GERMANY'S RESOURCEFULNESS
And our enemies' resourcefulness and power of adaptation is of a piece
with their capacity for work. When war was declared and foreign trade
arrested, numerous German factories underwent a quick transformation.
Silk-works began to turn out bandages and lint; velvet works produced
materials for tents; umbrella makers took to manufacturing rain-proof
cloth; the output of sewing-machine factories was changed to shrapnel;
piano manufacturers became makers of cartridges. Paper producers
supplied the War Office with paper-made blankets. For copper, when the
supply began to grow short, nickelled iron was quickly substituted.
Sugar was employed to obtain the spirit which had to take the place of
benzine. And the upshot of these transformations is that the orders
received for military needs exceed those which would in normal
conditions of exportation have been placed by foreign customers with
German industry. The goods traffic on German railways, which had
fallen to 41 per cent. during the first month of the war, has since
gone up to 96 per cent. Those achievements are not merely noteworthy
in themselves, they are ominously symptomatic.
A German professor, writing to a friend imprisoned in France,
commented in passing upon these qualifications of his countrymen in a
letter which M. Joseph Reinach soon afterwards gave to the public. One
passage in that document is worth quoting. The professor holds that
even if the worst comes to the worst, Germany can always conclude a
"white peace" which will leave her the formidable glory of having held
the whole world in check, will consolidate her prestige in Europe and
enable her, twenty years hence, when she has made good her losses, to
establish permanently her dominion. "My confidence is based on German
patriotism, on German sense of discipline, on German genius for
organization. But it is founded above all else on our enemies'
incapacity for organization. Ah, if our adversaries could enhance the
worth of their resources by acquiring our gifts of initiative and
method, we should be lost! I am thrilled by the picture of what we
could accomplish if we were in the places of the English and the
French and by the thought of the danger that would confront us if they
but knew how to utilize the force of their allies as we have availed
ourselves of those of Austria and Turkey."
Those reflections find their fairest comment in the events of the
twenty months that have passed since the opening of the campaign.
Our enemies' reading of those events is instructive. The Austrian
Press hails them as satisfactory. Even the Socialist organ[106]
declares that, in the qualities that go to the attainment of success,
"Austria holds the first place." The Austrian General Staff wrote
eight months ago: "Our troops have now been fighting for a
twelvemonth.... A whole world of enemies rose up against the Central
Empires, and more than once our army had to bear the brunt of their
formidable onslaught. To-day, they hold but small tracts of territory
in western Galicia and Alsatia, whereas Germany's hand is closed in a
tight grasp on Belgium and the richest provinces of France, and in the
north-east the allied forces of Austria and Germany have penetrated
well into Russian Poland. The cannons' muzzles are turned against the
most powerful fortresses of the Tsar, and in the Dardanelles our third
ally keeps watch and ward imperturbably."
[106] _Arbeiter Zeitung._
The War Lord himself has recorded his estimate of the results of the
first year's campaign. "Germany," he stated in a speech delivered at
Lemberg, "is an impregnable fortress. In her forward march she is
irresistible. She will prove to the world that she can overcome all
her enemies and will dictate to them the peace terms that please
herself." And in a discourse pronounced at Beuthen he recorded his
view of the Allies' outlook in these words: "Our enemies are
floundering in confusion. Among themselves they are not united. They
are disorganized by the struggle, disheartened by the knowledge that
they are powerless to conquer Germany. German valour, German
organization, German science have emerged with honour from this
ordeal, the most terrible that a nation has ever undergone. Germany is
greater and mightier than ever before."
It behoves us to learn from our enemies, and, abstraction made from
the monstrosities which are indelibly associated with the German name,
there is much which the Teutons can still teach us. That the secret of
success lies in a comprehensive system of organization is
self-evident. But that organization must utilize all the resources of
the Allies and include permanent arrangements, economic and other, for
a future which shall not be a continuation of the past. Many of the
advantages which the old ordering of things assured us are gone beyond
recall. Conscription is become inevitable. Free trade is an
institution of the past. The control of armies in the field by
delegates of a democratic parliament such as is now demanded by the
French Chamber is a dangerous craving for the fleshpots of Egypt.
Whether Germany wins or loses, her rebellion against European
civilization will effect substantial and durable changes in the
methods of that civilization from which even the United States will
not be exempted.
Thus between the old order of things and the new yawns an abyss which
has to be crossed before we can worst our enemies even in the military
campaign which is but one phase of the world-struggle. Our resources
for the purpose of bridging it are ample, but our first difficulty is
the circumstance that we are chained to the old system and are still
unwilling to burst the bonds that hold us. And until efficacious means
of effecting this are adopted the end must remain unattainable.
Victory will not descend on our camp like a manna from on high. The
Allied Armies do not resemble the mulberry tree which, having long
lagged behind its rivals, suddenly bursts into fruit as well as
flower.
During the past twenty months the Allies in general, and the British
in particular, have achieved feats of which they have reason to be
proud--feats which two years ago seemed beyond the compass of human
effort. But, much as we have done, we have not reached, nor indeed
attempted to reach, the limits of our capacities, and the story of
these memorable twenty months of struggle is dimmed by the shadow of
the vaster exploits from which we have unaccountably shrunk.
