GERMANY AND THE BALKANS
For two decades the Balkan States and Turkey had been objects of
Germany's especial solicitude. And with reason. For the part allotted
to them in the plan for teutonizing Europe was of the utmost moment.
The high road from Berlin to the Near East passed through Budapest and
the Balkans. And Austria, as the pioneer of German Kultur there, kept
her gaze fixed and her efforts concentrated on Salonica. Bulgaria's
goodwill had been acquired through Ferdinand of Coburg, himself an
Austro-Hungarian officer, and was maintained by Austria's energetic
championship of Bulgaria's claims against Serbia. Counts Aehrenthal
and Berchtold destined Bulgaria and Roumania to coalesce and form the
nucleus of a permanent Balkan confederation to be patronized and
protected by the Habsburgs.
But circumstance thwarted the design. And after the Balkan League had
done its work and Turkey's grasp on Europe had relaxed, Bulgaria, in
the person of Ferdinand, was brought to undo what without her lead
could not then have been achieved, to fall foul of her allies and
smash the coalition.
This incitement was unwelcome to many of Bulgaria's trusty leaders,
who, much though they might grudge Serbia's successes and rapid
growth, were of opinion that Bulgaria would be ill-advised to break
her connection with the Slav cause. But the leaders unexpectedly found
that they were being led, and led away from the natural friends of
Bulgaria by the German prince who had caused the death of Bulgaria's
greatest statesman and made no secret of his contempt for the
Bulgarian people generally. Ferdinand, assuming autocratic power,
rendered this inestimable service to the Teutons and fastened the
Bulgarian State to the Central Empires.
At some time before the outbreak of the war Ferdinand had struck up a
compact with the Central Empires which bound Bulgaria to follow their
lead. This he did at his own risk and on his own responsibility. I had
grounds for believing in the existence of some such covenant a
considerable time before the storm burst, but I had no tangible proof
of it. In July 1914, however, I knew it for certain, but without
having ascertained the particulars. When and by whom it had been
signed, and what were the main stipulations agreed upon, still
remained in the domain of speculation. I discovered, however, that
Bulgaria's hands were tied; that her mourning for lost Macedonia would
not last long; that the aims she pursued were the policy of the outlet
on four seas, and the territorial separation of Greece and Serbia;
that her role in the Peninsula was to be predominant; that she had
been chosen to supplant Serbia as the leading Balkan State, and would
pay tribute to the Central Empires in the shape of docility to and
ready co-operation with them; and that Roumania would, if she
continued to find favour in the eyes of the statesmen of Vienna and
Berlin, be associated with Bulgaria, but without attaining her rank or
acquiring her power.
It has since been positively asserted by M. Filipescu, an ex-Cabinet
Minister of Roumania, that "towards the mid-August 1914, when the
treaty was concluded which bound Bulgaria to Germany, the Roumanian
Minister in Berlin, M. Beldiman, had cognizance of this treaty and
apprised the Roumanian Government of the fact."[55] M. Take Jonescu,
the illustrious Roumanian statesman, has assigned a different date to
the conclusion of the agreement, but confirmed the fact of its
existence in the course of a conversation which has also been made
public.[2] He stated that the King of Bulgaria, "who is swayed more by
personal rancour than by the interests of his people, imposed his
policy on them. He allied himself with the Germans as long ago as
Spring 1914. The treaty was taken from Sofia to Berlin by an official
of the Deutsche Bank."[56]
[55] See _Le Temps_, October 31, 1915.
[56] Mr. M. Civinini of the _Corriere della Sera_. See
_Corriere della Sera_, October 11, 1915.
Whatever doubts may prevail respecting the exact date, the main fact
is established--Ferdinand bound Bulgaria to the Central Empires.
