THE GERMAN VIEW OF ENGLAND
Personally I am under considerable obligations to August Lomberg,
Rektor in Elberfeld. His _Präparationen zu deutschen Gedichten_ for
the purposes of instruction in schools has been a lantern to my way
and a light unto my path on the somewhat rugged slopes of the German
Parnassus. August Lomberg’s is the hand which has stayed my often
stumbling feet when I first aspired to Goethe and Schiller, deities
sitting enthroned aloft and remote. Guides to poetry are irritating
books in one’s own language. What a poet has to say, and what he means,
are strictly private matters between the reader and himself. The views
of a third person may even be regarded as an intrusion, not to say an
impertinence. But when you are struggling with the verbal intricacies
of a new tongue, guides to knowledge assume a very different light.
So, I repeat, I am under many obligations to August Lomberg, Rektor in
Elberfeld. As so often happens with German authors, he has taught me
more incidentally than the surface content of his works. The Rektor has
clearly a complete and painstaking acquaintance with the whole range of
German literature. But his observations concerning the poets were, to
me at least, of less value than the revelation of his own type of mind
and general outlook on life.
August Lomberg is a garrulous writer. His explanations are largely
historical as well as literary. Every line breathes a narrow and
aggressive patriotism of the type which has made the name of Germany
detested. The great poets of the Liberation period have sung both of
freedom and oppression on a note which rings clear and true to any
lover of liberty. The Elberfeld Rektor, commenting on this verse long
before 1914, can only do so in terms of abuse of France. To him a poet
is really important, not for some immortal gift to the sum-total of
the world’s truth and beauty, but for the degree to which he may have
added new stops to the full-sounding organ swelling the note of German
excellence. The ironical anti-patriotic strain in Heine fills the
Rektor with undisguised horror. So great is his reprobation of Heine
as a world citizen, that he can with difficulty begin to do justice to
him as a poet. And though like Wordsworth’s Nun he is breathless with
adoration before the genius of Goethe, I more than suspect that at
heart Goethe’s indifference to patriotic questions is a sore trial to
him.
These volumes of Lomberg’s are well-known school-books in Germany.
Hence their value as indicating a certain trend of thought. If the
English are ever to form a reasoned judgment of the Germans, it is
essential to understand something of that peculiar herbage on which the
minds of teachers and pupils alike have been pastured. But Herr Lomberg
has not been content to rest on his laurels as regards a critical study
of the German classics. War poetry has also claimed his attention and
his explanations. One afternoon in a bookshop I stumbled by chance on a
volume of German war poetry. I bought it and went on my way rejoicing.
I knew something by then of the general outlook of my friend the
Rektor’s mind, and felt sure that his observations on the World-War
would be worth reading. So indeed they proved.
The poems themselves were of very poor quality. Nothing remotely
comparable to the verse of Rupert Brooke or Julian Grenfell or of
half a dozen other English writers adorned these drab pages. Unless
Germany has produced something better than the mediocre collection
brought together by the Rektor, her inferiority in one respect at least
to England is outstanding. Leaving literary values aside, the normal
note struck was one of a boastful and irritating patriotism. The early
poems, written in the days when Germany was still flushed by hopes of a
speedy and overwhelming victory, are noisy and aggressive. One writer
exults over the air raids. “We have flying ships, they have none,”
he shouts stridently. No less great is the enthusiasm for the U-boat
exploits. The limits of degradation were reached by a poem about a
pro-German fish in the North Sea. The fish kept company with a U-boat
and followed the various sinkings with great interest. One day the
U-boat sank first a cargo of sugar, next of lemons, thirdly of rum.
The fish brewed a toddy of these various ingredients, and drank tipsy
toasts to the U-boat. I suppose the poem was intended to be funny. Of
humour it had none. The mentality it revealed was amazing.
As the first hopes of easy victory evaporated, a note of stress and
anguish replaces that of the original bluster. A poem on Ypres was
noticeable in this respect. But the particular interest of the book lay
to me in the Rektor’s explanations about the English. A fount of venom
overflows whenever the name of Britain is mentioned. He sets forth in
his own inimitable way how England, owing to her acute jealousy of
Germany, had deliberately provoked the war. England’s sordid anxieties
about her menaced commercial supremacy lay at the root of this action.
