IV

Truly, history affords no parallel to the spiritual poisoning and the

resulting horrible transmutation of a whole people, such as

Prussianism wrought in the incredibly short period of one generation.

Nor would I believe that such a dreadful phenomenon could possibly

take place were it not for the evidence of my own eyes and my own

ears.

My observations led me to think, however, that Prussianism had reached

the crest of its influence some years before the war and that liberal

tendencies were beginning to make headway against it.

There were many men in Germany before the war who were opposed to and

saw the dangers arising from militarist ambition and jingo teaching

and raised their voices against them in warning. There was the

ever-increasing Socialist vote which--although Socialism in the German

Empire does not mean what it means in Russia and amongst the

extremists in our country--did mean opposition to Junker methods and

reactionary tendencies.

I am by no means sure that the very growth and spread of that liberal

spirit did not have some influence in causing the militarist clique to

precipitate the war, as throughout history autocracy has resorted

frequently to the unity-compelling force of war in order to arrest,

divert and thwart liberalism and independence.

To deceive the German people, and steel them to patriotic

determination and sacrifice, the Prussian rulers and their spokesmen

affirmed at the beginning of the war, and have kept reaffirming ever

since with nauseating reiteration and disgusting hypocrisy, that

theirs was a _defensive war_, forced upon them by wicked and envious

neighbours. A defensive war, indeed!

Let me review very rapidly the circumstances which surrounded the

beginning of the war. Austria, after the friction of long standing

between the two countries, which had reached its culminating point in

the murder of the Austrian heir-apparent, sent an ultimatum to Serbia.

The conditions of that ultimatum, although unexampled in their

severity and sweeping demands, were accepted by Serbia almost in their

entirety.

Austria insisted on acceptance to the very letter, unconditional and

absolute, within twenty-four hours or war, whereupon Russia declared

that, if war was thus forced upon little Serbia, she would stand by

her. After much backing and filling, at the last minute, Austria

shrank from the calamity of a world conflagration and declared herself

ready to enter into friendly negotiations with Russia. The frightful

danger which threatened the world seemed to be on the way of being

removed.

But the Prussian militarist party, seeing in their grasp the

opportunity for which they had planned and plotted these thirty years,

were not willing to let it go by, and they did not shrink from the

catastrophe which was involved.

Heretofore Austria had held the centre of the stage and Germany had

professed herself unable to interfere. But when Austria was on the

point of receding, Germany did interfere, and, on the plea of the

menace of the Russian mobilization (a mobilization which there is

reason to suspect was deliberately provoked through machinations from

Berlin), started the war by an ultimatum to Russia, which was

tantamount to declaring war, on the very day on which Austria yielded.

Let it be remembered that whatever menace the Russian mobilization may

have contained was infinitely greater against Austria than against

Germany, and yet Austria, on the last day in July, 1914, declared

herself ready to negotiate.

I know something from actual and personal experience of the plotting

of the Prussian war party, and how for a full generation they had

endeavoured again and again to bring about a situation which would

force war upon the world. I know of my personal knowledge that the

stage was set for it six or seven years ago in connection with the

Agadir episode.

I know that the Pan-Germans meant to have a footing in South America,

and, once there, would have threatened and had prepared to threaten,

this very country of ours.

I know that Austria, in 1913, meant to conquer Serbia, and so informed

her then ally, Italy, believing that she could do so with impunity.

And I know that Austria did not believe that her ultimatum to Serbia

in July, 1914, would bring on a serious war.

I know it, because the week following the outbreak of the war I saw a

letter just arrived from a gentleman in high position in Austria,

connected with the Austrian Foreign Office, in which, writing to New

York under date of about July 20, 1914, he said:

"We are now passing through a nerve-wearing time because of

our difficulty with Serbia, but by the time this letter

reaches you everything will be all right again. The Serbians

have been intriguing against us these many years, and this

time they must be settled with for good and all. We shall go

in and take Belgrade, but inasmuch as we have given assurance

to Russia that we shall not permanently interfere with the

integrity and independence of Serbia, and inasmuch as neither

Russia nor her allies are ready to fight, the whole thing

will be a military promenade and will have no serious

consequences."

A defensive war! Was it a defensive war which Prussianism was thinking

of when it declined England's repeated offer for a reduction by both

countries of the building of warships; when it refused at the last

Hague conference to discuss the limitation of standing armies and

armaments; when Germany--alone amongst the great nations--rejected our

offer of a treaty of arbitration?

Years before the war, Nietzsche, than whom no man had greater

influence in shaping the trend of German thought in the past thirty

years, wrote:

"You shall love peace as a means to prepare for new wars. You

say that a good cause may hallow even war, but I say to you

that it is a good war which hallows every cause."

On July 29, 1914, the well-informed German newspaper, _Vorwaerts_,

declared:

"The camarilla of war-lords is working with absolutely

unscrupulous means to carry out their fearful designs to

precipitate a world war."

In October, 1914, three months after the outbreak of the war,

Maximilian Harden, one of the ablest and most influential of

German publicists, wrote:

"Let us renounce those miserable efforts to excuse the

actions of Germany in declaring war. It is not against

our will that we have thrown ourselves into this gigantic

adventure. The war has not been imposed upon us by others

and by surprise. We have willed the war. It was our duty to

will it. We decline to appear before the tribunal of united

Europe. We reject its jurisdiction. One principle alone

counts and no other--one principle which contains and sums

up all the others--_might_."