Personal interest as well as State reasons determined him to place
himself under Austro-German protection. It was at Austria's
instigation that he had spurned the advice of his official advisers,
treacherously attacked his allies and brought down defeat upon his
armies and discredit upon himself. But the Habsburg Government had
undertaken to see him through the ordeal to which he was then
subjected by his own people. The Treaty of Bucharest, which deprived
Bulgaria of Kavalla and Salonica, left the wound to fester and
Austro-Bulgarian friendship to harden into a definite alliance. None
the less Bulgaria's friendship with the Central Empires was not openly
manifested until the financial transaction was concluded between them
which made Bulgaria the creditor of Austria-Hungary shortly before the
outbreak of the war.
Economically, Bulgaria, like her neighbours, had long been a tributary
of the Central Empires. German and Austrian interests were cunningly
intertwined with Bulgarian in almost every branch of national life.
The banks, financial houses, export firms, are all under Austrian or
German control. In the army, too, despite its Russian training and
traditions, there was a party of officers whose admiration for the
war-lord ran away with their discretion. And the celebrated loan of
half a milliard francs, which Austrian financiers undertook to advance
to Bulgaria--on outrageously oppressive conditions--set the crown to
the work of many years. This transaction was not intended by either
party to be purely financial. Its political bearings were evidenced by
the circumstances in which it was negotiated and the terms on which it
was concluded. But the economic concessions insisted upon by Austria
and conceded by Bulgaria constituted of themselves a convincing proof
of the design to reduce the latter country to the position of one of
the dependents of the Central Empires.
Of all the recognized agencies for penetrating international opinion,
swaying international sentiment, and influencing international action,
one of the most abiding and decisive is that of royal courts. Yet its
value was not merely underrated by Britain, France and Russia, but was
completely ignored. And Germany, whose diplomacy, in spite of its
clumsiness and brutality, was far-sighted and assiduous in watching
for and utilizing every opportunity of smoothing the way for the
execution of the grandiose plan, purveyed almost every court and
throne in Europe with kings, queens and princesses of its own. And
those who were neither Germans by birth nor connected with Germans by
marriage were influenced by education, by military training, or at
least by a system of atmosphering which, with certain striking
examples before one, could be reduced to a few clear rules.
Roumania at the opening of the war was governed by a Hohenzollern
prince who had linked the destinies of his country with those of
Austria-Hungary as far back as the year 1880, and, having renewed the
secret convention in 1913, which for him was no mere scrap of paper,
convoked a crown council in August 1914 and proposed that Roumania
should redeem his pledge and take the field against the enemies of the
Central Empires. But King Carol's military ardour was not merely
damped but choked by a recalcitrant cabinet.
That monarch's influence as a pioneer of Teuton Kultur in Roumania can
hardly be exaggerated. An upright ruler, who discharged his duties
conscientiously, the King reckoned among these the dissipation of
native gloom by means of German light. And during his long reign he
succeeded in spreading a network of German economic interests
throughout his realm which, while raising the material level of the
nation, has reduced it to the position of a German tributary. It would
be unjust to make this a subject of reproach to the monarch who acted
up to his lights, but it would be a mistake to belittle the vast
services thus rendered by a single individual to the Teuton race, or
to overlook the degree of responsibility that attaches to the nations
now banded together, and in especial to Russia, for the sequence of
untoward phenomena which, now that they are not only seen, but felt,
and felt painfully, we naively deplore.
King Carol's successor is also a Hohenzollern prince whose attachment
to his Prussian fatherland is noted, whose relations with his kinsman,
the Kaiser, are cordial, but whose devotion to his subjects is
paramount. More than once since the opening of the campaign Roumania
was believed to be on the point of exchanging neutrality for
belligerency, but, on grounds which it would be unfruitful to discuss,
she abandoned the intention, if she ever harboured it. As matters now
are, the Allies are congratulating themselves on the circumstance that
she is still neutral.
The Queen of Sweden is a daughter of the most imperialistic of German
princes, the late Grand Duke of Baden and a cousin of the Kaiser, to
whom she is attached by bonds of sympathy and admiration. And her
consort the King, fascinated by the methods, the strivings, the
achievements of the Hohenzollerns, has made more than one attempt to
imitate them, but, owing partly to the opposition of the late Herr
Staaff, and largely to his own mental and moral equipment, which
point in a different direction, he felt obliged to desist.