Having plotted war and declared it at her own time, she then proceeded
to wage it on the most barbarous lines. English soldiers murdered
the wounded, concealed machine guns in their Red Cross wagons, and
immolated whole platoons of innocent German soldiers by an abominable
misuse of the white flag. The wickedness, the perfidy, the treachery
of England, the outrages committed by her against every law of God and
man--the Rektor lashes himself into a white heat on these themes. No
less fulsome and subservient is the writer in his praise of the Kaiser
and the Crown Prince. Germany’s passion for peace, a peace destroyed
only by the intrigues of a jealous and wicked world, is enlarged on
over and over again.
This book, like its predecessors, is intended for use in schools. We
can form some judgment, therefore, of the facts and fancies which
writers of the Lomberg type thrust as historical truth on the rising
generation. The influence of such statements can hardly be exaggerated,
and much similar poison has flowed through the whole German school
system. German school literature is a real mine of information to any
one who wants to study the root causes of latter-day German mentality.
Little wonder that animosities and misunderstandings rend nations in
twain when truth is subordinated to the worst purposes of political
and interested propaganda. Children are malleable stuff, and certain
long-sighted Teutons realised perfectly that what is driven into a
child in the first impressionable years abides through life.
The accident of improving my limited knowledge of the German
language brought me in contact with primers and readers covering all
standards and classes. In making my way from the Child’s First Reader
to the volumes in use in High Schools, I learnt a good deal more
than the actual study of words and grammar. From the Infants’ to the
Upper Standards one note was struck again and again with monotonous
regularity--praise of the Army, glorification of the Hohenzollerns. I
came into rapid conflict with my Child’s First Reader when on the first
page I was confronted with a little poem saying that, though a tiny
child, my great aim in life should be to shoot straight and grow up
into a fine soldier. Then came a fulsome hymn to the Kaiser swearing
lifelong fidelity to that noble man. Then followed a series of short
stories, no less fulsome, about the goodness and greatness of the Royal
Family. The book of course included other material, but glorification
of the Hohenzollerns permeated its pages, and the same thing repeated
itself exactly in all the following standards.
Thoroughly bored with the Child’s Reader, I tried some of the more
advanced books only to find an elaborated edition of the same theme.
One priceless story in a middle-standard book told a marvellous tale
about the adventures of a humble family in Berlin, the Empress, the
Emperor’s daughter, and a cow. The curtain rises on a child weeping
bitterly in a Berlin park. The beautiful and tender-hearted Princess
drives by in a glittering phaëton lined with plush and drawn by two
spanking ponies. Flinging the reins to a groom, she hastens to the
assistance of poverty in distress. A tale of woe is in due course
unfolded. A family, humble but virtuous, have lost a cow on which the
entire prosperity of the household pivoted. The Princess comforts the
weeping child, gives her money, and says that though the matter lies
beyond her powers, her mother will certainly call and deal with the cow
situation. The Princess is as good as her word. To the stupefaction of
the district, a royal carriage containing the Empress visits the humble
home the next day. The Empress administers more consolation; virtue
is to be upheld in the hour of trial. A cow is following immediately
from the royal farm; indeed it is on its way, lowing, so to speak,
at the moment in the streets of Berlin. The anxieties of the family
consequently will be at an end. The paralysed couple, falling flat on
their faces, stammer suitable words of gratitude and praise. Thanks to
the cow and the prestige attaching to it, the family fortunes prosper
exceedingly. The whole district tumbles over itself in the effort to
drink a glass of Imperial milk. But unhappily one day the woman is
knocked down and mortally hurt in a street accident. Lying in the
hospital at the point of death, the matron sees there is something on
her mind. On inquiry the patient replies that if only once again she
could see her benefactress, the Empress, and hold her hand, she would
die content. The matron, being apparently a person of ample leisure,
sets off at once to the palace to find the Empress. She is interviewed
by a lady-in-waiting, who declares it is impossible for her to see the
august one. Unfortunately it happens to be Prince Joachim’s birthday
and the festivities in connection with it are about to begin; the
Empress cannot possibly be disturbed. But the stout-hearted matron
is not to be daunted by any lady-in-waiting or any birthday party.
