliament, but to
the Emperor. What really made him feel proof against their attacks was
the similarity of his views to those of the Junkers and of all those
Prussian reactionaries who resisted tooth and nail whenever any one
dared to assail the privileges of the army.

This ambition on the part of the Conservative chiefs to act as the
power behind the political throne received a severe set-back two years
ago. The blow was all the more effective in that it wounded them in
their tenderest spot. Hitherto, they had managed to keep real estate,
above all when it passed to an heir, exempt from the new taxes. The
financial covering for the 1913 army bill, however, was passed by a
coalition of the Centre, the Socialists, and the Liberal groups, not
in accordance with the Government proposal, but with amendments which
brought landed property within the scope of the new taxation. The fact
that this vote had an influence on recent events compels me to enter
into some detail, in order to explain the mechanism of the financial
section of this important bill.

VIII.

“We must conduct affairs in such a way,” says the official German
secret report, published in the 1914 Yellow Book and dated March 19,
1913, the day after the army bill of that year was passed, “that, under
the weighty pressure of powerful armaments, enormous sacrifices, and
a strained political situation, an outbreak of hostilities would be
looked upon as a deliverance, because, like the war of 1870, it would
be followed by several decades of peace and prosperity.”

The new financial burdens were indeed heavy, even for a nation which,
like the German, was visibly growing richer and richer. The expenditure
involved in the new army bill was of two kinds. The one, amounting to
some £50,000,000, graduated over a period of three years, would not
be renewed; the other represented a permanent annual disbursement,
estimated at £24,510,000 until 1915, and £11,600,000 after that date.

Where were these vast sums to be found in a country already
overburdened with taxation? The Imperial Treasury had no more than
£5,000,000 left over from the receipts of preceding years. The
Chancellor could not resort to fresh taxes on food and drink. Moreover
his hands were tied by a motion, put forward by Herr Bassermann and
Herr Erzberger in the previous year, and passed by the Reichstag.
This motion bound the Government to frame, before March 31, 1913,
a scheme of taxation on property, in other words on wealth. “But a
general Imperial tax on property,” the Finance Minister, Herr Kühn, had
declared in the course of the debate, “would have been an encroachment
upon the financial sovereign rights of the federated States, and the
Imperial Government could not enter upon this path without injuring
the federal character of the Empire.” It must not be forgotten that
Prussia, being the most important of the federated States, would
have been the first to suffer from a blow directed at her fiscal
independence.

An internal loan of £50,000,000 was not feasible, in view of the
state of the market, in which even the most promising loans of German
municipalities found great difficulty in getting placed. It was out of
the question, on the other hand, to appeal to the foreign investor. He
would not have lent a penny for the increase of German armaments, which
were already causing a great deal of anxiety abroad.

The Finance Minister thought he had solved the problem by submitting to
the approval of the Reichstag a large batch of finance measures of the
most varied type.

First of all he proposed certain devices for the covering of permanent
expenditure. Then he moved an increase in the assessment of matricular
contributions paid by the federated States, on whose shoulders a fresh
share of the burden was thus thrown. Finally, to redeem the promise
made to the Reichstag in 1912 with regard to a property-tax, Herr Kühn
suggested imposing a tax on increments of wealth and capital in those
federated States which should not themselves have introduced such a tax
by 1916, and whose resources were not enough to pay the higher rate of
matricular contributions that was now demanded.

In order to meet the non-recurring expenses, the Government bill—this
is its truly original feature—proposed an extraordinary tax on property
and income, to be paid for the next two years. This _Wehrbeitrag_
(Defence Contribution) was really a special war levy, imposed on
capitalists in the midst of peace, when the political sky of Germany
was not in any way overcast. It was a tax on the patriotism of the
well-to-do classes, an urgent appeal to national sentiment. That the
response would be enthusiastic the Government did not doubt for a
moment. The assessment of property began at the very low minimum of
£500, that of income at the very high minimum of £2,500.

In the debate on the first reading the Finance Minister’s scheme was
coldly received by the Liberal elements. It soon became clear that the
vote for financial cover, which the Chancellor wished to obtain by the
beginning of July at the latest, would not be passed unless he resigned
himself to accepting drastic amendments. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg,
anxious to push the matter through as quickly as possible, acknowledged
that the Government proposals might be modified.