The accomplished Queen of the Belgians and the Tsaritsa of Russia are
also both German princesses, but they form exceptions to the rule that
whichever of any two spouses is German exercises an overmastering
influence on the other. The Prince Consort of Holland, the Duke of
Mecklenburg, is a German of the Germans, but through constitutional
channels he can wield no political influence, and the attitude of the
Dutch Government towards the Allies has been clear enough to need no
elaborate exegesis.
The King of Bulgaria is an ex-officer of the Austro-Hungarian army,
whose pro-German work and its far-resonant results will probably never
be wholly forgotten by his own German people. For, as we saw, it has
rendered them services that cannot be repaid. Not, indeed, that he had
any coherent plan in his mind's eye, or was guided by any deep-seated
moral principles. Politics were for him the art of the possible
enlarged by the negation of the ethical. Ferdinand may, therefore, be
described as an opportunist, who in current politics contented himself
with following his nose. Of treaties and conventions he had signed a
goodly number and broken some. Thus with Russia he had a secret
agreement of a military nature, and also with Russia's rival,
Austria-Hungary. With Serbia he had one set of stipulations, with
Turkey another, but, shifty customer that he is, he had set himself
above them all and was ever ready to follow the lead of personal
interest. What the historian will accentuate is the deftness with
which German diplomacy, for all its alleged clumsiness, contrived to
use his defects and his qualities alike for the furtherance of its own
designs.
Love of country, like religious faith, is a respectable mainspring of
action. But Ferdinand has been credited with neither. Whithersoever he
moves one looks in vain for the guiding light of large ideas. Deeper
than conscious volition lies the stored-up instinct of barren
pettifogging egotism to which a fine moral atmosphere is deadly.
Insincerity is second nature to him. He once boasted in my presence
that he was a born actor, and it is fair to say that he played his
roles--repellent for the most part--as behoves a mummer. The
astonishing thing is that he should have got influential politicians
to take him seriously. While assuring the French deputy, M. Joseph
Reinach, of his attachment to France and signing himself the European,
he was writing to Professor Walter of Budapest offering "all the
sympathies of the Bulgarian nation" to Hungary.[57] I have read
ecstatic communications of his penned in hours of exaltation, when
visions of Constantine's city, the mosque of Aya Sofia towering aloft,
warmed his fancy and the sheen of Byzantine brocades and the quaint
paraphernalia of bygone days inspired his apocalyptic words. His
language in those telegrams and letters was highfaluting and
bombastic. And I read other communications of his--mostly abject
appeals for help--devoid of dignity and manliness, when the gloom of
dissipated illusions was made unbearable by fear of dethronement and
death. And the figure cut by the Tsarlet, who addressed those humble
prayers--mostly to influential ladies--was despicable.
[57] In September 1914. See _Morning Post_, September 4,
1914.
Ferdinand was swayed by ingrained hatred of Russia which was almost as
potent as his contempt for the Bulgars. And he never made a secret of
either. For the Turkish pasha who was responsible for the Bulgarian
atrocities, which aroused Gladstone's indignation, Ferdinand's
professed admiration took the form of a subscription.[58] But high
above all motives that turned upon his feelings towards others were
those that centred entirely in himself.
[58] The Batak massacre of Bulgarians by order of Abdul Kerim
Pasha had called forth Gladstone's pamphlet: _Bulgarian
Atrocities_, and aroused the horror of civilized men. But the
Hungarian aristocracy sympathized with the mass murderer, and
presented him with a golden hilted sabre. The list of
subscribers for this mark of aversion to the Bulgarian people
can still be viewed in the Museum at Budapest. The third name
on that list--Princess Clementine--is followed immediately by
that of her son Prince Ferdinand of Coburg, who gave one
hundred florins as a token of his admiration for the
exterminator of his future subjects! It need hardly be added
that he was not yet Prince of Bulgaria.