She gives battle vigorously on behalf of her dying patient. “Who are
you,” she says reprovingly, “to stand between the mother of her country
and the humblest of her children.” The lady-in-waiting, routed and
overwhelmed, retires hastily to tell the Empress. Her discomfiture is
completed by grave reprimands from the august one that any time should
have been wasted at so critical a moment in bringing the facts to her
knowledge. Poor Prince Joachim is caught in the backwash of these
events. His birthday party is wrecked. The Empress hurries off to the
bedside of the dying woman, but not before the table groaning under
the weight of Joachim’s birthday cakes and flowers has been stripped
of half its adornments. With her arms full of roses the Empress enters
the hospital ward. The expiring patient gives a cry of joy and, after
an exchange of suitable sentiments, dies, holding the Kaiserin’s
hand. Even after death the connection of the humble family with the
Hohenzollerns is maintained. Even more permanent than the prestige
conferred by the cow is the prestige of the tombstone, erected in the
cemetery at the Imperial expense, with an inscription bearing the
Empress’s name.
Other stories no less grotesque redound to the credit of the Emperor or
the gallantry of the Crown Prince. Home workers were marked down as the
special preserve of the Crown Princess. Sweated industries in Berlin
might in fact exist to afford a channel for the altruistic impulses of
the royal lady. One by one the various key points of the Hohenzollern
family were dealt with in this fashion. The glorification of the Army
went on as steadily side by side.
All this, of course, is systematic propaganda carried out with
characteristic thoroughness and, be it added, clumsiness. For even
among the Germans it failed in many cases to carry conviction. I
remonstrated with my Fräulein--herself a school teacher: “How can you
bring your children up on this wretched stuff; with a country like
yours so rich in history and legend, surely there is something more
inspiring to teach than this nonsense about cows and sweated workers?”
Fräulein shrugged her shoulders. The ferment of the revolution was
working in her naturally liberal mind, and the unaccustomed liberty
of thought and action which the revolution had brought in its wake
moved her not a little. But she found it difficult to part with the
sheet anchors of the past, and respect for the Imperial family was
screwed very tightly into the average professional German. She admitted
the stories were stupid, but said that the Kaiser was the symbol of
Germany’s greatness and they had always been taught to revere him.
Since the revolution the Social Democrats have made an end of Kaiser
worship in the schools. Pictures and portraits have vanished. All
totems of the faith have disappeared. Apparently the children were
very much upset when they were first forbidden to sing hymns to the
Kaiser. There were tears when the portraits were removed. The German
mind, naturally docile, yearns for some concrete expression of faith
to which it can rally. Of all fields schools offer the greatest scope
to the corrupting influence of propaganda. And through the schools
Imperial Germany twisted and distorted the spirit of the people with
consequences no less dire to themselves than to the rest of the world.
One of the irritating facts about Germany to-day is that she refuses
to say she is sorry. We English are outraged by the fact that no
sense of guilt or of moral responsibility appears to have touched
the spirit of the people. It is not a question of dragging Germany
about in a white sheet and a candle from shrine to shrine, but of some
guarantee that there shall be no repetition of events so lamentable.
The best guarantee for the future is a clear recognition of what
was wrong in the past. Truth permeates very slowly through German
mentality, and few Germans seem to realise that they or their rulers
have brought the world to the very brink of ruin; that millions of
lives have perished as the result of their insensate ambitions. They
are conscious, painfully conscious of the miseries of Germany to-day.
But that civilisation as a whole is staggering under the blow they
dealt it--this aspect of the situation apparently never strikes them.
Facts which jump to our eyes as English people make no more impression
on them than they would on a blind man. Over and over again I have
been baffled by coming up against a blank wall of non-comprehension as
regards circumstances about which there is no dispute.
