PAN-GERMANY’S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
In April last, when it was generally believed in Paris that the
Revolution at Petrograd made certain the end of German influence over
the vast former Empire of the Tsars, I wrote the study referred to
on page 81 and reprinted here as Chapters IV and V.[1] I then said,
[In Russia] ‘Where conditions were ripe for idealistic extremists to
guide the revolution toward pacifism or anarchy, there are alarming
symptoms of the prevalence of the latter condition. The swarming
agents of Germany are working there without respite. If their efforts
succeed, the strength of Russia will swiftly dissolve.’
Unhappily, events have justified this word of caution in only too
full measure. The efforts of the Allies to reorganize the forces of
Russia have thus far met with small success. It is a task to which
their duty and their interests alike make it imperative for them to
devote themselves with their utmost strength. But we must cherish no
illusions. The rebuilding of the forces of Russia must inevitably
be a long, arduous, and doubtful undertaking. It is advisable,
therefore, to consider, at the same time, if there is not some
method of making up for the Russian default by bringing into play, to
further the victory of the Entente, certain powerful forces which the
Allies have not thus far even thought of employing.
Now, these forces and this method do exist; but in order to enforce
clearly their reality, their importance, and the way to make use of
them, I must, in the first place, call attention to a fundamental and
enduring error of the Allies, set forth the extraordinary credulity
with which they allow themselves to be ensnared in the never-ending
intrigues of Berlin, and describe the principal shifts which Germany
employs, with undeniable cleverness, to annul to an extraordinary
degree the effect of the Allies’ efforts. These essential causes
of mistaken judgment being eliminated, we shall then be able to
understand what the existing forces are which will enable the Entente
to make up with comparative rapidity for the Russian default, and
to contribute with remarkable efficiency to the destruction of
Pan-Germany.
I
THE FUNDAMENTAL AND ENDURING ERROR OF THE ALLIES
For three years past events have notoriously proved that the concrete
Pangermanist scheme, developed between 1895 and 1911, has been
followed strictly by the Germans since the outbreak of hostilities.
Now, the diplomacy of the Entente is devised as if there were no
Pangermanist scheme.
This is the source of all the vital strategical and diplomatic errors
of the Entente—consequences of the failure to understand the German
military and political manœuvring. Here is proof derived from recent
events—one of many which it would be possible to allege.
When it was announced a few weeks ago that Austria would play an
apparently preponderating part in the reconstitution of Poland, a
very large number of newspapers in the Entente countries decided
that ‘it is perfectly evident that the Austrian policy has carried
the day in Poland.’ A similar deduction has led Allied readers to
believe that Vienna has prevailed over Berlin. The result has been to
strengthen the faith of those who deem it possible to impose terms
on Berlin through the channel of Vienna, and even to induce Austria
to conclude a separate peace. Now, to convey such an impression as
this to Allied public opinion is to lead it completely astray. If the
Hapsburgs are playing an apparently predominant part in Poland it is
solely because that part, as we are about to prove, is assigned to
them by the Pangermanist scheme.
In the pamphlet, _Pan-Germany and Central Europe about 1950_,
published in Berlin in 1895, which contains the whole Pangermanist
plan, we find the following:—
‘Poland and Little Russia [the kingdom to be established at Russia’s
expense] will agree to have no armies of their own, and will receive
in their fortresses German or Austrian garrisons. In Poland, as
well as in Little Russia, the postal and telegraph services and the
railways will be in German hands.’
For twenty-two years the Pangermanist scheme has been followed up.
Tannenberg, in his book, _Greater Germany_, which appeared in 1911,—a
work whose exceptional importance has been demonstrated by events,
and which, in all probability, was inspired officially,—prophesies
very distinctly,—
‘_The new kingdom of Poland is made up of the former Russian portion,
of the basin of the Vistula, and of Galicia, and forms a part of the
new Austria._’
These most unequivocal words appeared, it will be admitted, _three
years before the war_. Now _Le Temps_ of September 7, 1917, said on
the authority of the Polish agency at Berne, which is subsidized by
Austria and publishes news communicated to it by the government of
Vienna,—
‘Germany would take such portion of Russian Poland as she needs to
rectify her “strategic frontiers.” This portion would include almost
a tenth of Russian Poland. _The rest would be annexed to Austria.