And he had cogent personal motives for cultivating cordial relations
with the country of his birth. From the Austrian Government he
expected to be saved from the necessity of abdicating and expiating
his unwisdom. It was his inordinate ambition and vanity which had
brought the Bulgarian nation to the very brink of ruin. He it was who
had insisted on breaking off negotiations with Turkey during the
London Conference and recommencing hostilities. In vain the Chief of
the General Staff, Fitcheff,[59] besought him to conclude peace. The
importunate military adviser was suddenly relieved of his duties and
the second phase of the Balkan war begun. It was Ferdinand, too, who
thwarted Russia's peace-making efforts, refused to send delegates to
the tribunal of arbitration in Petrograd, and ordered the treacherous
attack on the Serbs and the Greeks which culminated in Bulgaria's
forfeiting some of the principal fruits of her heroic military
exertions.
[59] General Fitcheff has since become Minister of War.
For this series of baleful blunders--to the Bulgars they were nothing
more--Ferdinand was known to be alone responsible. He had assumed the
sole responsibility, and he had hoped to gather in the lion's share of
the spoils. And as soon as responsibility seemed likely to involve
punishment, his Ministers withdrew and exposed his person to the
nation. When, after the end of the second Balkan war, General Savoff
repaired to Constantinople to better the relations between Bulgaria
and Turkey, he invited a number of French and British journalists who
happened to be just then in the capital, and he addressed them as
follows: "It has come to my ears that in Sofia I am accused of being
the person who issued the order to our army to attack our Allies and
that I am to be tried for it. They will never dare to prosecute me.
For I have here--" and he thumped his side pocket as he spoke--"the
order issued by the real author of the war and in his own handwriting.
He commanded me orally to do this, but I replied that I must have a
written order from the Government. Thereupon he shouted: 'I am the
supreme chief of the army and am about to give you the order in
writing,' indited the behest and handed it to me. That is why he
cannot prosecute me. I will show him up. Already now I tell you, so
that all may hear, _C'est un coquin, un miserable!_"[60]
[60] This narrative was published by M. Wesselitsky in the
_Novoye Vremya_, November 6, 1915.
That was General Savoff's summing-up of his august sovereign. And his
forecast proved correct. Ferdinand did not attempt to lay the blame on
him, still less to have an indictment filed against him. On the
contrary, he kissed Savoff on his return to Sofia and later on made
him his adjutant-general. Ferdinand's responsibility being
established, his abdication was clamoured for by public opinion. His
own estimate of his plight was impregnated with despair. He despatched
the abject telegrams mentioned above to his influential friends. It
was then that he received a letter signed by the three chiefs of the
Liberal groups of the old Stambulovist Party--Radoslavoff, Ghennadieff
and Tontcheff--and written, it has been alleged, after consultation
between all four parties, exhorting him to reverse the national policy
and link Bulgaria's fate with that of Austria. The Coburg prince
publicly welcomed them, dismissed the Daneff Cabinet, handed the reins
of power to the three self-constituted saviours of the dynasty and
country, and the Treaty of Bucharest was signed in an offhand manner.
The keynote of the policy of the new Cabinet was hatred of Russia, who
was held up to public opprobrium by the press of Sofia as the
mischief-maker who had betrayed Bulgaria; and as the nation thirsted
for a culprit on whom to vent its rage, the legend obtained a certain
vogue. At the same time emphatic assurances were given by Count
Berchtold that Austria would upset the Treaty of Bucharest, break
down the Serbian and Greek barriers that stood between Bulgaria and
her natural boundaries, and establish Ferdinand and his dynasty more
firmly on the throne. This prospect heartened the King and stimulated
his fellow-workers.