The Budget Committee went to work with a vengeance. For the
_Wehrbeitrag_, it raised the minimum of taxable property to £2,500
with an income of over £100, and, making the tax progressive, it taxed
incomes of over £250, provided they exceeded by £50 a sum representing
five per cent. of the taxpayer’s capital. For the valuation of real
estate it adhered to the principle of fictitious capitalization,
multiplying the incomes by 25 instead of 20, a co-efficient proposed by
the Government and considered too favourable to the landed proprietors.
The Princes were subjected to the extraordinary tax in the same way
as private citizens; the assurance given by princely families, that
they would contribute of their own free will, was not regarded as
sufficient. On the other hand, against the advice of the Liberals,
estates held in mortmain were exempted. The tax was to be collected
in three instalments: the first, one month after the preliminary
assessment, _i.e._ on December 31, 1913, the second in 1915, and the
third on February 15, 1916.

A large number of the taxpayers were called upon to contribute to this
“Defence Levy,” within two years, a third or more of their income.
For manufacturers, bankers, commercial companies, and others who had
capital in reserve, this sacrifice was not very hard to make. A landed
proprietor, however, who lived on the income derived from his estate,
would be compelled either to cut down expenses or to raise money on a
mortgage. In the same way, a person who depended on the modest proceeds
of his investments would have to sell or mortgage a portion of his
holdings.

For permanent expenditure, the Committee rejected the increase in
matricular assessments proposed by the Government, on the pretext
that the Empire ought not to beg for alms from the federated States.
On the other hand, it accepted, with some modifications of detail,
the principle of taxing increments of wealth and capital. It exempted
princely families, but not limited companies.

At the second and third readings, the Reichstag adopted the resolutions
of its committee. On 30th June, the date recommended by the Government,
the bill for financial cover was passed, as I have said above, by a
notable majority, composed of the Liberal and Socialist groups, with
which the Centre had combined, the Conservatives forming the bulk of
the opposition.

It was a great victory for the more advanced elements, Progressive
and Socialist. The Centre and the National Liberals rallied to their
standard, being convinced that it was impossible to revive the
Bassermann-Erzberger proposal. In point of fact, the bill passed by
the Reichstag proceeded, to a great extent, upon the same lines as the
measure proposed by these two deputies. A series of direct taxes, on an
enormous scale, now swelled the resources of the Empire, while their
yield, in accordance with the Bismarckian policy, was almost entirely
reserved for the individual States. The Socialists would have liked to
go further and throw the whole weight of this burden upon the shoulders
of the privileged classes.

After all, the Reichstag vote was, in a way, a breach of the federal
compact, and an invasion by the Imperial Parliament of the rights
of individual States. It marked a stage in the journey towards
complete unification of the Empire by means of fiscal processes. This
encroachment by the central power was not accepted without a murmur by
Saxony and the southern States. Their deputies in the Reichstag were
forced to bow to the higher necessities pleaded by the Government,
and to ratify a measure which claimed to be in the interests of the
nation as a whole. It may be said that from this time onward the fiscal
independence of the federated States ceased to exist.

The anger of the Conservatives found vent in the columns of their
newspapers and the speeches of their leaders. Their representatives in
the Reichstag, clinging to the Government scheme, had voted in sheer
desperation against the new tax on increments of wealth and capital,
nominally because it infringed the autonomy of the individual States,
really because, in striking at increments in wealth due either to a
rise in site-values or to inheritance in direct line, it assailed their
position, privileged till then, as landed proprietors.

IX.

It was not to be expected that the Conservatives would accept this
defeat without any thought of seeking revenge. The aristocracy who
direct the party had supported all the costly proposals for augmenting
the military forces, in order to ensure Germany’s triumph in the next
war. Their sins now recoiled upon their own heads. From this time
forth, the landowners would suffer the common lot of taxpayers, and in
the grim struggle that they wage with such amazing vigour against an
ungenerous soil, would no longer be able to devote the entire surplus
of their income to the improvement of their farms. Their rout was due
to the growth of the Socialist vote, to the place won in the Reichstag
by Social Democracy, whose magnetic force was attracting both the
Christian Democrats of the Centre and the more advanced Liberals. The
problem now before them was this: should they submit to the domination
of the Left, or should they counteract it, and endeavour to build a
dam, once for all, against those Socialist floods that threatened to
sap the very foundations of the monarchy?