The Emperor Charles would thereupon issue a decree of annexation of
Russian Poland to Galicia, under the title of Kingdom of Poland._...
The dual monarchy would then become triple, and the first result of
this readjustment would be to compel all Poles to undergo military
service in the Austrian armies. All the deputies representing Galicia
would automatically leave the Austrian Reichsrath, to enter the
new Polish Parliament, which would give the German parties in the
Austrian Parliament a certain absolute majority.’
This result of the present action of Vienna and Berlin, foreshadowed
by the _Temps_ apparently for the near future, has been in view for
twenty-two years. In fact, in the fundamental pamphlet of 1895,
already quoted, it is said that ‘_Galicia and the Bukowina will be
excluded from the Austrian monarchy. They will form the nucleus of
the kingdoms of Poland and Little Russia ... which, however, may be
united, by the personal link of the sovereign, to the reigning house
of Hapsburg._’
So it is that, very far from having forced anything on Germany in
relation to Poland, Charles I of Hapsburg has shown that he submits
with docility to the Pangermanist decrees, since he gives his entire
adhesion to the carrying into effect of the plan followed at Berlin
from 1895 to 1914—for nineteen years before hostilities began!
The actual fact, therefore, is the direct antithesis of what the
conclusions of many Allied newspapers have, of course in absolute
good faith, permitted their readers to believe. Now everything goes
to show that this error arises solely from a technical ignorance
of the Pangermanist scheme, of which the guiding spirits of the
Entente seem to have no more conception than a considerable portion
of the Allied press. However, if they wish for victory, the Allies
must inevitably act in systematic opposition to the Pangermanist
scheme. They cannot therefore dispense with the necessity of becoming
thoroughly familiar with it.
Nor is there any more reliable guide, since the events that have
taken place for three years past have demonstrated the absolute
accuracy of the Pangermanist outgivings anterior to the war.
Knowing what the Germans are going to do, we can deduce therefrom
the best means of opposing it. If this method had been followed,
no serious error would have been committed by the Allies. They
would have understood that Germany was making war in behalf of the
Hamburg-Persian Gulf enterprise,—which was intended to supply her
with the instruments of world-domination; that, consequently, the
Danube front, _which the Allies held_, must be retained at whatever
cost, which would have been, comparatively speaking, very easy, if
they had recognized in time this imperative necessity.
Now, if the Allies had retained their hold of the Danube front, the
war would have been over nearly two years ago. It is, in fact,
solely because they did not grasp the necessity of thus holding it,
that the Germans have been able to carry out their Eastern plan and
to constitute the Pan-Germany which must now be destroyed in order
to avoid the defeat of civilization, and eventual slavery. To effect
this destruction is infinitely easier than is generally believed,
on the condition that the most is made of the causes tending to
the internal dissolution of Pan-Germany. But, to understand these
available causes, familiarity with the Pangermanist scheme is
indispensable. It is urgently necessary, therefore, to put an end to
this intolerable condition, namely, that, while the Allies have an
extraordinary opportunity to become accurately acquainted with the
whole programme of procedure at Berlin, as contained in a multitude
of German documents,—that is to say, the real objects of Germany in
the war,—while they have this opportunity, they go on acting and
arguing as if that programme did not exist. It is this condition
which proves most clearly the extraordinary and enduring credulity
which the Allies exhibit in face of the endless German intrigues.
II
THE CREDULITY OF THE ALLIES
The heads of the Allied governments, moved by the best intentions
but completely taken by surprise by the war, are carrying it on
far too much in accordance with the ordinary procedure of times of
peace—negotiations, declarations, speeches. Notably in the gigantic
palaver into which Maximalist Russia has developed, men fancy that
they have acted when they have talked. The events of three years
of war prove conclusively that the Boches, turning to their profit
the predilection of the Allied leaders for verbal negotiations and
manifestations,—a predilection complicated by ignorance of the
Pangermanist scheme,—have succeeded in nullifying to an extraordinary
degree the effect of the sacrifices of the Entente.