The old-world social conceptions still prevalent in Great Britain
afford no standard by which to gauge the significance of the crisis
through which Europe is passing, nor do they provide efficacious means
of satisfying the pressing needs which it has created. Yet the
nation's guides perceive nothing to change in those conceptions; on
the contrary, they uphold them zealously. No event has occurred in
modern times of greater concern to Europe than the unleashing of
disruptive forces which threaten when the war is over to break up the
politico-social fabric. Now, the mere prospect of this tremendous
upheaval and of its sequel is, one would fancy, calculated to arouse
the spirited interest of all the nations affected. Yet in Great
Britain, whose very existence it menaces, it was at first received
with such unmeaning comments as "business as usual." The alertness of
the people's sensations--always inconsiderable--for volcanic outbursts
which have their centre abroad, has never been quite so blunted as
to-day.
Germany cultivates force not for its own sake but because it happens
to suit her particular purpose. For this reason she preaches the
doctrines that right and might are identical, that the end hallows the
means, that military and political necessity overrule treaties and
laws. For as violence and cunning may still gain triumphs, under the
conditions that once rendered them the only weapons of man, Germany's
first step is to bring about such conditions and to spread faith in
the teachings of the new gospel. What the success of these efforts
would involve is evident. All the ground slowly and painfully
reclaimed from the primitive state of nature, transmuted into social
order, and moralized by the altruistic accord of progressive humanity,
would be submerged by the tidal wave of Teutonism.
The first clash of the two forces which took place a generation ago
was hardly noticed. Germany stretched out her feelers tenderly, and
even when she was draining nation after nation of its life juices, she
took care to lull the patient while sucking his blood. Accordingly her
attack provoked no counter-attack, nay, there was no serious attempt
at defence. Those who directed the forces of the civilized communities
were unconscious of the counter-force that was steadily undermining
these--so unconscious that in lieu of isolating and paralysing it, the
tendency of their endeavours was to further and to strengthen it. For
they hastily assumed that it, too, was a great moral force in an
uncouth guise and should also be tended and cultivated. Their duty,
had they hearkened to its promptings, would have been to employ
towards the criminal plotters against Europe's civilized communities
coercion of the same drastic description that once enabled mankind to
substitute for the barbarous usages of savage tribes the habits of
social relationship and moral self-surrender to the weal of all. Among
the mainstays of Germany's type of society and the instruments by
which it was built up are heavy artillery, mighty armies, the gallows,
bribery and guile. With some of those arms she had opened the
campaign of conquest a quarter of a century ago, and of that campaign
the present war, unexampled though it be, is but an acute and
transient episode. This would appear to be the only true reading of
contemporary events.
Few careful students of European politics will now deny that the
struggle between the forces for which Teutonism stands and those on
which the social ordering of the rest of Europe is based was
inaugurated long ago, that the ground was then cleared for the new
politico-social structure, or that the dissolution of our "effete,
drowsy States, saturated with wealth and honeycombed with
hypocrisies," was carefully planned and taken in hand with scientific
precision. It is equally clear, to those who have eyes to see, that
the present clash of nations, despite its appalling effects on
civilization, is but an acuter phase of that campaign, a series of
incidents in a mighty struggle which neither began in July 1914 nor
will end with the close of hostilities, but will rage on for years to
come in less sanguinary but more decisive forms. For the future
peace--whatever its terms--which will silence the cannon's boom, will
but transfer the war theatre without ending the war. The methods will
be changed from military to economic. But only the weapons will be
different; the military discipline, the callous indifference to the
dictates of human and divine law, the utter absence of scruple will
continue to characterize the tactics of our enemy, who will then have
a wider scope for his activities than the battlefield can offer. The
German has no match among the allied nations in the regions of the new
diplomacy, trade, industry, applied science, insidious journalism and
vast organization. He is incomparably better equipped than they, and
owing to his amorality has none of those obstacles to contend with
which so often confront them with scruples and check their advance.
And during the progress of the present war the Teutons are making
ready for that economico-political duel which will, they hope, give
them the decisive superiority for which they had vainly hoped from the
war. That hope, if their experience of the past thirty years be a fair
indication, is by no means groundless.
Not to realize these facts to-day is to play into the hands of our
enemies, as we have been steadfastly doing during the past thirty
years. The British and their allies are being overcome less by German
skill and cleverness than by their own sluggishness, narrowness of
outlook and love of ease. As the German professor, whose utterances I
have already quoted, tersely put it: "My confidence is founded above
all else on our enemies' incapacity for organization." In truth, it is
not inborn incapacity to which we owe our unquestioned inferiority,
but to the atrophy of will-power which is one of the consequences of
years of egotism, overweening confidence, self-indulgence and the loss
of an inspiring social faith.
Now, there is every reason to assume that these master facts are not
yet recognized by our rulers, who seem perfectly contented that the
nation should go on living as before from hand to mouth, with no
far-reaching views for the future. This insular narrow-mindedness is
natural. For the Ministers in power are the same who obstinately
refused to credit the evidence of their senses, which went to prove
that Germany was bending all her energies to the successful
prosecution of a formidable campaign against us and our presumptive
allies for a whole generation. The frank recognition of this state of
masked hostility would have imposed on the Government the correlate
duty of taking up the challenge, readjusting our public life to the
altered conditions, urging the nation to make heavy sacrifices and
dissatisfying radical constituencies, whose one ideal is to devote
themselves exclusively to parochial policy and domestic legislation.
And the chiefs of the party in power lacked the mental and moral
strength to throw off their deep-rooted apprehension of the
consequences to party prospects, of increased taxation and other
burdens of citizenship. They never grasped the situation as a whole,
but restricted their survey to each fragmentary question as it was
thrust into the foreground of actualities and eliminated every other.