If we bear in mind the views that the Conservative party has in
common with the military aristocracy, making the two bodies scarcely
distinguishable; its ascendancy over the Imperial Government, whose
Chancellors, like Bülow, have called themselves Conservatives by blood
and tradition; its influence at Court; the dictatorial spirit of its
chiefs, actuated by the most diverse motives, Prussian patriotism,
class cohesion, material interests; and finally, the short space of
time that elapsed between the passing of the 1913 finance bill and
the declaration of war on Russia—if we bear all this in mind, we
shall come to the conclusion that the squirearchy took every advantage
of that narrow interval, brought great pressure to bear upon the
Sovereign, and decided him to precipitate the course of events.

The somewhat forced enthusiasm with which the introduction of the
Defence Levy was hailed in Berlin drawing-rooms was speedily quenched
after the Reichstag vote, and black looks appeared on all sides as
the first term for payment drew near. The growing burdens exacted by
the army and navy now made their weight felt everywhere, and caused a
general demand for some limit to the constant advance of armaments and
taxation. Yet the people saw no chance of relief except as the result
of a war. “... That the outbreak of hostilities may be looked upon as
a deliverance,” says the secret report already quoted. This was the
idea that was gradually making its way into the German mind. On the day
after mobilization, while having a talk with the Bavarian minister, I
expressed my surprise at the fact that the war-demonstrations of the
previous evening had been noisier in Munich than in Berlin. “Isn’t
it perfectly natural?” he replied. “We are crushed by a weight of
taxation, ordinary and extraordinary. The moment seems favourable.
France and Russia are not ready. The Bavarians think it better that war
should come than that the present intolerable state of things should
continue.”

Not only did the military clique make capital of this discontent for
the furtherance of their ends, but, we may surmise, the Conservatives
exploited it for a political purpose which is not hard to guess. A
successful war was the only way of stopping the downward rush of the
Empire along the democratic slope, and of regaining the mastery of the
Reichstag for the moderate parties. A victorious monarch, invested with
a halo of dazzling glory by his subjects throughout all Germany, could
allow himself anything. Was it not after a series of military triumphs
that Bismarck had overcome the last resistance of the separatists? But
the great man had made the mistake—a mistake for which his successors
paid dear—of introducing universal suffrage for the elections to the
Reichstag. Little by little, the popular vote was threatening to bring
forth a hideous monster, a Parliament in which the majority would be
led by the advocates of a social revolution. The Conservatives, in
spite of a promise made by the Emperor, had managed to prevent an
electoral reform for the Prussian Chamber of Deputies. We shall hardly
overrate the daring of their leaders, if we credit them with the
design of inducing William II., after the victory, to modify the 1871
constitution in a reactionary spirit.

A certain country, not strong enough to earn the respect of the
Imperial Government, had shown that it is possible to mitigate
the evils attendant on universal suffrage by means of minority
representation, compulsory polling, and plural voting. In Germany, a
reform involving one of these methods, or applying some other powerful
brake to the electoral car, would have been easy to introduce at an
auspicious moment. Even under a constitutional government, the bulk of
the German nation, with many of its cravings satisfied, and with a long
vista of world-wide supremacy and economic affluence before its eyes,
would have offered no resistance to the Hohenzollern who returned from
abroad with the laurels of a conqueror.

This, I admit, is a mere hypothesis, but there is nothing improbable in
it for one who knows the pugnacious bent of Prussian Conservatism.

