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ENGLAND AND GERMANY
BY
DR. E. J. DILLON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
THE HON. W. M. HUGHES, M.P. PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
BRENTANO'S NEW YORK
CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. LONDON
1917
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK
ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY SUFFOLK
TO
H.S.H. ALICE
PRINCESS OF MONACO
THIS PARTIAL PRESENTMENT OF THE
BEGINNINGS OF A WORLD
CATACLYSM
INTRODUCTION
Behind any human institution there stand a few men--perhaps only one
man--who direct its movement, protect its interests, or serve as its
mouthpiece. This applies to nations. If we wish to know for what a
nation stands and what are its ideals and by what means it seeks to
realise them, we shall do well to know something of the men who lead
its people or express their feelings.
It is of vital importance that we should understand the attitude of
every one of the nations--both friends and enemies--involved in this
war. For in this way only can we know what is necessary to be done to
achieve victory.
And the remarkable man who has written this book knows those who lead
the warring nations in this titanic conflict very much better than
ordinary men know their own townsmen.
Dr. Dillon has moved through the chancelleries of Europe. He has seen
and heard what has been denied to all but very few. In the Balkans,
that cauldron of racial passions which, overflowing, gave our enemies
an ostensible cause for this war, he moved as though an invisible and
yet keenly observant figure. He could claim the friendship of
Venizelos and other Balkan statesmen. He has travelled as a monk
throughout the mountain fastnesses, he has slept in the caves of
Albania. He understands the people of all the Balkans, speaks their
tongues as a native, and knows and assesses at their true value their
leaders.
At the time of the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and the
Archduchess, Dr. Dillon was in Austria, and he remained there through
those long negotiations in which Germany tenaciously clung to her
design of war.
How well he knows Germany let his book speak. His knowledge of Russia
is profound. A master of many languages, he occupied a chair at the
Moscow University for many years, and his insight into Russian
politics is deep.
In this book he speaks out of the depth of his knowledge, and tells
the people of Britain what this war means to them, and what needs to
be done before we can hope for victory. He speaks plainly because he
feels strongly.
It may be that we cannot agree with him in everything that he says.
But no one, after reading Dr. Dillon's remarkable book, will any
longer regard the war as but a passing episode. It is a timely
antidote to that fatal delusion.
For this war is a veritable cataclysm, and the future of the world
hangs upon the result. We must change our lives. Insidiously, while we
have called all foreigners brothers and sought foes amongst ourselves,
the great force of barbarism, in a new guise and with enormous power
of penetration and annexation, has worked for our undoing. This force
now stands bared, in the hideous bestiality of Germany's doctrine of
Might, and it can be defeated only by an adaptation of its methods
that will leave nothing as it was before.
Dr. Dillon's unfolding of the story of German preparation is, it will
be admitted, one of fascinating interest. Of its value as a
contribution to political and diplomatic history it is not for me to
speak. But to its purpose in keying all men to the pitch; all to a
sense of the great events in which we are taking part, I bear my
testimony. "Germany is wholly alive, physically, intellectually, and
psychically. And she lives in the present and future" (p. 311). And
the living force of Germany requires us to rise to the very fulness of
our powers; for as the champions of truth and right we must prove
ourselves physically and morally stronger than the champions of
soulless might.
Germany is wholly alive; but she is alive for evil. We whose purpose
is good, whose cause is justice and whose triumph is indispensable if
honest industry and human right are not to disappear from mankind, are
as yet not fully alive to the immensity and necessity of our task. We
must awaken, or be awakened, ere it be too late.
Germany is living in the present and in the future. It is a present of
determined effort, of unlimited sacrifice, of colossal hope. The
future for which she strives and suffers is a future incompatible
with those ideals which our race cherishes and reveres. Either our
philosophy, our religion and code prevail, or they fade into decay,
and Germany's aims remain. The choice is definite.
There can be no parley, no compromise with the evil thing for which
Germany fights. There is not room for both. One must go down.