I could go on for hours quoting similar views and sentiments from the

utterances of leading German writers and educators before and since

the war. It is worth mentioning, though, that Maximilian Harden has

seen a new light, and for some time has been courageously speaking and

writing in a very different strain. There are a number of influential

men in Germany who, like him, have undergone a change of mind and

heart. Strong and outspoken assertions of liberal sentiment and

independent aspirations have found utterance in that country in the

course of the last six months, such as have not been heard within its

frontiers these many years.

A defensive war! There are certain telegrams (generally unknown in

Germany, even to this day) from Sir Edward Grey, the British Minister

for Foreign Affairs, to the British Ambassador in Germany, sent during

the week preceding the outbreak of the war in Europe, which by

themselves are conclusive testimony to the contrary. In these

messages, the British Foreign Minister went almost on his knees to beg

Germany to consent to a conference in order to avoid war.

He went to the utmost limits in promising benevolent consideration for

Germany's view-point and wishes, then and in the future, and he stated

that if Germany would put forward any reasonable proposition honestly

calculated to maintain peace, England would support it with all of its

influence, and if France and Russia would not fall in line England

would promptly separate itself from these two countries.

These overtures and pleas met with no response from the Masters of

Germany. They declared war.

It is probably true that the Russian Pan-Slavists had planned war

sooner or later, just as the Pan-Germans did. War might _perhaps_ have

come then or at some other time, even if the Prussian rulers had not

precipitated it. But the fact remains that it was the Imperial German

Government which _did_ declare war. For having anticipated that

"perhaps," and resolved it according to their own plans and wishes,

for that, their initial crime, and for those which followed, the

rulers of the German people will have to answer before the judgment

seat of God and history. Upon them rests the blood-guilt for this

dreadful catastrophe which has befallen the world.

V

A few days ago I read a poem addressed to Germany, of which these

lines have remained in my memory:

"Oh, land of now, oh, land of then,

Dear God, the dreams, the dreams of men!

Enslaved, immersed in greed and hate,

Where are the things which made you great?"

The things which made Germany great are not dead, and the world cannot

afford to allow them to die. They belong to the immortal possessions

of the human race.

They have passed, for the time being, alas, out of the keeping of the

mass of the German people, whose glorious inheritance they were.

They are now in the keeping of that minority, not, perhaps, very great

as yet, but growing steadily, of men in Germany itself from whose eyes

the scales have begun to fall. They are in the keeping of all the

nations who appreciate and cherish and are determined to maintain

those great and high things which the civilized world has attained

through the toil, sacrifice and suffering of its best in the course of

many centuries. And, above all, they are in the keeping of the ten or

fifteen millions of Americans of German descent.

As that great American of German birth, Carl Schurz, and many other

brave and high-minded Germans--my own father, I am proud to say, among

them--in 1848 stood in arms against Prussian oppression, for liberal

ideas and right and truth and freedom, so do we stand now. In fighting

for the cause of America as loyal Americans, we are fighting at the

same time for the deliverance of the country of our birth from those

unrighteous powers which hold it enthralled and feed upon its soul.

If ever a nation entered a war after having maintained infinite

forbearance in the face of grave menace and dangers and the most

intolerable affronts, and from motives as pure and high as the great

blue dome of heaven, America is that nation.

We seek no reward whatsoever of a material nature. We seek no "place

in the sun"--to use the German Chancellor's term--except the sun of

liberty, and that we do not seek selfishly, but to share with all the

world.

America is not waging a war of vengeance, notwithstanding all the

injuries and measureless provocations that we have received. We have

lighted a fire to purify, not to burn at the stake.

America is incapable of hating an entire people, but we do hate, we

are fighting and we shall fight with every ounce of our might, the

spirit which has power over the people of Germany, and which, if it

were to prevail--as, under God, it never will--would destroy liberty,

justice and plighted faith. It was not the people of Great Britain

which America fought in the War of the Revolution, but the spirit and

the ruling caste which then held sway over them. America fought then

for an ideal and for liberty and independence, and sacrificed blood

and treasure and suffered and endured and won. And so it will be now.

The spirit of Prussianism and the spirit of Americanism cannot live in

the same world. One or the other must conquer.

In the mad pride of its contempt for democracy, Prussianism has thrown

down the gauntlet to us. We have taken up the challenge and now stand

arrayed by the side of the other freedom-loving nations of the world,

giving our fresh strength and our boundless resources to them, who,

heroically striving, have borne the heat and burden of a dreadfully

long and exhausting struggle, yet stand unwearied, erect and resolute.

The enemy is of formidable strength. But even if he were far stronger

than he is, even if we did not have the men and the means which are

ours, even if our comrades-in-arms had not demonstrated their superb

and indomitable prowess, still must our cause prevail--for there is

fighting with us a force which has ever proved itself stronger than

any other power on earth, and again and again has triumphed over

overwhelming odds. That force, God-inspired, death-defying and

unconquerable, is the soul of man.

And when--Heaven grant it may be soon!--the soul of the German people

will have freed itself from the sinister powers that now keep it in

ban and bondage, when it will have found again the high impulses and

aims of its former self, when it will once more understand and speak

the universal language of humanity and right, then, in God's own time

there will be peace.