THE ERRORS OF EFFICIENT GERMANY
The Yankee finding himself, like Mark Twain's hero, suddenly
transported back to King Arthur's Court is landed in a surprising
and unknown world. But one of King Arthur's knights brought to
life at the court of the present German Emperor aside from steam,
electricity, gun powder, telegraph and telephones would find the
system as despotic as in the days when the enchanter, Merlin,
wove his spells and the sword Excalibur appeared from the depths
of the magic lake. But while the system is as royal and as
despotic as in King Arthur's day, while the king and his military
nobles look down on the merchants and the toilers and the plain
people, no knights ride forth intent upon good deeds, to protect
the poor or avenge the wrongs of the innocent.
It was the cold realists of the General Staff who battered down
the defences of Belgium and the forts of France, destroyed the
monuments of art and levied a tax of sixty million francs a month
upon a little country deprived of its means to produce wealth,
took the food from the inhabitants, shipped the machinery and raw
material into Germany, deported the men and insulted the women
and drove whole populations from their homes to work as slaves
for the conquerors.
But while they can plan military successes in the first rush of
assault on the chessboard of Europe they have failed to
understand other nations--failed even to learn the lessons of
history. They did not know that in every land, in every walk of
life, there are men who will "reject a bribe and who will die for
an idea."
Imagine a German Staff officer reporting in Berlin that over a
hundred thousand Alsatians were armed and organised and that they
threatened, unless certain proposed legislation uniting them, for
example, with Baden, was withdrawn, to resist forcibly any
attempt to incorporate them in that Grand Duchy. Would not this
look to a German officer like real revolution and nothing else?
And when, in addition, there came news of the landing of arms for
the Nationalists in Ireland and of the organisation of the
Nationalist army, the Germans, without knowledge of the
psychology of other peoples, believed that Great Britain had her
hands full and that the moment had come when they could go to war
and leave Great Britain out of all calculations. So studying only
the German mind, believing that all peoples in national character
are like the Germans, the Great General Staff, the greatest
military aggregation the world has ever seen, failed lamentably,
whenever the human element became the factor in the situation.
Its military successes have been marvellous; its judgments of
mankind ridiculous. Its errors of judgment may be arranged as
follows:
_Error Number One._
Italy was in alliance with Germany and Austria, although there
was no greater hate before the war than that between Italians and
Austrians; and the Great General Staff believed that Italy would
remain in this unnatural alliance, would fight in order to give
the Germans and the German-Austrians the domination of Europe.
The victory of the Central Empires would have placed Italy under
that Austrian influence from which in her struggle for freedom
under the leadership of Cavour, Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel she
had liberated herself.
Prince Buelow, who early in his career romantically married a
charming Italian of good family, was sent to Rome to keep Italy
neutral. But he failed.
_Error Number Two._
Germany's belief that because of the Carson movement Great
Britain was immobilised and could take no part in the war.
_Error Number Three._
The theory cherished especially in military circles that because
the Japanese army had been trained by Prussians Japan would join
Germany. Indeed, at the moment when the Japanese were packing
their trunks and preparing to leave their Embassy, a German crowd
with flags and torches was assembled in front cheering Japan,
the latest ally of the Entente.
_Error Number Four._
The belief by the General Staff that the British Colonies would
render no assistance to the mother country.
In the first days after England entered the war many German
statesmen said to me, "Of course, now Canada will be incorporated
in the United States." The Germans believed that the practical
thing, for the moment, for the Canadians was to avoid war, to
disavow all their obligations and ties of blood and permit
Britain to be destroyed. The General Staff thought that because
the world did not have actual proof of the German designs of
world conquest, because that design had not been publicly
proclaimed, that no people or nation would either know or
understand the vast enterprise of conquest on which Prussian
autocracy had embarked.
_Error Number Five._
The unexpected resistance of the Belgians.
The German armies were held only a few days, yet the delay of
those few days changed the fortunes of the world.
_Error Number Six._
The splendid stand of France which was a complete surprise to the
Great General Staff. They believed that France was degenerate,
torn by scandals, and that a sudden assault would land the
German army in Paris. In this connection it was another great
error for the Germans to have sought Paris, important from a
sentimental but not a military point of view. They might better
have occupied first the north coast of France, and from there
could have conducted the German submarine campaign with deadly
effect.
_Error Number Seven._
We have seen what a shell the Russian Empire was, but in July,
1914, the Great General Staff believed that Russia was on the
edge of a revolution. Barricades had been erected in the streets
of Petrograd and the Staff believed that the revolution, which
has since divided Russia, was in the making. Instead of this the
Russian Empire lasted for nearly three years and the Russian
troops and generals inflicted many a hard blow not only on the
Austrians but on the German forces.
_Error Number Eight._
Germany was confident that the United States had been so
propagandised, so covered by bribes, by paid newspapers, that the
export of supplies to the Allies could be prevented. Another
error was the barbarity shown in the sinking of the _Lusitania_
by which it was sought to terrorise Americans into withholding
from England and France the privileges of international law, and
of the definite treaty of The Hague in 1907, in which Germany had
joined and which gave to private individuals the right to supply
munitions of war to any belligerent.
_Error Number Nine._
Thinking that the Emperor, by posing as a Mohammedan in the East,
could with the aid of the Turks stir all Mohammedans to a Holy
War.
The Germans laboured with the Mohammedan soldiers captured by
them. I saw many fine looking old Sheiks from the desert entering
the Foreign Office in Berlin. The Eastern world was filled with
German spies. But the Holy War was a failure, and the hope that
the races of Asia and Africa would rise in favour of Germany was
not borne out by events. The men of the East are wise, the rulers
of India are enlightened and were not silly enough to place
themselves voluntarily under the harsh rule of Prussia.
_Error Number Ten._
The belief that President Wilson had been elected with an
absolute mandate to keep the peace at all costs, the Germans
declared for unrestricted submarine warfare, expecting a craven
neutrality from the United States.