We must win outright. And we can and shall win--if we bend every
thought, our whole will, our every energy, our utmost intensity of
determination to the great work. Failing this, we shall secure only a
victory equivalent to defeat. We chose the part of free men, and, when
purified by complete self-sacrifice, shall emerge from the ordeal a
great and regenerated people.
W. M. HUGHES.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY THE HON. W. M. HUGHES vii
I THE CHARACTER OF GERMANY 1
II THE GERMAN SYSTEM OF PREPARATION 7
III GERMANY AND ITALIAN FINANCE 27
IV THE ANNEXATION MANIA 37
V GERMANY AND RUSSIA 53
VI THE STATESMANSHIP OF THE ENTENTE 81
VII TEUTON POLITICS 88
VIII A MACHIAVELLIAN TRICK BY WHICH RUSSIA'S
HAND WAS FORCED 99
IX GERMAN PROPAGANDA IN SCANDINAVIA 108
X GERMANY AND THE BALKANS 116
XI THE RIVAL POLICIES 136
XII PROBLEMS OF LEADERSHIP 146
XIII PROBLEMS OF FINANCE 161
XIV READJUSTMENTS 175
XV THE POSITION OF ITALY 192
XVI ROUMANIA AND GREECE 214
XVII GERMANY'S RESOURCEFULNESS 227
XVIII THE PERILS OF PARTY POLITICS 236
XIX PAST AND PRESENT 246
XX PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE 272
XXI THE FINAL ISSUE 296
OURSELVES AND GERMANY
CHAPTER I
THE CHARACTER OF GERMANY
During the memorable space of time that separates us from the outbreak
of the catastrophic struggle, out of which a new Europe will shortly
emerge, events have shed a partial but helpful light on much that at
the outset was blurred or mysterious. They have belied or confirmed
various forecasts, fulfilled some few hopes, blasted many others, and
obliged the allied peoples to carry forward most of their cherished
anticipations to another year's account. Meanwhile the balance as it
stands offers ample food for sobering reflection, but will doubtless
evoke dignified resignation and grim resolve on the part of those who
confidently looked for better things.
The items of which that balance is made up are worth careful scrutiny
for the sake of the hints which they offer for future guidance. The
essence of their teaching is that we Allies are engaged not in a war
of the by-past type in which only our armies and navies are contending
with those of the adversary according to accepted rules, but in a
tremendous struggle wherein our enemies are deploying all their
resources without reserve or scruple for the purpose of destroying or
crippling our peoples. Unless, therefore, we have the will and the
means to mobilize our admittedly vaster facilities and materials and
make these subservient to our aim, we are at a disadvantage which will
profoundly influence the final result. It will be a source of comfort
to optimists to think that, looking back on the vicissitudes of the
first twenty months' campaign, they can discern evidences that there
is somewhere a statesman's hand methodically moulding events to our
advantage, or attempering their most sinister effects. Those who fail
to perceive any such traces must look for solace to future
developments. For there are many who fancy that the economy of our
energies has been carried to needless lengths, that the adjustment of
means to ends lacks thoroughness and precision, and that our leaders
have kept over rigorously within the narrow range of partial aims,
instead of surveying the problem in its totality and enlarging the
permanent efficacy of their precautions against unprecedented dangers.
The twenty months that have just lapsed into history have done much to
loosen the hold of some of the baleful insular prejudices which
heretofore held sway over the minds of nearly all sections of the
British nation. It may well be, therefore, that we are now better able
to grasp the significance of the principal events of the war, and to
seek it not in their immediate effects on the course of the struggle,
but in the roots--still far from lifeless--whence they sprang. For it
is not so much the upshot of the first phases of the campaign as the
deep-lying causes which rendered them a foregone conclusion that force
themselves on our consideration. Those causes are still operative,
and unless they be speedily uprooted will continue to work havoc with
our hopes.
