All the pamphlets issued secretly to the members of the Pan-German
League invariably used Rome as their illustration. We are not surprised,
therefore, to find that the German leaders called attention to the fact
that it took two wars at intervals of some years to make Rome a world
empire.
In like manner, therefore, the Kaiser and his Cabinet told the German
people at home and abroad that the first war, beginning in 1914, would
establish a Middle-Europe Empire extending from Hamburg on the North Sea
to Bagdad on the Persian Gulf.
One of the pamphlets issued many years ago fixed the countries to be
conquered about 1915, and distinctly mentioned Denmark, Holland, Belgium
and North France, Poland and Rumania, Hungary and Austria, Serbia and
Bulgaria, and the wheat granaries of Russia, with Turkey and Armenia.
The number of people to be conquered and included after the first war
was fixed at 250,000,000.
The argument states that it will take but a few years to compact this
Middle-Europe Empire and that naturally Great Britain, Spain and Italy,
to the west, with Norway and Sweden to the north, with Italy and
Switzerland to the south, and of course Greece and Egypt would, from
time to time, as crises came, fall inevitably into Germany's hand.
Berlin, as the world capital, should by 1920 be the magnet, and the
little particles of iron, named the Balkan States, would be drawn and
held by this great German magnet in Berlin.
The first step to be taken and the first goal to be reached concerned,
of course, the English Channel, the Dutch cities on the mouth of the
Rhine, and the iron mines of Northern France. We know to an absolute
certainty all the details of this plan.
For more than thirty years Germany had been organizing her army; she
knew every road, inn, bridge, factory, shop, and wholesale store in
Denmark and Holland, Belgium and France. In all of the larger ones she
had German agents belonging to the Pan-German League toiling as workmen
and every detail was planned out in advance.
In 1910 General von Bissing, one of the Kaiser's closest friends, was
sent to Brussels. For years he spent the summer months apparently at
the watering places near The Hague in Holland and Ostend in Belgium,
preparatory to the hour when Germany would seize Belgium and he assume
his position as Governor-General, living in Brussels.
Men nearing death tell the truth. In January of 1917 von Bissing
prepared a memorandum for the direction of Belgian affairs in His
Majesty's name and according to his wish. This document contains the
meditations of a dying man. The statements he makes, he says, contain
the views that inspired his every act in Belgium during his
administration.
In his last will and testament von Bissing, in the spring of 1917,
advises the German Government in Berlin that the time has come to throw
off all disguises. He says that at the beginning of the war it was
probably good policy to deny that the Government ever intended to annex
Belgium, but, he says, "now that we are victorious there is no reason
why we should not publish to the world the fact that we never intend to
give up one foot of the Belgian sea-coast, nor one ton of the Belgian
coal, nor one acre of the French iron mines."
He says plainly: "The annual Belgian production of 23,000,000 tons of
coal has given us a monopoly on the continent which has helped to
maintain our vitality. If we do not hold Belgium, administer Belgium in
future for our interest and protect Belgium by force of arms, our trade
and industry will lose the positions they have won in Belgium and
perhaps will never recover them."
And what about Dutch cities and seaports? On page eighteen of General
von Bissing's last will and testament he adds:
"Our frontier, in the interest of our sea power, must be pushed forward
to the sea." This sentence makes it perfectly plain that a little later
Germany intends to incorporate Rotterdam in her own customs union.
"Belgium must be seized and held, as it now is, and as it is to-day it
must be in the future. The conquest of Belgium has simply been forced
upon us by the necessities of German expansion."
Von Bissing, however, recognizes the difficulty of annexing Belgium and
securing the consent of the members who shall arrange the treaty of
peace at the conclusion of the war, and this is his decision:
"Our best method, therefore, is to avoid, during the peace negotiations,
all discussion about the form of the annexation and to apply nothing
but the right of conquest. Plainly Belgium's King can never consent to
abandon his sovereignty, but we can read in Machiavelli that he who
desires to take possession of a country will be compelled to remove the
King or regent, even by killing him."
Von Bissing has torn off all masks. He himself states that he is
speaking for the Kaiser, as his most trusted friend and counsellor.
Germany intends, therefore, ultimately to kill King Albert of Belgium,
and this carries with it that the Kaiser and his War Staff believe they
have the right to kill any King or President who happens to stand in the
pathway of their ambition. Every lover of mankind whose heart is knitted
in with the poor and the weak will understand what that editor meant the
other day when he said:
"The one duty of the hour, therefore, for America, is to kill Germans,
that we may keep the rest of the world from being killed."