But perhaps the most decisive factor in Bulgaria's attitude towards
the Central Powers has been that of Russia towards Bulgaria. The
Tsardom cherishes tender feelings towards the political entity which
it called into being. Bulgaria is the creature of the great Slav
people which shed its blood and spent its treasure in giving it life
and viability, and has ever since felt bound to watch over its
destinies, forgive its foolish freaks, and contribute to its political
and material well-being. Congruously with this frame of mind, Russia
has not the heart to deal with Bulgaria as she would deal under
similar provocation with Roumania or Greece. Like the baby cripple, or
the profligate son, this wayward little nation ever remains the
spoiled child. Hence, do what harm she may to Russia, she is not
merely immune from the natural consequences of her unfriendly acts,
but certain to reap fruits ripened by the sacrifices of those whose
policy she strove to baulk. Conscious of this immense privilege, she
takes the fullest advantage of it. Under such conditions no stable
coalition of the Balkan States was possible.
The remarkable ascendancy thus won by Germany over Bulgaria is but one
of the salient results of her foresight, organization and
single-mindedness which the Allies are now beginning to appreciate.
Their ideal policy in the Balkans was to have none. Great Britain in
particular was proud of her complete disinterestedness.
Between the Teutons and the Greeks there were no such close ties as
those that linked Bulgaria to the Central Empires. The Hellenic
kingdom is a democracy marked by a constant tendency to anarchy. Down
to the beginning of the reign of the present monarch its ruler was
never more than the merest figure-head, nor its people anything but an
amalgam of individuals deficient in the social sense and devoid of
political cohesiveness. The late King George, for instance, remained,
to the end of his life, an amused spectator of the childish game of
politics carried on by his Ministers; and so insecure did he consider
his tenure of the kingship, that his frequent threat to "take his hat"
and quit the country for good had become one of the commonplaces of
Greek politics. Only a few years ago his reign appeared to be drawing
to an ignominious end. His functions were usurped by a military league
and his sons removed from the army. Anarchy was spreading, at that
time I expressed the opinion that the only person capable of saving
Greece--if Greece could yet be saved--was the Cretan insurgent, M.
Venizelos. This suggestion appealed to the Chief of the Military
League and was adopted. Venizelos was invited to Athens with the
results known to all the world. At first reluctantly tolerated, he was
subsequently highly appreciated by King George and was afterwards
handicapped by King Constantine, whose impolitic instructions during
the Bucharest Conference resulted in sowing seeds of discord between
Greece and Bulgaria.
To small countries and petty personal ambitions, a war among the Great
Powers brings halcyon days of flattery, bribery and seductive
prospects in an imaginary future. In Greece all these and other
attractions were dangled before the eyes of men of power and
influence. The Sovereign, whose admiration for the Kaiser verges on
idolatry, soon extended this platonic sentiment to the Kaiser's army.
And when fortune seemed definitively to espouse the cause of the
Central Empires, his admiration was reinforced by fear and the
pro-German leanings, which were at first merely platonic, bade fair to
harden into active co-operation. It was not until then that the
Entente Powers, discerning the fateful character of their errors and
the trend of events, resolved after much hesitation and discussion to
put forth an effort to retrieve the situation. Of his philo-German
tendencies King Constantine gave several public proofs long before the
war, and on the psychological soil from which they sprang, German
diplomacy raised its typical structure of intrigue and adulation. As
the irresistible captain who had shattered the armies of Turkey and
Bulgaria, winning undying fame for himself and his country, the King
was encouraged to believe that on him devolved the mission of uniting
all Hellenes under his sceptre, building up a larger Greece,
consolidating the monarchy within, and ruling as well as reigning. And
so well laid was this plan that when the European armies took the
field and the Entente Powers counted Greece, then apparently governed
by Venizelos, among its cordial friends, the Teutons, sure of their
ground, but still working assiduously for their object, put their
trust in the Kaiser's royal henchman and their own permanent display
of force, and were not disappointed.