A personal experience in this sense, at once exasperating and amusing,
overtook me on a journey between Cologne and Paris. I shared my
cabin in the sleeping-car with a German lady from Cassel, a typical
fair-haired, solid-looking Prussian. We exchanged the ordinary
politenesses of travellers thrown together on the road. I was
interested to hear that not only did the lady conduct a large business
enterprise in Cassel, but that she was a prop of the Volkspartei
and took a keen interest in politics. She spoke of Bolshevism and
the Red Peril with the fear and disgust always noticeable in the
German Bourgeoisie. The train by which we were travelling crossed the
devastated area in the night. Before going to bed my companion asked
me whether we should see anything of the ravaged districts. I replied
that I thought it would be too dark for any view of the country. It
happened, however, that I woke up at 3 A.M. and, drawing the blind,
found we were just moving out of Péronne. It was a grey July dawn,
with driving rain, which intensified the unspeakable desolation of the
Somme. Tragic beyond words were the massacred orchards. In some cases
the stumps of trees not wholly cut through were throwing up fresh
leaves in a painful effort after new life. My heart was stirred at the
thought of my Prussian stable companion slumbering peacefully in the
bunk above. She had wanted to see devastations; devastations she should
see.
“Gnädige Frau,” I said in a firm loud voice, “wake up. We are in the
middle of the devastated area, you had better look at it.” Sounds as
though a person had been disturbed from deep sleep issued from the
top berth. Personally I do not like to think what I should have said
or done had a strange woman in the train woke me up at 3 A.M. But
Prussian docility responded to an order. Gnädige Frau got down meekly
from her berth and established herself at the window. A suitable
flow of exclamations and adjectives then took place: “entsetzlich,”
“furchtbar,” “schrecklich,” “böse,” and so on. Comfortably wrapped up
in my bunk I surveyed the scene with virtuous satisfaction, feeling
that I was bringing home the war to one Prussian at least in an
entirely right spirit and manner. Gnädige Frau, however, turned my
flank with the military efficiency of her race. To my intense disgust
I found that the text I had provided by this view of the Somme only
led to an elaborate sermon on the devastations of the Russians in
East Prussia. “You cannot imagine what awful things were done by
those terrible Cossacks,” said the lady, “and how our poor cities
were ruined. The rich German towns have had to become godparents
to whole districts in the devastated area.” She rattled on in this
sense as though the German legions had never set foot in France. I
replied tartly that I hoped the trifling inconveniences experienced
in East Prussia might afford some scale by which she could measure
the sufferings of France, but I could only feel my moral lesson had
miscarried sadly. Still, I got her out of her bunk at 3 A.M. and the
morning was not only wet but chilly.
I have mentioned this story because it is very typical of the average
German obtuseness which has an exasperating effect on their former
enemies. We are bound, however, to try and study patiently the root
causes of this vast moral myopia, because in it lies the key to the
whole German attitude to the war. This myopia cannot be appreciated
without some grasp of the real points of failure in the German
character. During the war they haunted our imaginations as wily and
strenuous children of the devil. In fact they are a very stupid,
very insensitive, very docile people. Their ideas are as limited and
often as absurd as those which people the nursery. Still worse, they
are incapable apparently of understanding what other races think and
feel. They have many excellent qualities, and an admirable capacity
for hard work and patient research. But they do, I believe, possess
three more skins than the ordinary man. Mixed up with the docility and
unlimited power for submission to authority, runs a considerable strain
of brutality which throws back to the unpleasant habits of the remote
Germanic tribes. They can be and are very brutal to each other, as
well as to their enemies. People so constituted were doomed to become
the tools of miscreants in high places.
The average German, for all his powers of hard work and his marvels of
applied science, is at bottom little better than a stupid child. His
docility, his credulity, his lack of any real subtlety of spirit have
left him at the mercy of the monstrous theories preached and practised
by the ruling military class. Like a child he believed all he was
told; like a child he was immensely proud of the vainglorious bombast
of military trappings. Children too, it must be remembered, can be
both cruel and callous. Unless this attitude of mind is realised, the
riddle of German mentality appears as insoluble. But granted a docile
and stupid people, governed by a ruthless military class endowed with
the same practical diligence and ability as the mass of the nation, and
no less insensitive to the finer issues of the spirit, all that has
happened falls into place.