Until the Russian Revolution, Berlin brought to bear on the
diplomacy of the Entente those allies of Germany who were then
regarded by the Entente as neutrals. Indeed, the declarations of
Radoslavoff, confirmed by the recently published Greek _White Book_,
have conclusively established the fact that the agreements between
Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey, and King Constantine, _in contemplation
of this war_, antedated the opening of hostilities—that certain ones
of them go back as far as April, 1914. Now, it is known that the
Entente diplomacy had no knowledge of this situation, and that it
allowed itself to be hoodwinked for three months by the Turks, for
thirteen months by the Bulgarians, for thirty months by the King of
Greece, the Kaiser’s brother-in-law, and even, to a certain degree,
down to a very recent period by Charles I of Hapsburg, certain Allied
diplomatists having persisted in coddling the chimera of a peace with
Austria against Germany.
Unhappily, to solve the present problems, which are, above all,
technical, the best intentions, or even the most genuine natural
intelligence, are insufficient. _It is necessary to know how_, and
one cannot know how without having learned. The Allied Socialists
who have placed themselves in the spotlight have shown themselves to
be, generally speaking, utopists, entirely ignorant of Germany, of
the German mind, of geography, ethnography, and political economy,
pinning their faith, before all else, to formulas, and knowing even
less than the official diplomats of the technique of the multifold
problems imposed by war and peace. As the anti-Prussian German, Dr.
Rosemeier, has stated it so fairly in the New York _Times_, these
idealists, by reason of their radical failure to grasp the inflexible
facts, are doing as much harm to the world in general as the Russian
extremists and their German agents.
It is undeniable that Berlin has found it easy to profit by the
state of mind of the idealistic Socialists of the Entente by causing
its own Social Democrats to put forth the _soi-disant_ ‘democratic’
peace formulas, which for some months past have been infecting the
Allied countries with ideas that are most pernicious because they
are impossible of realization. Despite the efforts of realist
Socialists, men like Plekhanoff, Kropotkin, Guesde, Compère-Morel,
Gompers, and their like, the Stockholm lure, notwithstanding its
clumsiness, has helped powerfully to lead Russia to the brink of the
abyss, and hence to prolong the war and the sacrifices of the Allies.
In France and England a few Socialists have been so genuinely insane
as to say that the occupations of territory by Germany are of slight
importance; that we can begin to think about peace; that Germany is
already conquered _morally_, and so forth. In view of such results,
due to the astounding credulity of the idealistic Socialists of the
Entente, it is quite natural that Germany should pursue her so-called
‘pacifist’ manœuvres.
Late in 1916, the Frankfort _Gazette_ advised its readers of the
spirit in which these intrigues were to be conducted by Berlin. ‘The
point of view is as follows: to put forward precise demands in the
East, and in the West to negotiate on bases _that may be modified.
Negotiation is not synonymous with renunciation._’
This last sentence summarizes the whole of German tactics. All the
proposals of Berlin have but a single object: to deceive and sow
discord among the Allies by means of negotiations which would be
followed by non-execution of the terms agreed upon, Germany retaining
the essential positions of to-day’s war-map which would assure her,
strategically and economically, the domination of Europe and the
world.
Now, it is an astounding fact that the warnings given by the Germans
themselves—the occupation of more than 500,000 square kilometres by
the Kaiser’s troops, the burglarizing of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria,
and Turkey by the government of Berlin—have not yet availed to
prevent a considerable proportion of the Allies from continuing to be
enormously deceived. At the very moment when the German General Staff
is strengthening the fortifications of Belgium, especially about
Antwerp, there are those among the Allies who seriously believe that,
by opening negotiations, they will succeed in inducing Germany to
evacuate that ill-fated country and to repair the immense damage that
she has inflicted on her.
There are those who wonder what the objects of the war on Germany’s
part can be, when the occupations of territory by Germany,
corresponding exactly to the Pangermanist scheme dating back
twenty-two years, make these objects as clear as day.
There are those who attach importance to such declarations as the
German Chancellor may choose to make, when every day that passes
forces us to take note of monumental and never-ending German lies and
of the unwearying duplicity of Berlin.