Yet every medal has its reverse, even the one stamped in advance with
the effigy of William II., Emperor of Europe. If Germany emerges
humbled and weakened for many a long year from a conflict in which
the best-laid plans of victory will have been wrecked by unforeseen
elements, the scaffolding of her ambitions will come down with a crash.
When its rulers are called to account for their overweening confidence,
the German people—if we exclude the chance of a revolution, an idea
for which this country of innate discipline has little taste—will
probably demand a limitation of the Emperor’s power in the form of a
parliamentary system of real political liberty. In 1913, Count von
Schwerin-Lowitz, President of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, said,
in a Conservative meeting at some rural centre, that the Prussians,
having been accustomed for centuries to feel themselves ruled by
the iron hand of their kings, and being quite satisfied with their
admirable officials, would never adapt themselves to the unstable
guidance of a full parliamentary system. That may be: but Prussia
proper—the Prussia that has known this “iron hand” for centuries—is
not such a very large part of Germany. Of course, Parliamentarism,
like every human institution, has its faults, great or small according
to the temperament of the race concerned. Yet these faults, even in
their worst form, seem trifling in comparison with the disasters
of a European war, caused by the whim, the ambition, or the bad
statesmanship of an autocrat. Few men will have done more harm to the
monarchical principle than William II., who poses as its champion and
knight-errant. Fortunately, the King of the Belgians, face to face with
this Cæsar born out of his time, has shown how a really modern king may
typify the soul of his people, a people resolved to fight to the death
in order to preserve its independence.

In countries with parliamentary institutions, the sovereign has to
reckon first and foremost with the feelings of the great mass, and
with a more active, more potent, and more enlightened public opinion.
With all due deference to German scribes, we may say that a world-war
of conquest and pillage would have been so unpopular in France and in
England, that in neither of those lands of freedom would the Government
have set such a war in motion. I feel convinced that the Germans,
delivered from the shackles of their present constitution, and governed
no longer by officials, but by responsible ministers owing their
position to popular suffrage, would return to their better nature, to
an ideal of progress on peaceful lines.

CHAPTER V.

PUBLIC OPINION: ECONOMIC CAUSES OF THE WAR.

I.

I arrived in Berlin some time after the unravelling of the Morocco
tangle. I knew already that the Convention of November 4, 1911, had
aroused grievous disappointment in Germany. But what was the state
of public opinion? Was it still overexcited, overheated through
the incidents of the past summer? Or was it beginning to cool down
again and revert to its normal temperature of ill-humour towards the
western neighbour-country and of that general bitterness which had
marked Franco-German relations for the last eight years? I decided to
investigate this matter, and the study proved rather a long one.

My first thought was to seek information from the commercial world,
since it is regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a barometer very sensitive
to the ups and downs of public feeling. I had recommendations to
several big bankers in Berlin. Moreover, our Consul-General, Herr F.
von Mendelssohn, joint-director of one of the oldest and most respected
banking firms in the German capital, proved exceedingly helpful,
inviting me several times to his house to meet various interesting
figures in the highest circles of commerce and finance. All these
gentlemen seemed to me strongly in favour of peace. The same pacific
note rang through all their conversation. According to them, the
calm of Europe had at no time been seriously threatened during the
Agadir crisis. Whatever may have been the verdict afterwards passed on
Kiderlen-Wächter’s diplomatic work, it was too soon then to form a fair
estimate of its gains and losses. Industrious Germany wished to live
on good terms with France. Peace was essential to business, and German
financiers, in particular, had every interest in keeping up their
profitable connection with their French colleagues.

After a few months in Berlin, I came to the conclusion that these
pacifists represented at that time (1912) the most widespread but least
noisy opinions, the opinions of the majority. By this I mean, not the
majority of the governing classes, but the majority of the nation
as a whole. The bulk of the population, in fact, the rank and file
of industrial workers attached to Socialist or Christian-Democratic
unions, the little democratic artisans of the towns, the peasants of
the country districts, clung, by instinct as much as by reason, to the
peace that allowed them to live and prosper. They dreaded war, because
it meant loss of work and wages, and was at best an unknown quantity.
No one in Germany feared the other miseries that war brings in its
train—invasion, devastation, or famine; for no one, either among the
proletariate or among the middle classes, had any doubts of victory.
For all that, in this nation of workers, the general desire was not
to make conquests, but to go on earning money and getting rich. The
statements that I heard from some of the humblest contributors to the
nation’s wealth all agreed on this point.