For years past a certain view of England as a sinister and aggressive
power was preached steadily for their own ends by the military party.
On the outbreak of war the German people were told that England was
bent on the destruction of their country. They were fed on tales of
atrocities and horrors. It was represented to them that Germany was
fighting for her life a war of defence. Even in a country like our own,
in which liberty is an old-established principle, the censorship and
other conditions imposed by war resulted in a great darkening of truth
and knowledge. But in a country like Germany, with no representative
government, with no freedom, with a Press wholly subservient to the
ruling junta, it is not astonishing that the people as a whole
blundered on to ever lower depths of ignorance and prejudice.
I have described the sort of food on which the German school child is
reared. No less instructive are the German memoirs which have been
published recently, for they show in turn the view impressed on the
adult population. Bethmann-Hollweg, Admiral von Tirpitz, Ludendorff,
Bernstorff, Hindenburg, have all had their say on the war. With the
exception of Hindenburg, who observes a generous reticence about his
colleagues, the general tone of these memoirs is one of acrimonious
controversy. One is reminded of a group of naughty schoolboys caught
out in some misdeed, each saying, “Please, teacher, it was the other
fellow.” Admiral von Tirpitz’s _Recollections_ is the longest and most
garrulous of these volumes. It is a book of absorbing interest, and
throws a flood of light on the origins of the war. Here we see laid
bare the whole spirit which provoked the conflict. Here, too, we see
that even among the German governing class, this spirit in the extreme
form represented by Admiral Tirpitz himself met in some quarters with
opposition. If one person deserves to be hanged in connection with the
war, then the halter should surely be placed round the neck of the old
Admiral.
Von Tirpitz reveals himself in these pages as an able but most
unsympathetic figure. He lays the lash generously about his colleagues,
and the Emperor in particular is not spared. Creator of the German
Navy, he lays bare the whole ruthless spirit animating the German
war lords. English readers will notice with interest, and perhaps
some surprise, the view of themselves and their country on which
the Admiral enlarges. According to Von Tirpitz, the growth of the
German Navy was not only directed towards making any English attack on
German trade risky, but served the philanthropic purpose of supporting
the non-Anglo-Saxon races in their struggle for freedom against the
intolerable dictatorship of British sea-power. It was, in fact, the
special mission of the German Empire to free the world from the
strangling tyranny of the Anglo-Saxons. The English reader learns with
surprise as he makes his way through these volumes how ruthless was the
spirit in which England marked Germany down for destruction. Finally,
through craft and Machiavellian principles of the worst kind, she
accomplished her end. While German statesmen were weak, vacillating,
and hopelessly pacific, a succession of English Governments, Radical no
less than Conservative, animated one and all by the same fell purpose,
only waited for the appropriate moment to fall on the European Simon
Pure.
Lord Haldane during his visit to Berlin in 1912 figures as a skilled
and determined mock negotiator, adamant as to concessions on the
English side, but bent on sowing discord among German statesmen and
reducing the fleet to impotence. Tirpitz accuses him of an evil
conscience. Did not Lord Haldane shut his eyes to the wholly pacific
intentions of Germany and invent a Berlin war party with which to
inflame public opinion in England?
The Admiral speaks feelingly of the “armed battue” against Germany.
He lays his hand on his heart and declares that in 1914 the German
Empire was “the least preoccupied of all the Great Powers with
possibilities of war.” Yet in spite of “our suicidal love of peace”
the world would persist in laying the guilt of all that had happened
on Germany. “It is really extraordinary how unpopular we are,” cries
the Admiral naïvely in one of his letters. But he sticks to his point.
The historical guilt of England is irrefutably clear. The “old pirate
state” has once again torn Europe to pieces. Thanks to the most brutal
methods she has secured a victory, and liberty and independence have
perished. But the Admiral is not only concerned to abuse England. He
deals faithfully with his own countrymen. If on the one hand English
readers obtain a fresh insight through German eyes into their own
villainies, they obtain information possibly less fantastic as to the
discord which raged inside the German war-machine. If in the interests
of truth we are compelled to say that the Germans overrated our powers
of conducting a war with supreme efficiency, it is clear that we were
no less at fault in attributing super qualities to our enemies.
