After all the Germans at home and abroad understood the Pan-German
scheme of seditious intrigue in foreign countries and the vast web was
spun and thrown out over all the cities and continents where the
Kaiser's representatives were living, the second thing to be done was to
make the plan clear by spreading it out like a great map. The method
used, therefore, was pictorial.
The Department of Publicity in Berlin became experts on geography. They
began to issue illustrated maps so that the rudest German peasants and
the German colonists living in Milwaukee or El Paso, in Rio Janeiro or
Buenos Aires, in Brussels or St. Petersburg, in Melbourne or Calcutta,
could easily understand the method and the goal.
Out of twenty maps issued in Berlin and reproduced by Andre Cheredame,
no one is more important than the one marked "The Old Roman Empire." The
simplest German miner understood the map at a glance and realized its
meaning for the members of the Pan-German League. Here is old Rome
marked world capital. Here is Caesar Augustus called the first world
emperor. Here is Carthage with its capital looted and Roman peasants
remaining after the victory to move into rich men's houses and estates
of North Africa. And here also were the maps of conquered Palestine,
Ephesus, Athens and Corinth. To be sure the old Romans had to become
soldiers, but, later, did not each Roman soldier live in the rich
gardens around Thebes, Ephesus and Corinth?
Instantly the imaginations of the German peasants and workmen kindled.
The Kaiser was right. What had been in Rome must be in Berlin. The Elbe
must succeed the Tiber. Berlin shall be the second world-capital. Our
Wilhelm shall be the second world-emperor. Germania shall be written
straight across Europe from Hamburg on the North Sea to Bagdad on the
Persian Gulf. Germans alone shall be allowed to carry weapons, as once
only the Roman was allowed to own a spear; only Germans shall be allowed
to hold title deeds to lands, even as once only Romans could hold a
field or a house in fee simple. Old Rome won by becoming a military
State.
Did not the people of Rome go forth as soldiers and return with
triumphal processions, with treasures of loot that took days to pass
along the Appian Way, while the Romans stood cheering and the women and
children sang and threw flowers in the path? Why should not the German
army, between the reaping of the wheat in July and the threshing of the
wheat in October, return from Brussels and Paris laden with treasure,
while a second triumphal procession marched down Wilhelmstrasse?
The German peasants kindled at this dream. Why should the German have
to live always on bologna sausage, drink beer, eat sauerkraut and live
in ugly houses when the people of Paris and London drank champagne, ate
roast fowl, wore French laces and the finest English wools? It was a
wicked shame. Surely the German was intended for something better than
sauerkraut and beer!
"Two weeks and we will be in Brussels. Three weeks and we will have
Paris. Two months and we will loot London."
This was the plan. How significant that letter, taken from the dead body
of a German boy found in No Man's Land, near Compiegne.
"Within three days, Liebschen, we will be in Paris. I intend to bring
you a pocketful of Paris rings and jewels, with Paris gowns and laces."
From the body of a German boy found near Luneville was taken this letter
saying that, with his three companions, he had picked out four French
farms and left the houses standing, and that his friends and himself had
picked out these farms as permanent homes. Later he added that Heinrich
thought it would be much better for them to wait until they smashed
England and made Canada a German colony. Then they could own, not small
French farms, but vast Canadian farms with a hundred tenants working for
him in the valleys around Toronto and the vineyards of Winnipeg and
orchards of Hudson Bay.
Most shrewd and cunning, the plotters of the Potsdam gang. They knew how
to feed the fires of envy and avarice in the German people. Every few
weeks they placed new material in the hands of every German at home and
abroad. They reminded each poor peasant and foreign colonist that he was
a superman, and that by day and by night he was to prepare for the time
when he would become the head of all the people of the town or industry
with which he was related. Poor Germans in foreign countries dreamed
their dreams of the time when they would be appointed by the Kaiser and
Foreign Minister to take charge of the village in Mexico, the mine in
Chile, or when they would be the tax collector in some distant province.
We know now, from letters that have been found, that the German soldiers
in France carried in their pockets a description by the German historian
Curtius of the triumphal procession along the Appian Way, when the
Roman conquerors came home loaded with loot. These skillful German
plotters printed at the bottom of Curtius's description the statement
that each German soldier must look forward to a similar return from
London, Paris and Brussels to march through the streets of Munich and
Berlin.
What a dream was this German dream! What treasures were to be brought
into Berlin! What marbles and bronzes of Rodin stolen from Paris! At
last Berlin was to own beautiful paintings, for the treasures of the
Louvre were to be the Kaiser's.
Never was there such a dream dreamed by peasants who soon were to become
princes and kings and patricians. The German had exchanged the rye bread
of 1913 for the "fog bank" of 1918; had given up German beer to grasp
only empty, breaking bubbles. But it was a great dream while it lasted.
In pursuance of his hope he sacrificed three million German boys, left
dead in the fields of Flanders and France. He sent home four million
German cripples. He filled the land with vast armies of widows and
orphans.
It could not have been otherwise. There has never been, and never will
be, but one world city--Rome; and there has never been but one
world-emperor--Caesar Augustus. There is to be one universal kingdom--and
that is the kingdom of God, the kingdom of love, justice, peace and
good-will. The German has been pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp.
A world-kingdom will come, but no Kaiser will rule over that empire of
love. In that world-parliament all the races shall be represented as
equals; then the earth that has long been a battle-field shall become an
Eden garden, where all are patriots towards the world-kingdom, and
scholars towards the intellect, and self-sufficing towards the family,
and obedient towards their God.