It is now fairly evident that the present war is but a violent phase
in the unfolding of a grandiose ground idea--the subjugation of Europe
by the Teuton--which was being steadily realized ever since the close
of the Franco-German campaign of 1870. It is likewise clear that,
despite her "swelled head," Germany's estimate of her ability to try
issues with all continental Europe was less erroneous than the faith
of her destined victims in their superior powers of resistance. The
original plan, having been limited to the continental states, was
upset by Great Britain's co-operation with France and Russia. But,
despite this additional drag, Germany has achieved the remarkable
results recorded in recent history. And with some show of reason she
looks forward to successes more decisive still. For in her mode of
conceiving the problem and her methods of solving it lie the secret of
her progress. But there, too, is to be found the counter-spell by
which that progress may be effectually checked; and it is only by
mastering that secret and applying it to the future conduct of the
struggle that we can hope to ward off the dangers that encompass us.
Germany is like no other State known to human history. She exercises
the authority of an infallible and intolerant Church while disposing
of the flawless mechanism of an absolute State. She is armed with the
most deadly engines of destruction that advanced science can forge,
and in order to use them ruthlessly she mixes the subtlest poisons to
corrupt the wells of truth and debase the standards of right and
wrong. And this she can do without the least qualms of conscience, in
virtue of her firm belief in the amorality of political conduct. Her
members at home and abroad, whose number is not fewer than a hundred
and twenty millions, form a political community of whose compactness,
social sense and single-mindedness the annals of the human race offer
no other example. All are fired by the same zeal, all obey the same
lead, all work for the same object. She sent and is still sending
forth missionaries of her political faith, preachers of the gospel of
the mailed fist, to every country in which their services may prove
helpful. Diplomatists, journalists, bankers, contrabandists, social
agitators, spies, incendiaries, assassins and courtesans, willing to
offer up their energies and their lives in order to circumvent,
despoil or slay the supposed enemies of their race, address themselves
each one to his own allotted task and discharge it conscientiously.
Those German colonists abroad are the eyes and arms and tongues of the
monster organism of which the brain-centre is Berlin. They endeavoured
to stir up dissension between class and class in Russia, France,
Britain, Belgium, to plant suspicion in the breast of Bulgaria and
Roumania, to create a prussophile atmosphere in Greece, Switzerland
and Sweden, and to bring pressure to bear on the Government of the
United States in the hope of fomenting discord between the American
and British peoples. They have occupied posts of influence in the
Vatican, are devoted to the Moslem Caliph, cultivate friendship with
the Senussi and the ex-Khedive of Egypt, are intriguing with the Negus
of Abyssinia, and spreading lying rumours, false news and vile
calumnies throughout the world. During the years that passed between
the war of 1870 and the outbreak of the present European struggle,
that stupendous organism contrived by those and kindred means to
possess itself of the principal strongholds of international opinion
and influence, the centres of the chief religions, the press, the
exchanges, the world's "key industries," the great marts of commerce
and the banks. It has friends at every Court, in every Cabinet, in
every European Parliament, and its agents are alert and active in
every branch of the administration of foreign lands. And while
suppleness marked their dealings with others, they were inflexible
only in their fidelity to the Teuton cause. Thus in Russia they were
conservative and autocratic in their intercourse with the ruling
spheres, and revolutionary in their relations with the Socialists and
working classes; in France and Britain they were democrats and
pacifists; in Italy they were rabid nationalists or neutralists
according to the political sentiments of their environment; in Turkey,
Morocco, Egypt and Persia staunch friends of Islam. They intrigued
against dynasties, conspired against cabinets, reviled influential
publicists, fostered strikes and tumults, set political parties and
entire states by the ears, dispelled grounded suspicions and armed
various bands of incendiaries and assassins.
But in spite of cogged dice and poisoned weapons, the comprehensive
way in which the enterprise was conceived, the consummate skill with
which it was wrought out towards a satisfactory issue, the
whole-heartedness of the nation which, although animated by a fiery
patriotism that fuses all parties and classes into one, is yet
governed with military discipline, offer a wide field for imitation
and emulation. For the changes brought about by the first phases of
the war are but fruits of seed sown years ago and tended ever since
with unfailing care, and unless suitable implements, willing hands and
combined energies are employed in digging them up and casting them to
the winds, the second crop may prove even more bitter than the first.