When these various memoirs are read side by side and compared, they
reveal strife, division, and hesitation of a remarkable kind in the
higher direction of the war. Tirpitz, as head of the war party, writes
with extraordinary bitterness of Bethmann-Hollweg the Chancellor. No
words are bad enough for the man who had struggled sincerely enough,
according to his lights, for the preservation of peace between England
and Germany. His hesitations, vacillations, errors of policy are dealt
with in a ferocious spirit. But the Army and even the Navy do not
escape severe criticism. “The end of July 1914 found us in a state of
chaos,” writes the Admiral. The generals made “frightful mistakes,” the
war was one of “missed opportunities,” the Navy in particular was never
allowed to do its work. The troops were heroic, but “the hereditary
faults of the German people and the destructive elements among them”
led to the downfall of the whole nation.
The popular view of Germany, which most English people held during
the war, was that for forty years the German nation from the
Emperor downwards had pursued the definite and determined end of
the destruction of England. The real situation appears to have been
far more complex. To credit the Emperor and his entourage with an
inflexibility of purpose so great is to rate their capacity far too
high. The mediocre statesmen of our own generation were not Bismarcks.
They were incapable of the far vision, the sinister purpose, the iron
will of the old Chancellor. Unlike him they did not know when to stop.
An influential section among the soldiers was certainly bent on a war
of aggression and pursued this end with unfaltering determination. They
had considerable influence both among the Press and the professors.
Consequently they loomed large in the public eye. But even among the
governing class, as Tirpitz’s angry complaints reveal, there were
certain weak-kneed statesmen who were anxious to pursue a pacific
policy. As for the German nation as a whole, the unparalleled growth
of the Socialist party during recent years proves that the views of
the German militarists were meeting with considerable opposition among
sections of their own countrymen.
The militarists largely controlled the machine and were therefore
in the stronger position. An autocratic form of government and an
Executive divorced from all control by Parliament made the Socialist
vote, large though it was, of no practical value in determining policy.
The General Election of 1912, when the Socialists and Progressives
who had definitely challenged the Chauvinism of the Government secured
considerable gains in the Reichstag, caused dismay in military circles.
It is clear that the dread of democratic control was one of the causes
which impelled the soldiers to bring matters to a head. A shadow had
fallen on their power which a successful war, so they thought, would
dispel. Had Germany possessed a democratic constitution which would
have given due weight and place to the anti-military elements, it
is difficult to believe that the war would ever have occurred. It
was a race between the forces making respectively for peace and for
aggression, and time was on the side of the former.
The military party consequently forced the pace and precipitated
the conflict. That on the outbreak of war the whole German nation,
Socialists included, closed its ranks and presented a united front
to the enemy is natural enough. The view of the defensive war was
widespread, and German myopia could not see straight about the
threatening character of the armaments which had been piled up. But
between the guilt of the rulers, which is black indeed, and the guilt
of the nation as a whole, wide discriminations should in justice be
made. If it were not so the future outlook, dark as it is at the
moment, would be quite hopeless.
The part played in the middle of this welter by the arrogant and
inferior figure on the throne is not easy to determine. The Emperor
was not necessarily insincere when he expressed his abstract desire
for peace. But his vanity was flattered by the vision of himself as
Supreme War Lord ashore and afloat of a submissive Europe. He did not
necessarily want to fight. He wanted very much to be in a position
which enabled him to bully. Probably the governing classes in Germany
held much the same view. The Emperor lent himself to the creation
of huge armies and a threatening fleet, and then expressed surprise
that his perpetual sabre-rattling and histrionic performances created
anger and alarm throughout Europe. Other nations refused to think
that Dreadnoughts were built as pets, or that armaments were piled
up for the purposes of ceremonial salutes. Having surrounded himself
with material of this character, he was in all probability genuinely
appalled when the inevitable explosion occurred. He had no real wish to
trade with the devil, but he was always in and out of the shop, turning
over the wares and listening to the flatteries of the salesman. A man
of his type was bound, sooner or later, to become the tool of villains
with a purpose clearer than his own.