There are those who are willing to listen to talk about a _peace
by negotiation_, when the facts prove that Germany respects no
agreement, that a treaty signed by Berlin is of no value, and that,
furthermore, it is the Germans themselves who so declare. At the very
outbreak of the war Maximilian Harden said, ‘_A single principle
counts—Force._’ And the Frankfort _Gazette_ printed these words:
‘_Law has ceased to exist. Force alone reigns, and we still have
forces at our disposal._’ To Mr. Gerard, United States Ambassador to
Germany, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin said, ‘_We snap our
fingers at treaties._’
After such facts and such declarations, the persistent credulity of a
certain fraction of the Allies is a profoundly distressing thing, for
which the remedy must be found in a popular documentary propaganda,
thoroughly and powerfully prepared.
The pacifist German intrigues are manifest enough. We can
particularize six leading examples, employed by Berlin, either
separately or in combination.
III
THE SIX LEADING PACIFIST GERMAN INTRIGUES
1. _A separate peace between Germany and one of the Entente Allies.
The Alsace-Lorraine coup_
It is evident that the defection of one of the principal Allies would
inevitably place all the others in a situation infinitely more
difficult for continuing the struggle. If we assume such a defection,
the Germans might well hope to negotiate concerning peace on the
basis of their present conquests.
That is why they have multiplied proposals for a separate peace
with the Russians. At Berlin they are especially apprehensive of
a continuance of the war by Russia because of the inexhaustible
reserves of men possessed by the former Empire of the Tsars. The time
will probably come when they will attempt also to lure Italy from the
coalition by offering her the Trentino, and if necessary, Trieste, at
Austria’s expense, this last-named cession, however, being destined,
in the German plan, to be temporary only.
The desire to break up the coalition at any cost is so intense among
the Germans, that we must anticipate that, at the psychological
moment, they will even go so far as to offer to restore
Alsace-Lorraine to France. As for the sincerity of such an offer,
these words of Maximilian Harden, written early in 1916, enable us to
estimate it:—
‘If people think in France that the reëstablishment of peace is
possible only through the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine, and _if
necessity compels us to sign such a peace, the seventy millions of
Germans will soon tear it up_.’
Moreover, nothing would be less difficult for Germany, thanks
to the effective forces of Central Pan-Germany, than to seize
Alsace-Lorraine again, very shortly, having given it up momentarily
as a tactical manœuvre.
2. _A separate peace between Turkey, Bulgaria, or Austria-Hungary,
and the Entente_
A particularly astute manœuvre on the part of Berlin consists in
favoring, under the rose, not perhaps a formally executed separate
peace, but, at least (as has already taken place), semi-official
negotiations for a separate peace between her own allies named above
and the Entente.
The particular profit of this sort of manœuvre in relation to the
definitive consummation of the Hamburg-Persian Gulf scheme, is
readily seen if we imagine the Allies signing a treaty of peace
with Turkey, for instance. In such a hypothesis the Allies could
treat only with the liegemen of Berlin at Constantinople, for
all the other Turkish parties having any political importance
whatsoever have been suppressed. Now, if the Allies should treat
with the Ottoman government, reeking with the blood of a million
Armenians, Greeks, and Arabs, massacred _en masse_ as anti-Germans
and friends of the Entente, the following results would follow from
this negotiation: the Entente, agreeing not to punish the unheard-of
crimes committed in Turkey, would renounce its moral platform: it
could no longer claim to be fighting in the name of civilization.
The Turkish government, which is notoriously composed of assassins,
would be officially recognized; and thus the self-same group of
men who sold the Ottoman Empire to Germany would be confirmed in
power—the group whose leader, Talaat Pasha, declared in the Ottoman
Chamber in February, 1917, ‘We are allied to the Central Powers
for life and death!’ The control by Germany of the Dardanelles, a
strategic position of vast and world-wide importance, guarded by her
accomplices, would be confirmed; the numerous conventions signed
at Berlin in January, 1917, which effectively establish the most
unrestricted German protectorate over the whole of Turkey, would
accomplish their full effect during a Pan-German peace.
