Many historic meetings, big with social disaster, are recorded in
history. Witness the meeting of the Athenian judges for the killing of
Socrates. Witness the coming together of the priests and Judas for the
piteous tragedy of the death of Jesus. Witness that midnight meeting of
the conspirators in Florence for the burning of Savonarola. Terrible
also the results of that meeting in the Potsdam Palace in 1896 that
culminated in the Pan-German Empire scheme.
What began as a spark that day has ended in a world conflagration.
In retrospect the Kaiser and his associates had many events behind them
to encourage the ambition to make Berlin a world capital, Kaiser Wilhelm
the world emperor and all the other nations and races subject peoples.
Beginning in 1860 with thirty-five millions of people and only fifteen
billions of dollars, Germany had climbed to greatness upon iron steps,
heated hot by war. Never did wars yield so large a return.
The war with Denmark had given Germany the Kiel Harbour, the Kiel Canal
and a sea-coast for her ships.
The war with Austria had given Germany the rich coal provinces of
Central Europe. The war with France had given Germany the iron mines of
Alsace and Lorraine.
And here for the next war were Denmark and Holland, Belgium and northern
France--so many jewel boxes that could be looted. To the eastward were
Poland with her coal mines, Rumania with her oil fields and Russia with
her wheat granaries. And once Central Europe became a Middle-Europe
German Empire there was no reason why later on Germany should not extend
her conquests to Russia on the east and England on the west, and then to
North and South America.
It was a great scheme. Never was prize so rich. Never could obstacles be
so easily swept away. To make Berlin a world-capital and Kaiser Wilhelm
a world-emperor only two things were needed.
Plainly the first thing to be done was to organize the Pan-German Empire
League and educate the leading men of Germany--the ship owners, bankers,
merchants and manufacturers, editors, ministers, priests and university
professors.
Local branch societies were organized in all the large German towns and
cities. Weekly meetings were held, papers read and reports made. Slowly
people of the middle class were included in the league. Documents marked
"Secret and Confidential" were distributed, setting forth the details of
the scheme.
Full reports were made as to what Germany could make by seizing the
fields of Denmark, the cities on the mouth of the Rhine in Belgium, the
coal and iron mines of France, Poland and Russia, and also the
undeveloped resources of the Valley of the Euphrates.
Careful statements were prepared as to the difficulties that must be
surmounted, but always this lure was held out--that the poorest German
who then had nothing, would when Germany was victorious become a
landowner, live in a mansion and drive his own automobile. Then he would
have Russians and Frenchmen to wait upon him, since the German was a
superman, intended for a patrician, while all other races were pigs,
intended by nature to be bondsmen and plebeians.
"The rest of the world is amassing wealth, and when the fruit is ripe
then we Germans will pluck it"--this was their motto.
Little by little the germ of world-ambition became a fever, burning in
the soul of every German at home or abroad. It took twenty years to
thoroughly inculcate every individual of the German race with this
feverish ambition, but when 1914 came every German had gone over to the
Pan-German scheme and was ready to die for it.