German apostasy began with German military success. What the Kaiser
offered to Germany in exchange for her soul was the Pan-German empire.
The originator of the world empire scheme was the Kaiser; Nietzsche
was its philosopher; Treitsche its historian; Bernhardi its advocate;
and von Hindenburg its executive. The first conference regarding the
Pan-German empire seems to have been called in 1895, and was held
in the Potsdam Palace. During the next two or three years, a world
organization was brought together by the "Potsdam gang," with the
Kaiser at the center, an inner circle of officers, and politicians,
a larger circle of bankers, manufacturers, and ship owners. Finally
there was a far-flung web of diplomats, spies, commercial travellers,
Pan-German League agents, organizing in New York, Chicago and San
Francisco, in Buenos Ayres and Rio de Janeiro, in Buda Pesth and
Vienna, in Constantinople and Cairo, German Veteran Leagues, German
Commercial Associations, all looking towards the day when the Kaiser
would be the world emperor, and all countries would become provinces
paying tribute to the world capital, Berlin. "What about international
law?" asked an American diplomat of Bernhardi. "There will be no
international law," was the answer. "Berlin will decide what laws are
best for the rest of the world."
The Pan-German empire pamphlets, maps, books, magazine articles,
published during the next ten years, were legion, but Professor
Tannemann, a personal friend of the Kaiser, in 1911 restated the
Kaiser's scheme. The essence of Pan-German plan was condensed into a
few sentences: "From Hamburg and the North Sea to the Persian Gulf;
the immediate goal, by 1915, the conquest of 250,000,000 of people;
the ultimate goal, the Germanization of all the nations of the world."
One of the Kaiser's speeches contains the explanation of his dream
of becoming a world conqueror: "From my childhood I have been under
the influence of five men,--Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Theodoric II,
Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream
of a world empire; they failed. I am dreaming a dream of a German
world empire--and my mailed fist shall succeed." The Kaiser printed
a map headed, "The Roman Empire; Cæsar Augustus, world emperor."
That map shows the once great states, Athens, Ephesus, Jerusalem,
Alexandria, Carthage, reduced to county seat towns, paying tribute to
the world capital, while their captive kings had walked as slaves in
the triumphal processions along the Appian Way, towards the palace
of the world ruler, Cæsar Augustus. One of the Pan-German empire
pamphlets, and many of the German newspapers contain a revised map
of Europe, showing "Germania" stamped across the continent, with St.
Petersburg, Paris and London become county seat towns, paying tribute
to the world capital, Berlin. Many German newspapers, during this
war, have published maps showing Canada as a German province, with
the name "Germania" stamped across South America, Mexico and Central
America. These many pamphlets and Pan-German empire books explain
Admiral Dewey's report to President McKinley. That report seems to have
been written in the cabin of the flag-ship _Olympia_, in Manila Bay.
Dewey states that the German admiral told him plainly to make a note
of this prophecy that within fifteen years (1899, report of Admiral
Dewey), Germany would crush France and Belgium, seize Holland and
Denmark, utterly destroy England, and take Canada as a German province.
Admiral Dewey added that the German admiral told him that while the
Kaiser intended to seize New York and Washington and hold them for an
indemnity, he did not intend to permanently hold in subjection the
United States, but he did intend to retain Mexico and South America,
and then "dispose of the Monroe Doctrine as he thinks best." This may
explain the Kaiser's word to Mr. Gerard: "After this war I will stand
no nonsense from the United States." So astounding were these claims
that the statesmen and rulers of the world laughed at these threats,
deeming it incredible that Germany was plotting a world war. Two or
three men of remarkable prescience and vision, General Roberts in
London, Chéradame in Paris, and Ex-President Roosevelt, understood and
therefore never ceased warning the nation to prepare and make ready for
a conflict that seemed to them inevitable.
When the Kaiser first announced his Pan-German empire scheme he bribed
his people by appeals to avarice, ambition, and jealousy of England
and Russia. The arguments used by the Potsdam gang were very simple:
Agriculture pays six per cent., trade eight per cent., finance ten per
cent., shipping twelve per cent., but war is an industry that pays
fifty per cent. dividend upon the investment. Germany's war upon little
Denmark, a people without army or navy, paid an enormous dividend upon
the investment, in that it gave Germany one of her richest provinces,
made possible the Kiel Canal, and left Denmark permanently crippled
and exposed. "Denmark and Holland, also, are apples," says a German
author, "that are slowly ripening, and we will pick the fruit at the
proper time." Germany's war of 1864 upon Austria was the attack of a
brigand upon a traveller rich with gold, and the cities and provinces
that Germany wrested away from the ruler of Vienna paid a hundred per
cent. upon the investment. In his Memoirs Bismarck tells the world
plainly that he deliberately fomented a war with France, that he might
seize the iron ore provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, in order to obtain
the hematite iron that would make it possible for Germany to pass from
the agricultural people into an industrial and manufacturing state as
the competitor of England for the world's trade. For more than forty
years the chief argument presented in the Reichstag for increased
appropriations for the army and the navy was the money dividends paid
by war.
In 1911 the Kaiser spread out before his people bribes most alluring.
Just as the Devil led Jesus up into a mountain and showed Him the whole
earth, so the Kaiser and the Potsdam gang led the Germans into a mount
of temptation and showed them how easy it was to make the Kaiser a
world emperor. The argument was very simple; after twenty-five years
of preparation, Germany has nine million soldiers, has cannons, liquid
fire, poisoned gases, battle-ships, aeroplanes, with every wagon and
automobile ready to have the pleasure body removed, and a military
body substituted. "We are ready to the last buckle on the horses'
harness." To the east was Russia, broken by war with Japan; Russia with
her gold mines, her wheat granaries, her vast coal and iron deposits
and forests all undeveloped. To the southeast was Rumania, with her oil
wells, with Constantinople and the silk fields, and the Tigris, the
gateway to the Indian Ocean, and the treasures of the Bagdad railway
country. To the west was unarmed Belgium, rich with twenty billions
of treasure; France, half armed, with her newly discovered iron mines
and coal measures; England, one vast jewel box, a kind of Aladdin's
cave,--"Wait until Germany lifts her mailed fists upon the English
treasure box, there will be enough for everybody in Berlin," is the
gist of Zimmermann's speech of November, 1914. "The people of the
United States call us Huns," writes the editor of the _Localanzeiger_,
"but New York had better remember that the young Huns from the German
forests took only two weeks to cross the Alps and loot the city of
Rome." Other German members of the Reichstag have likened the United
States unto a Croesus, the richest man in the world, living in a golden
house, surrounded with bags, bursting with gems and wedges of gold and
silver, but a Croesus that had no lock on his door and no weapon in his
hand.