The Bulgarian intrigues for a so-called separate peace with the
Allies have been at least as numerous as those of the Turks of the
same nature. In reality, the Bulgarian agents who were sent to
Switzerland to inveigle certain semi-official agents of the Entente
into negotiations, were there by arrangement with Berlin for the
purpose of sounding the Allies, in order to determine to what degree
they were weary of the war. The Bulgarians have never been really
disposed to conclude peace with the Entente based on compromise upon
equitable conditions. They desire a peace which will assure them
immense acquisitions of territory at the expense of the Greeks, the
Roumanians, and, especially, the Serbians, for at Sofia they crave,
above all things, direct geographical contact with Hungary. Thus the
great Allied Powers could treat with the Bulgarians only by being
guilty of the monstrous infamy of sacrificing their small Balkan
allies, and of assenting to a territorial arrangement which would
permit Bulgaria to continue to be the Pangermanist bridge between
Hungary and Turkey over the dead body of Serbia—an indispensable
element in the functioning of the Hamburg-Persian Gulf scheme, and
hence of Central Pan-Germany.
Now, this is precisely the one substantial result of the war to
which Bulgaria clings above all else. So it is that a peace by
negotiation—in reality a peace of lassitude—between the Allies and
Bulgaria, would simply give sanction to this state of affairs.
In the same way, such a peace with Austria-Hungary could but give
definitive shape to the Hamburg-Persian Gulf scheme. From the
financial and military standpoint, the monarchy of the Hapsburgs,
considered as a state, is to-day absolutely subservient to Germany.
The reigning Hapsburg, whatever his private sentiments, can no longer
do anything without the consent of the Hohenzollern. Any treaty of
peace signed by Vienna would be, practically, only a treaty of which
the conditions were authorized by Berlin. There must be no illusion.
Nothing less than the decisive victory of the Allies will avail to
make Germany loosen her grip upon Austria-Hungary, _for that grip is
to Germany the substantial result of the war_. In truth it is that
grip which, by its geographic, military, and economic consequences,
assures Berlin the domination of the Balkans, and of the East, hence
of Central Pan-Germany, hence of Hamburg-Persian Gulf, and the vast
consequences which derive therefrom.
Let us make up our minds, therefore, that all the feelers toward a
separate peace with Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary, which have
been put forth and which will hereafter be put forth, have been and
will be simply manœuvres aimed at a so-called peace by negotiation,
which would cloak, not simply a German, but a Pan-German peace.
3. _The democratization of Germany_
Certain Allied groups having apparently made up their minds that
the ‘democratization’ of Germany would suffice to put an end
automatically to Prussian militarism and to German imperialism,
it was concluded at Berlin that a considerable number, at least,
of their adversaries, being weary of the war, might be willing
to content themselves with a merely formal satisfaction of their
demands, in order to have an ostensibly honorable excuse for bringing
it to an end. That is why, with the aim of leading the Allies off the
scent and inducing them to enter into negotiations, Berlin devoted
herself during the first six months of 1917, with increasing energy,
to the farce called ‘the democratization of Germany.’ Meanwhile
the most bigoted Pangermanists put the mute on their demands. They
ceased to utter the words ‘annexations’ or ‘war-indemnities.’ They
talked of nothing but ‘special political arrangements’—a phrase which
in their minds led to the same result but had the advantage of not
embarrassing the peace-at-any-price men in the Allied countries.
The device of democratization of Germany was complementary to the
Stockholm trick, which, as we know, was intended to convince the
Russian Socialists that Russia had no further advantage to expect
from continuing the war, since Germany in her turn, was about to
enter in all seriousness upon the path of democracy—and so forth.
We must acknowledge that many among the Allied peoples allowed
themselves to be ensnared for the moment by this manœuvre, and
honestly believed that Germany was about to reform, of her own motion
and radically. But when the German tactics had achieved the immense
result of setting anarchy loose in Russia,—a state of affairs which
was instantly made the most of in a military sense by the Staff at
Berlin,—the farce of the democratization of Germany was abandoned.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg was sacrificed to the necessity of dropping
a scheme which he had managed, and Michaelis—Hindenburg’s man,
and therefore the man of the Prussian military party and of the
Pangermanists—succeeded him.
As a matter of fact, the Germans have, for all time, had such an
inveterate penchant for rapine that they are quite capable of
setting up a great military republic and submitting readily enough
to Prussian discipline, with a view to starting afresh upon wars for
plunder.
