After the crisis of Agadir, M. Georges Bourdon visited Germany to make an
inquiry for the _Figaro_ newspaper into the state of opinion there. His
mission belongs to the period between Agadir and the outbreak of the first
Balkan war. He interviewed a large number of people, statesmen, publicists,
professors, politicians. He does not sum up his impressions, and such
summary as I can give here is no doubt affected by the emphasis of my
own mind. His book,[1] however, is now translated into English, and the
reader has the opportunity of correcting the impression I give him.
Let us begin with Pangermanism, on which M. Bourdon has a very interesting
chapter. He feels for the propaganda of that sect the repulsion that must
be felt by every sane and liberal-minded man:--
Wretched, choleric Pangermans, exasperated and unbalanced, brothers
of all the exasperated, wretched windbags whose tirades, in all
countries, answer to yours, and whom you are wrong to count your
enemies! Pangermans of the Spree and the Main, who, on the other side
of the frontier, receive the fraternal effusions of Russian Pan-Slavism,
Italian irredentism, English imperialism, French nationalism! What is it
that you want?
They want, he replies, part of Austria, Switzerland, Flanders, Luxemburg,
Denmark, Holland, for all these are "Germanic" countries! They want
colonies. They want a bigger army and a bigger navy. "An execrable race,
these Pangermans!" "They have the yellow skin, the dry mouth, the green
complexion of the bilious. They do not live under the sky, they avoid the
light. Hidden in their cellars, they pore over treaties, cite newspaper
articles, grow pale over maps, measure angles, quibble over texts or traces
of frontiers." "The Pangerman is a propagandist and a revivalist." "But,"
M. Bourdon adds, "when he shouts we must not think we hear in his tones the
reverberations of the German soul." The organs of the party seemed few and
unimportant. The party itself was spoken of with contempt. "They talk
loud," M. Bourdon was told, "but have no real following; it is only in
France that people attend to them." Nevertheless, M. Bourdon concluded
they were not negligible. For, in the first place, they have power to
evoke the jingoism of the German public--a jingoism which the violent
patriotism of the people, their tradition of victorious force, their
education, their dogma of race, continually keep alive. And, secondly,
the Government, when it thinks it useful, turns to the Pangermans for
assistance, and lets loose their propaganda in the press. Their influence
thus waxes and wanes, as it is favoured, or not, by authority. "Like the
giant Antaeus," a correspondent wrote to M. Bourdon, "Pangermanism loses
its force when it quits the soil of government."
It is interesting to note, however, that the Pangerman propaganda purports
to be based upon fear. If they urge increased armaments, it is with a
view to defence. "I considered it a patriotic duty," wrote General Keim,
"in my quality of president of the German League for Defence, to demand
an increase of effectives such that France should find it out of the
question to dream of a victorious war against us, even with the help of
other nations." "To the awakening of the national sentiment in France
there is only one reply--the increase of the German forces." "I have the
impression," said Count Reventlow, "that a warlike spirit which is new is
developing in France. There is the danger." Thus in Germany, as elsewhere,
even jingoism took the mask of necessary precaution. And so it must be, and
will be everywhere, as long as the European anarchy continues. For what
nation has ever admitted an intention or desire to make aggressive war?
M. Bourdon, then, takes full account of Pangermanism. Nor does he neglect
the general militaristic tendencies of German opinion. He found pride
in the army, a determination to be strong, and that belief that it is in
war that the State expresses itself at the highest and the best, which is
part of the tradition of German education since the days of Treitschke.
Yet, in spite of all this, to which M. Bourdon does full justice, the
general impression made by the conversations he records is that the bulk
of opinion in Germany was strongly pacific. There was apprehension indeed,
apprehension of France and apprehension of England. "England certainly
preoccupies opinion more than France. People are alarmed by her movements
and her armaments." "The constant interventions of England have undoubtedly
irritated the public." Germany, therefore, must arm and arm again. "A great
war may be delayed, but not prevented, unless German armaments are such as
to put fear into the heart of every possible adversary."
Germany feared that war might come, but she did not want it--that, in sum,
was M. Bourdon's impression. From soldiers, statesmen, professors, business
men, again and again, the same assurance. "The sentiment you will find most
generally held is undoubtedly that of peace." "Few think about war. We need
peace too much." "War! War between us! What an idea! Why, it would mean a
European war, something monstrous, something which would surpass in horror
anything the world has ever seen! My dear sir, only madmen could desire or
conceive such a calamity! It must be avoided at all costs." "What counts
above all here is commercial interest. All who live by it are, here as
elsewhere, almost too pacific." "Under the economic conditions prevailing
in Germany, the most glorious victory she can aspire to--it is a soldier
who says it--is peace!"
The impression thus gathered from M. Bourdon's observations is confirmed
at every point by those of Baron Beyens, who went to Berlin as Belgian
minister after the crisis of Agadir.[2] Of the world of business he says:--
All these gentlemen appeared to be convinced partisans of peace....
According to them, the tranquillity of Europe had not been for a moment
seriously menaced during the crisis of Agadir.... Industrial Germany
required to live on good terms with France. Peace was necessary to
business, and German finance in particular had every interest in the
maintenance of its profitable relations with French finance.[3] At the
end of a few months I had the impression that these pacifists personified
then--in 1912--the most common, the most widely spread, though the least
noisy, opinion, the opinion of the majority, understanding by the
majority, not that of the governing classes but that of the nation
as a whole (p. 172).