Going up the social ladder, we should also reckon among the advocates
of peace, I think, most of the manufacturers, great and small, and of
the traders, wholesale as well as retail. The industrial employers
who depend on borrowed capital—their name is legion in Germany—needed
credit, and therefore an unbroken calm. Any external crisis, leading to
a stoppage of business, would have made it difficult for them to meet
their bills, and if it lasted for some time, would have faced them with
the prospect of ruin. Heads of great undertakings who acted as their
own bankers foresaw in war a temporary shrinkage in their profits, and
the likelihood of being cut off from countries beyond the seas. We
should not be doing justice to their insight if we believed that they
shared all the illusions of the Imperial Government as to England’s
indifference and her complete aloofness from European conflicts.
Very different ideas must have flitted across the minds of the great
shipowners of Hamburg and Bremen and the directors of the Deutsche
Bank and Disconto-Gesellschaft, those enterprising men who were always
busily working out fresh projects. The care that they took to reassure
their London friends as to the pacific aims of German statesmanship
proves to us the value they attached, if not to the peace of Europe, at
any rate to the peace of the seas.

At the top of the scale, in Berlin society—a very exclusive set, in
spite of the constant efforts of the newly rich to gain admittance—I
met some sincere pacifists. The old German nobility, which figures in
that Golden Book the Almanac de Gotha, is naturally more cosmopolitan
than the country squires, and it gladly keeps up family connections
with the foreign aristocracy. This class did not appear to have any
hatred for the French or for the English. Such hatred was rather to be
found among the middle classes: it was the envy that mushroom opulence
feels for old-established wealth. The personal feelings of a few Serene
Highnesses, however, counted for very little, and the same may be said
of those great lords, courtiers, but not counsellors, to His Imperial
Majesty, who applauded everything that he did, and offered him nothing
but flattery and obeisance.

II.

The bellicose minority, more active and strenuous, included, in the
first place, the war party of which I have spoken in Chapter III.
But by the side of the violently aggressive Germans there were more
lukewarm spirits; by the side of the Pan-Germans and the disciples of
Von der Goltz and Bernhardi there were men of a philosophic cast, who
saw war coming as an inevitable necessity, a crisis decreed by fate,
essential to the well-being and development of the Empire. The shades
of difference among them were as varied as the colours in a prism.

Among the nobles of South Germany, for instance, the military
traditions of their families were tinged with regret for the old days
of independence and with a certain ill-feeling towards Prussia. It was
the same with the aristocracy of Hanover, an impoverished caste (apart
from a few great landowners), devoted to the profession of arms, and
still loyal to the memory of their generous treatment by the English
dynasty, which they liked to contrast with the stinginess of the
Hohenzollerns. In the Rhine provinces, the former contact with France
had left unmistakable traces upon the upper classes, among whom French
culture did not arouse the same scorn and detestation as in the north
and east of the Empire. For all these patricians a fresh war—in other
words fresh victories—meant an even more complete triumph for Prussian
supremacy, and an end of all autonomy for the smaller States. If the
heart of the soldier in them beat faster at the thought of Germany’s
latter-day glory, the eyes of the provincial grew sombre as they saw
the shadows threaten to engulf all that was left to them of a still
cherished past.

The great Liberal middle class has always prided itself on a patriotism
no less watchful than that of the landed gentry. Its representatives in
the Reichstag, as I have pointed out, voted for all the army bills as
unfailingly as the Conservatives. This was not the quarter from which
any aid could be expected, especially after Agadir, in an attempt to
draw closer to France. Yet it seems to me that not a few middle-class
millionaires must have been led, by their personal share in financial
and industrial concerns, to wish for a continued spell of peace. In
such matters it is impossible to dogmatize; but can we believe that
these cool heads, these astute calculators, inclined to the view that,
under the whip-lash of victory, German wealth would take a tremendous
leap forward, and that the products of the national labour would swamp
the markets of the globe? For my part, I think that they were too
shrewd to have any hope of stifling English and American competition
otherwise than by unremitting efforts in their own sphere.