We must bear this truth constantly in mind: if the Hohenzollerns have
succeeded, in accordance with Mirabeau’s epigram, in making war ‘the
national industry,’ it is because, ever since the dawn of history,
the Germans have always subordinated everything to their passion for
lucrative wars. The same is true of them to-day. Especially in the
last twenty years the secret propaganda of the Berlin government has
convinced the masses that the creation of Pan-Germany will assure
them immense material benefits. It is because this conviction is
so firmly rooted among them that substantially the entire body of
Socialist workingmen are serving their Kaiser without flinching, and
are willing to endure the horrors of the present conflict so long
as it may be necessary and so long as they are not conquered in the
field.
4. _Peace through the International_
This is another of the tricks conceived at Berlin. In reality
the International, having always followed the direction of the
German Marxists, has been the chief means employed for thirty
years to deceive the Socialists of the countries now in alliance
against Germany by inducing them to believe that war, thanks to
the International alone, could never again break out. In a report
on ‘the international relations of the German workingmen’s unions’
(1914), the Imperial Bureau of Statistics was able to proclaim as
an undeniable truth: ‘In all the international organizations German
influence predominates.’
The conference at Stockholm, initiated by German agents, and that
at Berne, upon which they are now at work, are steps which German
unionism is taking to reëstablish over the workingmen of all lands
the German influence, which has vanished since the war began.
The idea now is to force the proletariat of the whole world into
subjection to the guiding hand of Germany. The object officially
avowed is to rehabilitate the International in the interest of
democracy. In reality, it is proposed, above all else, to replace in
the front rank the struggle between classes in the Allied countries,
in order to destroy the sacred unity that is indispensable to
enable the most divergent parties to wage war vigorously against
Pangermanist Germany. As the Berlin government is well aware that
it has nothing to fear from its own Socialists, the vast majority
of whom, even when they disown the title of Pangermanists, are
partisans of Central Pan-Germany, the profit of the manœuvre based
on the International would inure entirely to Germany, who would
retain her power of moral resistance unimpaired, while the Allied
states, once more in the grip of the bitterest social discord,
would find their offensive powers so diminished by this means that
peace would in the end be negotiated on the basis of the present
territorial occupations of Germany.
5. _The armistice trick_
All the schemes hitherto discussed, whether employed singly or in
combination, are intended, first and last, to assist in playing
the armistice trick on the Allies. This is based upon an astute
calculation, still founded on the weariness of the combatants,
which is so easily understood after a war as exhausting as that now
in progress. At Berlin they reason thus—and the reasoning is not
without force: ‘If an armistice is agreed upon, the Allied troops
will say, “They’re talking, so peace is coming, and, before long,
demobilization.” Under these conditions our adversaries will undergo
a relaxation of their moral fibre.’
The Germans would ask nothing more. They would enter upon peace
negotiations with the following astute idea. If, hypothetically, the
Allies should make the enormous blunder of discussing terms of peace
on bases so craftily devised, Germany, being still intrenched behind
her fronts which had been made almost impregnable, would end by
saying, ‘I am not in accord with you. After all is said, you cannot
demand that I evacuate territory from which you are powerless to
expel me. If you are not satisfied, go on with the war.’
Inasmuch as, during the negotiations, everything essential would
have been done by German agents to accentuate the moral relaxation
of the country which was most exhausted by the conflict, as they
succeeded in doing in Russia in the first months of the Revolution,
the immense military machine of the Entente could not again be set
in motion in all its parts. The result would be the breaking asunder
of the anti-German coalition, and, finally, the conclusion of peace
substantially on the basis of existing conquests. Thus Berlin’s
object would be attained.
6. _The ‘status quo ante’ trick_
The last of the German schemes, and the most dangerous of all, is
that concealed under the formula, ‘No annexations or indemnities’—a
formidable trap, which, as I have pointed out in earlier chapters,
has for its object to confirm Germany in the possession of the
gigantic advantages which she has derived from the war, and which
would assure her the domination of the world, leaving the Allies with
their huge war-losses, whose inevitable economic after-effects would
suffice to reduce them to a state of absolute servitude with respect
to Berlin.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1917, p. 721.