The mass of the people, Beyens held, loved peace, and dreaded war. That was
the case, not only with all the common people, but also with the managers
and owners of businesses and the wholesale and retail merchants. Even in
Berlin society and among the ancient German nobility there were to be found
sincere pacifists. On the other hand, there was certainly a bellicose
minority. It was composed largely of soldiers, both active and retired;
the latter especially looking with envy and disgust on the increasing
prosperity of the commercial classes, and holding that a "blood-letting
would be wholesome to purge and regenerate the social body"--a view not
confined to Germany, and one which has received classical expression in
Tennyson's "Maud." To this movement belonged also the high officials, the
Conservative parties, patriots and journalists, and of course the armament
firms, deliberate fomenters of war in Germany, as everywhere else, in order
to put money into their pockets. To these must be added the "intellectual
flower of the universities and the schools." "The professors at the
universities, taken _en bloc_, were one of the most violent elements in
the nation." "Almost all the young people from one end of the Empire to
the other have had brought before them in the course of their studies
the dilemma which Bernhardi summed up to his readers in the three words
'world-power or decadence.' Yet with all this, the resolute partisans of
war formed as I thought a very small minority in the nation. That is the
impression I obstinately retain of my sojourn in Berlin and my excursions
into the provinces of the Empire, rich or poor. When I recall the image
of this peaceful population, journeying to business every week-day with a
movement so regular, or seated at table on Sundays in the cafés in the open
air before a glass of beer, I can find in my memories nothing but placid
faces where there was no trace of violent passions, no thought hostile to
foreigners, not even that feverish concern with the struggle for existence
which the spectacle of the human crowd has sometimes shown me elsewhere."
A similar impression is given by the dispatch from M. Cambon, French
Ambassador to Berlin, written on July 30, 1913.[4] He, too, finds elements
working for war, and analyses them much as Baron Beyens does. There are
first the "junkers," or country squires, naturally military by all their
traditions, but also afraid of the death-duties "which are bound to come
if peace continues." Secondly, the "higher bourgeoisie"--that is, the
great manufacturers and financiers, and, of course, in particular the
armament firms. Both these social classes are influenced, not only by
direct pecuniary motives but by the fear of the rising democracy, which
is beginning to swamp their representatives in the Reichstag. Thirdly,
the officials, the "party of the pensioned." Fourthly, the universities,
the "historians, philosophers, political pamphleteers, and other apologists
of German Kultur." Fifthly, rancorous diplomatists, with a sense that they
had been duped. On the other hand, there were, as M. Cambon insists, other
forces in the country making for peace. What were these? In numbers the
great bulk, in Germany as in all countries. "The mass of the workmen,
artisans and peasants, who are peace-loving by instinct." Such of the great
nobles as were intelligent enough to recognize the "disastrous political
and social consequences of war." "Numerous manufacturers, merchants, and
financiers in a moderate way of business." The non-German elements of the
Empire. Finally, the Government and the governing classes in the large
southern States. A goodly array of peace forces! According to M. Cambon,
however, all these latter elements "are only a sort of make-weight in
political matters with limited influence on public opinion, or they are
silent social forces, passive and defenceless against the infection of
a wave of warlike feeling." This last sentence is pregnant. It describes
the state of affairs existing, more or less, in all countries; a few
individuals, a few groups or cliques, making for war more or less
deliberately; the mass of the people ignorant and unconcerned, but also
defenceless against suggestion, and ready to respond to the call to war,
with submission or with enthusiasm, as soon as the call is made by their
Government.
On the testimony, then, of these witnesses, all shrewd and competent
observers, it may be permitted to sum up somewhat as follows:--
In the years immediately preceding the war the mass of the people in
Germany, rich and poor, were attached to peace and dreaded war. But there
was there also a powerful minority either desiring war or expecting it,
and, in either case, preparing it by their agitation. And this minority
could appeal to the peculiarly aggressive form of patriotism inculcated by
the public schools and universities. The war party based its appeal for
ever fresh armaments on the hostile preparations of the Powers of the
Entente. Its aggressive ambition masqueraded, perhaps even to itself,
as a patriotism apprehensively concerned with defence. It was supported
by powerful moneyed interests; and the mass of the people, passive,
ill-informed, preoccupied, were defenceless against its agitation. The
German Government found the Pangermans embarrassing or convenient according
as the direction of its policy and the European situation changed from
crisis to crisis. They were thus at one moment negligible, at another
powerful. For long they agitated vainly, and they might long have continued
to do so. But if the moment should come at which the Government should make
the fatal plunge, their efforts would have contributed to the result, their
warnings would seem to have been justified, and they would triumph as
the party of patriots that had foretold in vain the coming crash to an
unbelieving nation.
[Footnote 1: "L'Enigme Allemande," 1914.]
[Footnote 2: See "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," pp. 97 seq. and 170 seq.
Bruxelles, 1915.]
[Footnote 3: A Frenchman, M. Maurice Ajam, who made an inquiry among
business men in 1913 came to the same conclusion. "Peace! I write that all
the Germans without exception, when they belong to the world of business,
are fanatical partisans of the maintenance of European peace." See Yves
Guyot, "Les causes et les conséquences de la guerre," p. 226.]
[Footnote 4: See French Yellow Book, No. 5.]