On the other hand, those who supplied the Empire with its guns and its
rifles, with the armour-plates of its navy and the equipment of its
soldiers, must have rubbed their hands with glee when they saw the
signs that heralded a fresh war, since its first effect would be to
increase tenfold the output of their workshops. Other manufacturers
persisted in looking on all Frenchmen as revolutionaries, dangerous
models for the German labourer to copy. Their hatred of the republican
system was enhanced by the fear of strikes, for which these undesirable
neighbours set the example. In spite of the formidable barriers raised
by the most monarchical State in the world, they still dreaded the wind
of emancipation and liberty that might in the long run cross the Vosges
and bring unrest to the disciplined spirit of the German toilers.

It would be a gross overstatement to say that the followers of the
liberal vocations were for the most part in favour of a new European
conflict. Many of them were by nature men of peace; many, again,
were far too much immersed in professional duties and research work
to trouble their heads about politics. Yet all the highly-educated
element in Germany, all those whose minds had been trained by intensive
methods, issued from the same mould, that of the public schools and
universities, where the fire of a white-hot patriotism was kept alive.
Almost all of the younger generation, from one end of the Empire to
another, had been faced, while still at their lessons, with the dilemma
which Bernhardi summed up for his readers in the words: “_Weltmacht
oder Niedergang!_” (“World Power or Downfall!”) Among university
students and even the pupils of the _Gymnasien_ (highest-grade
schools), knotty problems were hotly discussed. Had the era of great
wars vanished for ever? Had not Germany, girt, like the Siegfried of
her legends, with an invincible sword, come too late into the lists, at
a time when the struggle to carve the world had reached its end? Was
Germany therefore to rest content, in cowardly fashion, with her humble
lot, or should she throw down the gauntlet to those who held these rich
spoils in fee? As time went on, these questions grew more and more
pressing, while no change took place in the relative position of the
great Powers.

German literature, drawing inspiration from Tolstoi, the Scandinavian
masters, and the French writers, was extremely fond of painting social
distress. Although much given to criticism, often severe, of the
privileged classes, it never, so far as I know, inveighed against war
and the abuse of might. Vivid sketches of officers, scathing satires
on their vices and on the brutalities of Prussian discipline—of these
there was enough and to spare. They were often very well written;
some have been translated into French and produced with success on
the Parisian stage. No eminent playwright or novelist of the day in
Germany, however, spoke out boldly on behalf of peace and disarmament.
Their pens pricked individual types, and often drew blood; but
they always respected, nay, even glorified the army, as a sacred
institution, the solid pillar of the Germanic union, the instrument of
its greatness to come.

The university professors, taken as a whole, were one of the most
fiery elements of the nation. Not only did they inflame with their
teachings the youthful minds entrusted to their care, and stamp them
with an indelible imprint of nationalism, but they did not shrink from
criticising the policy, too timid for their liking, pursued by the
Imperial Government. I have in my possession letters from provincial
savants, in which the Convention of November 4, 1911, is branded as
a disgrace, and the name of Kiderlen-Wächter held up to the scorn of
every German. One of them wrote: “Such a scandal will not occur again.
Germany, conscious of herself and realizing her strength, will no
longer tolerate a peaceful settlement of such affairs.”

When all is said and done, the resolute champions of war—the only
war in question being one with France, the opponent whose name was
constantly cropping up in the patriotic books and journals—formed,
so far as I could see, a rather small minority of the nation. This
impression, which I gathered from my stay in Berlin and my travels
about the provinces, both rich and poor, remains firmly fixed in
my mind. When I call up the picture of this tranquil people, going
steadily about its business every week-day, or comfortably seated every
Sunday at the café tables and drinking the national glass of beer, I
can remember nothing but those placid faces, on which violent passions,
antipathy to the foreigner, and even the feverish stress of the battle
for existence, had left none of those marks which I have sometimes
observed elsewhere as a looker-on at the human crowd.

III.

How is it that this same nation responded as one man to the call of its
Emperor and hurled itself with enthusiasm at its enemies? Because it
thought it had been challenged, and that the frontiers, the welfare,
the very existence of the Empire were in danger. Middle-class citizens,
Socialist workmen or peasants, all were convinced that they were
defending their country against the attack of Tsarism combined with
warlike France and perfidious Albion; that the war had been desired,
prepared, planned by the Powers of the Triple Entente, impelled by an
ignoble envy or a traditional hatred.