Lord Haldane in his book _Before the War_ has given an account, both
sane and dispassionate, of the causes and forces which led up to
the struggle. He analyses with admirable clarity the weakness and
the strength of the German machine. In a striking passage he draws
attention to a fact too little realised by the vast majority of English
people, namely, that highly organised though the German nation might
be on its lower levels, on the top storey not only confusion but chaos
existed. Instead of a Cabinet representing the majority of an elected
Parliament to whom it was bound to submit its policy, the governing
body in Germany was an irresponsible group of men animated by wholly
divergent ideas.
In the centre of this group was a vain, feather-headed monarch, not
devoid of good impulses, and at times of generous feeling, but cursed
with an instability of character which made him lend an ear first to
the promptings of one counsellor and then of another. The Emperor
swayed from side to side according to the fancy of the moment; at one
time drawing close to the war party, at another inclining to the more
sober counsels of the peace party. Such a temperament does not improve
with the flight of years. Time only deepened in the Emperor’s mind the
sense of his own importance in the eyes of God and man. His unstable
brain was more and more bemused with ideas of power and infallibility.
Already in 1891 he had caused deep resentment throughout working-class
Germany by a speech to young recruits at Potsdam. He referred in
acrimonious terms to the Socialist agitations, and went on to say: “I
may have to order you to shoot down your relations, your brothers,
even your parents--which God forbid!--but even then you must obey my
commands without murmuring.” Criticism was treasonable; criticism was
therefore not audible, but the words were never forgotten nor forgiven.
Vanity and megalomania steer an erratic course, and the consequent
vagaries of German high diplomacy kept Europe in a chronic state of
nerves which deepened the general sense of anxiety and suspicion.
Since the revolution the diplomatic documents in the Berlin archives
relating to the plot against Serbia, together with the Emperor’s
marginal notes, have been published by order of the new German
Government. The war has produced no volume more painful than that of
Karl Kautsky in which these documents are set forth. The revelation
is of the blackest, so far as the Emperor is concerned. His personal
responsibility for creating the situation which led to the war is
established beyond question. His marginal notes, always foolish and
often vulgar, are almost incredible in their criminal levity. The
Emperor comments, for instance, on the most solemn and impressive of
Sir Edward Grey’s warnings to the German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky,
in the words “the low cur!” We watch this vain unstable figure flitting
with a lighted torch round the powder magazine of Europe. With the
lives of millions in his hand, the mediocre intelligence of the Emperor
seemed unable to forecast the elementary consequences of his own acts.
At the start his sole object in view was the dismemberment of Serbia
and the creation of a new Balkan situation. The German Ambassador in
Vienna, who counselled moderation in the demands made on the Serbian
Government, was reprimanded severely. William was concerned to stir
up his more sluggish ally, Austria, to warlike purpose. If Russia
objected--well, never mind about Russia. The implications of a general
European war do not seem to have occurred to him. When as huntsman he
laid on the hounds, the magnitude of the quarry was not apparent. Later
on, when the chasm into which he had dragged the world dawned before
him in its appalling immensity, he shrank back aghast on the brink.
But too late. The terrible vitality of deeds had taken charge of the
situation and hurried on the tragedy to its final consummation.
A curious point arises not only from the study of the Kautsky
documents, but of the various German memoirs which have appeared. The
primary responsibility of the Emperor for staging the scene is proved
beyond doubt. But he was away yachting in the weeks before the war,
and it is not clear with whom the further responsibility rests for
converting the Serbian intrigue into the wider act of world aggression.
At this point history has further secrets to reveal. The Great General
Staff were in all probability determined not to let slip so golden an
opportunity, and engineered matters in the sense of war during the
Emperor’s absence.
Strangely enough, Tirpitz, though ultimately more responsible for the
war than any one else in Germany, did not want to fight in August
1914. His fleet was not ready and had yet to attain its maximum
strength. He denounces Bethmann-Hollweg’s refusal of Sir Edward
Grey’s proposed conference as a capital blunder. War at that moment
should in his opinion have been averted. Germany was not sufficiently
prepared. Further, the old Admiral with great shrewdness deplores the
sabre-rattling against England on various occasions. Do not irritate
your enemy until you are ready to fight him, was his principle.
