We are at war with the Menace. It is the same Menace--now grown to a
monster with four heads dominated by one brain--that over a hundred
years ago invited Lafayette to its palace at Potsdam to review the
Prussian army, and then cynically suggested to him an end upon the
scaffold. It is the same Menace, now from its four mouths spitting its
spume of hate upon a chaotic world, that thrust the body of the champion
of democracy into a dungeon, but could not kill his soul. Our present
war against this creature of evil is but one more act in the drama begun
by the spirit of Lafayette.
How shall this act end? Listen to this. I quote largely from André
Chéradame, a man who deals not in platitudes and conceits to tickle the
vanity of a nation, but in cold, hard facts.
In 1914, when the war began, Prussian militarism controlled Germany,
with a population of sixty-eight millions; and Germany had one ally,
Austria-Hungary, of whose thirty million people a majority were directly
antagonistic to Berlin. By the spring of 1915 it had extended and
organized its power among these thirty million Austro-Hungarians, who
until that time had taken orders from their own independent military
chiefs. In the fall of 1915 it joined hands with Bulgaria and Turkey
over the corpse of Serbia. Thus, since the beginning of the war, has
been formed the Quadruple Alliance, dominated by Prussian militarism.
This alliance, or Prussia before the alliance was completed, has since
the beginning of the war seized Belgium, Poland, Serbia, Albania,
Montenegro, part of France, and most of Roumania. The population now
controlled by Prussian militarism is about one hundred and seventy-five
million people. The economic resources controlled by it show a
corresponding increase. Before the war began, Prussia planned for a
Pan-Germanism of this nature, and this plan has now been almost
completed.
If Prussia can now, by granting pretentious but ineffective political
reforms to its own people and by fighting a defensive war until the
contest becomes a deadlock, hold this Pan-Germany in its present
position, then after peace has been declared it can organize this vast
additional strength in man power and resources which it has gained, can
Prussianize this additional one hundred million, can, by the same
intrigue which it has used in the past, undermine during this period of
peace the internal defensive effectiveness of the democracies, and when
the time comes can strike again. And if the democracies are unable to
win now, what chance will they have then?
Drop the scales from our eyes and look clearly at the facts, hard as
they are. The Menace has been fighting a winning fight. By merely
keeping a deadlock for the rest of the war, and forcing a truce under
the guise of peace, the Menace will win; provided, however, that it is
not expelled by the German people themselves. This is the strength--and
the weakness--of the foe against which we have declared war.
The Prussian looks a long way ahead. M. Chéradame, in his work, "Le
Complot Pan-Germaniste Demasqué," recites the following incident: "In
1898, before Manila, the German Rear-Admiral von Goetzen, a friend of
the Kaiser, said to the American Admiral Dewey, 'In about fifteen years
my country will begin a great war.... Some months after we have done our
business in Europe we shall take New York and probably Washington, and
we shall keep them for a time.... We shall extract one or two billions
of dollars from New York and other towns.'" The months referred to by
the German sailor may be turned into years, and the one or two billions
may be multiplied by ten--but the Prussian looks a long way ahead.