The Imperial Government’s master-stroke lay in showing the
Austro-Serbian crisis in this light to German credulity, and in
appearing itself as the blameless guardian of peace. We possess an
official document which supplies the proof of this clever presentment
of the facts—the White Book, laid by the Chancellor upon the table of
the Reichstag on the 3rd of August.

This date should be carefully noted. Two days after the expiry of the
ultimatum to Russia, the White Book was already finished. With its
carefully selected reports and telegrams, and its long prefatory
memorandum in which the facts were skilfully doctored, it was printed,
handed out to members of the Reichstag, and issued to the public, all
within twenty-four hours. To accomplish this long and detailed work in
so short a space of time seems an incredible feat. There is no reason,
however, to marvel at the miracle, if, as we may well believe, the
official explanation was drawn up in advance, while the discussions
were still going on and the Imperial Government, anticipating that
Russia would not comply with the summons to demobilize, had already
decided to declare war on that Power. From this it will be seen that,
however much the Chancellor and Herr von Jagow may have been personally
inclined towards a peaceful settlement of the dispute, they were none
the less ready to obey orders from above, and to prepare everything
at their offices, with a view to putting the public off the scent in
Germany and in neutral countries.

On every page the White Book is at pains to throw the blame for the
catastrophe on Russia. Such is the monotonous burden of this diplomatic
chant. No clear light is thrown on the various conciliatory efforts
and devices of the Entente Cabinets. The pacific rôle played by
Germany is carefully put in the foreground, and the right of calling
a whole people to account for an isolated crime is claimed on behalf
of Austria-Hungary as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The military measures of precaution taken by Russia and France are
antedated, and denounced as preparations for a war with Germany.
Nevertheless, the White Book contains a telegram of 29th July which
does not fit in with its line of argument. In this telegram it looks
very much as if William II. were trifling with his brother, the Tsar;
he advises Russia, with regard to the Austro-Serbian War, to go on
playing the part of a spectator, and says that if she does so a direct
understanding between Vienna and St. Petersburg will afterwards be not
only feasible but desirable. An understanding about what, one may ask,
when Serbia has become a mere prey, delivered up to the fury of the
Austro-Hungarian soldiery? The German public, never liable to murmur
at anything that the authorities may say, accepted as gospel truth the
most reckless assertions of the Wilhelmstrasse.

It would be going too far to say that the people were surprised at the
outbreak of hostilities. The vociferous appeal to their patriotism
in the previous year, when memories of the war of liberation were
evoked, had not been made in vain. Their crushing military burdens
had not been imposed with the idea of persuading them that peace
would be maintained. Finally, it was not for nothing that William
II., since his accession, had adopted in his speeches a very warlike
manner of declaring that the harmony of Europe must be preserved. When
he spoke of peace, his hand seemed ready to draw the sword, and he
solemnly told his subjects that, with a view to answering any attack
or insult—which no one in Europe was contemplating—they should keep
their bayonets sharp and their guns in good trim. Rhetorical metaphors,
some may argue. At any rate, it is a bad way of keeping up friendly
relations with neighbour-countries to picture the latter, time after
time, as meditating an assault on Germanism, and as held back only by a
wholesome fear of its armed strength.

We are assured by many admirable writers that the war was inevitable,
because the old murderous passions were not yet quenched in the German
breast. A religion of valour, a love of war, a zest in the combat—these
manly virtues, it is said, are still inherent in a race of warriors,
scions of Arminius, descendants of the Goths, the Vandals, and the
Burgundians. Some, in order to find an explanation of the present
fighting, have even gone back to Odin. However this may be, Germany,
during the past two or three hundred years, has waged fewer wars than
France, as Prince Bülow remarks in his book; the Frenchman has shown
himself more combative than the German. Too little account is taken of
the long period of weakness and depression that preceded and followed
the religious struggles and the wars of Frederick the Great. Madame de
Staël, no doubt, read the German soul of her day accurately enough,