It is a strange fact that Bethmann-Hollweg, who had always desired
peace, seems to have lost his head completely in the crisis and showed
a fatal obduracy which might have been expected from Tirpitz. The
conference for which Sir Edward Grey pressed would in all probability
have avoided the war. Bethmann-Hollweg wanted peace, yet he banged
the door on the one possibility of maintaining it. One gathers the
impression of a group of men groping blindly on the edge of a precipice
over which finally they hurl themselves. But the hand which pushed them
into decisions, certainly unwelcome to some of the actors, has yet to
be revealed. We know it must in effect have come from a man or group
of men among the military party. The exact personalities are not at
present clear.
The German memoirs written by statesmen of the old régime, which throw
so much light incidentally on the tragedy of Europe, must be read in
detail in order to obtain any real appreciation of their atmosphere.
Their great value lies in the fact that they make the German view of
England more intelligible. We are able to measure the vast distortion
of truth as it has reached the average German, and the profound
misconceptions under which he labours. Exasperated though we may feel
by such aberrations, we begin to understand why the rank and file of
the German nation, trained from their youth in subservience to the
ruling house, still believe they were the attacked, not the attackers,
in the war. I have heard recently of Germans meeting pre-war English
friends with personal feelings quite unchanged. The English found,
however, to their bewilderment that the Germans, out of delicacy to
their feelings, would not discuss the war--it must be, so they hinted,
terrible for them to realise the crimes England had committed both in
her unjustifiable attack on Germany and in her practical conduct of the
war. Naturally as English they would desire to avoid any reference to
so painful a subject.
Hence Germany’s reluctance to say she is sorry. So far she will not
admit there is anything to be sorry for. Never was there a nation more
exasperatingly devoid of the spirit of self-criticism. Everything
German is perfect in the eyes of a German. In the crash which has
overtaken the nation little realisation exists of the moral issues
involved. Among the Socialist party alone would much difficult
and unpalatable truth appear to be permeating. At the meeting of
the Second International held in Geneva during August 1920, the
responsibility of the Kaiser’s Government for the outbreak of the war
was admitted in precise terms by the German Socialists. The wrong
done to France in 1870 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, the wrong
done to Belgium in 1914 and the just claims of reparation, were all
acknowledged and incorporated into a formal resolution. Though the
Bourgeoisie may clasp their hands tightly over eyes and ears, the
Socialists at least have no illusions as to the crimes and follies of
the Imperial Government. But, crushed as they are by the heavy burthens
of the Peace, they are more concerned to dwell on the trials of the
present than the failures of the past.
What we should remember, I think, is that the bulk of the German
nation did its duty in the war just as we did ourselves. Alongside
the organised atrocities and brutalities which disgraced the higher
direction of the military machine, must be set the courage and
self-sacrifice of large numbers of humble people. The average German
fought for his Fatherland with a conviction just as great as that of
the average Frenchman or Englishman. In view of the rigid censorship
which ruled, it is clear that the rank and file knew little or nothing
of many deeds which outraged the conscience of the civilised world.
They served a bad cause with a fortitude from which it would be
ungenerous to withhold praise. The future peace of the world lies in
the hope that their powers of loyalty and service may be turned to
other and better ends.
Meanwhile the existing veils of ignorance and misconception can only be
raised by a frank and free contact of men and women of both nations
who are not afraid to come together and face facts however unpalatable.
These distorted values can only be redressed through a determined
effort to seek truth for itself undeterred by false conceptions of
national honour. A nation which claims to be great should be great
enough to admit the wrong she has done. Germany must learn to see
straight about herself before peace in the real sense can be restored
between her and nations who have suffered grievously through her
action. Peace is here and now the urgent need of the world, but peace
cannot live if perpetually pelted by prejudices and ignorances. The
Supreme Charity has not left us without guidance in this matter, and as
on another famous occasion, let the man or woman in the happy position
of having no fault come forward to cast the first stone.