Long before the war-cloud burst, the history makers of Berlin
recognized the fact that the key to the Dardanelles lay in Sofia, and
not only to the Dardanelles, but also the key to the Near East. The
statesmen of Austria and Germany discerned that the Bulgars under
their guidance could be got to do for Turkey what Japan hoped, and
still hopes, to effect for China. It is a work of complete
transformation, a sort of political transubstantiation whereby the
Bulgars would infuse ichor into the limp veins of the Ottoman organism
and recreate a strong political entity which would be an instrument in
the hands of the Central Empires. The Bulgar knows the Turk, to whom
he is more akin by race habits and temperament than to any of the Slav
peoples, understands his psychic state, his mode of feeling and
thinking, and is therefore qualified to serve as link between the
Oriental and the Western. It was in view of this eventuality that the
slow, plodding work of grafting Kultur on the Bulgar people was
undertaken. Two German schools, one in Sofia and the other in
Philippopolis, were the centres whence it was radiated to the ends of
the land. In Bulgaria there are many preparatory grammar schools in
which tuition for both sexes is free. All scholars who have passed
through one of the German schools are admitted without any examination
into the Grammar School, or Gymnasium, a privilege which works as a
powerful attraction. Since Turkey retroceded Karagatch[61] to Bulgaria
there are three such centres of Teutonic propaganda in Bulgaria, and I
am informed that a fourth will shortly be established in Rustschuk.
[61] One of the suburbs of Adrianople ceded in July 1915.
The record of the economic invasion of Roumania by the Teuton,[62]
supplemented as it was by various complex auxiliary movements of a
political character, supplies us with a fresh variation of the trite
text that Germany conceived her plan on a vast scale and executed it
by co-operation between the State and the individuals, leaving nothing
to chance which could be settled by forethought. The ruler of the
country was a Hohenzollern, and as he wielded absolute power in
matters connected with foreign policy, he had a free hand and kept it
efficaciously employed. For over thirty years King Carol transacted
the international business of the realm--economic as well as
political--with assiduity, conscientiousness and a fair meed of
success. He encouraged industry and commerce, and welcomed German and
Austrian capital and enterprise. The upshot of his exertions was that
in the fullness of time his kingdom, like those of Italy, Bulgaria and
Turkey, became to most intents a nascent Teutonic colony. In Roumania,
as in Bulgaria, the commercial methods and business ways are German.
The heads of banking establishments and great industries are either
Teutons or friends of Teutons. Nearly every big enterprise, commercial
and industrial, was launched and kept afloat by capital from the
Fatherland. The Discount Bank in Berlin has a vast cellar filled with
Roumanian bonds, shares and other securities. So close are the ties
that connect the little state with the great empire that even the
Roumanian railways have a special convention with those of Prussia.
Here, then, as everywhere else, we are in presence of intelligence
wedded to politico-economic enterprise. Individual German firms and
the Government worked hand in hand; diplomacy, trade and commerce
moved steadily towards the same goal, and attained it.
[62] Roumania's annual imports from Austria-Hungary,
according to the latest available statistics, were valued at
136,906,000 francs; from Germany at 183,713,000; and from
Great Britain at only 85,470,000 francs. France exported
thither goods valued at no more than 35,273,000 francs.
Owing to Roumania's grievances against Russia--whose seizure of
Bessarabia nearly forty years ago left a wound which festered for
years and has only recently been cicatrized--King Carol concluded a
military convention with the Austro-Hungarian empire, the stipulations
of which have never been authoritatively disclosed. There is reason to
believe that one clause obliged the Roumanian Government to come to
the support of the Habsburg Monarchy with all its military resources
in case that empire should be wantonly attacked by another Power.
Whether this instrument, which was never laid before the Roumanian
legislature for ratification, is deemed to have been vitiated by the
lack of this indispensable sanction, or is assumed to have terminated
with the decease of the king who concluded it, is a matter of no real
moment. The relevant circumstance is the unwillingness of
Austria-Hungary to invoke the terms of the convention and the resolve
of the Bucharest Cabinet to ignore them.
Thus Roumania, like all other neutral states, was well within the
sphere of attraction of the Central Empires long before the present
conflict was unchained. And the clever tactics by which siege was laid
to the sympathies of a nation which at bottom has hardly any traits in
common with the besieger, would have entailed a complete revision and
remodelling of the polity of Russia, France and Britain, had these
Powers had any coherent programme or distant aims. But their motto
was: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
True, none of those States ever designed a political revolution of the
Old Continent, such as Napoleon had imagined or Germany is now
striving to realize. But neither did they read aright nor even give
serious thought to the symptoms of the great conspiracy which was
being hatched by others for that purpose. Busied with their party
squabbles and social reforms, they took it for granted that
international tranquillity which was a condition of the stability of
all internal affairs was assured. Such occasional misunderstandings as
might crop up among the Powers could, they imagined, always be
smoothed over by manifestations of goodwill and timely concessions.
Fitfulness and hesitancy marked every attempt made by Germany's rivals
to push their trade or extend their political relations beyond their
own borders.
This lack of enterprise was especially accentuated in their dealings
with Turkey. No Powers had done so much to uphold Ottoman sway in
Europe as France and Britain, and for a long while their exertions
found their natural outcome in a degree of influence at the Sublime
Porte which was unparalleled in Turkish history. But once Germany
inaugurated her economico-political campaign in the Near East, the
principle of neighbourliness was invoked in favour of allowing her to
possess herself of a share of the good things going, whereupon Great
Britain, and in a lesser degree France, curbed their natural impulse
and left most of the field to the pushing new-comer. For years the
writer of these lines pointed out the danger of this self-abnegation,
but his insistent appeals for a more active line of conduct were met
by the statement that Near Eastern affairs had long ceased to tempt
the enterprise or affect the international policy of Great Britain. As
though Great Britain were not a member of the European community or
her geographical insularity implied political isolation; or as if her
policy of equilibrium were capable of being achieved without the
employment of adequate means! When I raised my voice against our
participation in the Baghdad railway scheme and bared to the light the
political designs underlying it, Cabinet Ministers assured the country
that its scope was exclusively economic and cultural and had no
connection with politics! This naive belief and the _laissez-faire_
attitude which it engendered enabled the Teutons to reduce Turkey to
economic and political thraldom and to earmark Asia Minor,
thenceforward hedged in with the Baghdad and Anatolian railways, as a
future German colony.
The closeness and constancy of the relations between economics and
politics which easily took root in German consciousness, had for
another of its corollaries the dispatch of General Liman von Sanders
and his band of officers to reorganize the Ottoman army. This measure
struck some observers as the beginning of the end of European peace.
It was thus that the Russian Premier, Kokofftseff, and his colleague,
Sazonoff, construed it, and that was the interpretation which I also
put upon it. But none of the other interested Governments expressed
similar misgivings, nor, so far as one can judge, entertained any. Yet
when war was finally declared, Germany's plan of campaign allotted an
important role to Turkey not in a possible emergency, but at a date to
be determined by the completion of her military and naval equipment.
In this ingenious and comprehensive way, operating at a multitude of
points, but never dissociating economics from politics, never
abandoning the work of commercial expansion to the unaided resources
of individuals, the Teutonic empires contrived to spread a huge net in
whose meshes almost every civilized nation was to some extent
entangled. And the subsequent political conduct of many of these was
determined in advance by the plight to which they had been thus
reduced. Russia was reasonably believed to be incapable of taking the
field; Italy was accounted wholly unfitted to bear the weight of the
financial burden which a conflict with Germany would lay upon her
shoulders; Roumania, it was calculated, would decline to exchange
material gains for political returns purchased at a heavy cost;
Bulgaria could not afford to estrange Austria's sympathies and need
never fear that she might forfeit those of Russia; Sweden, saturated
with German Kultur, was one of the foreposts of Teutonism in the north
of Europe and might in time be induced to imitate Bulgaria and play
for the hegemony of the Scandinavian States with the Kaiser's help;
Switzerland was virtually German in everything but political
organization; Holland would believe in Prussianism and tremble;
Belgium was economically a pawn in German hands and Antwerp a German
port; and in the United States millions of hyphenated Germans would
plead the Teuton cause and do the rough work of advancing it by means
of their political organization and influence.