Germany had a great military mission to fulfil. Her immense energy and
power, which had bulked so large in the early history of Europe, and
which had been so sadly scattered during the religious wars, was now to
come to its own again. She was to make for herself a great place in
Europe, and to expand in colonies over the world. It was a pleasing and
natural ambition, and the expression of it gave a great vogue and
popularity to Treitschke's lectures. The idea was enormously reinforced
by the cause which I have already mentioned and dwelt upon--the growth
of the commercial interest in Germany. From 1870 onwards this growth was
huge and phenomenal. In a comparatively short time a whole new social
class sprang up in the land, and a whole new public opinion. If
expansion from the point of view of Junker ambition had been desirable
before, the same from the point of view of the financial and trading
classes was doubly so now. If a military irruption into the politics of
the world was favoured before, it was clamoured for now when a powerful
class had arisen which not only, called the tune but could pay the
piper.
Thus by the combination of military and commercial interests and
entanglements the web of Destiny was woven and Germany was hurried along
a path which--though no definite war was yet in sight--was certain to
lead to war. The general military, programme of Treitschke, the
conviction that force and force alone could give his country her
rightful place in the world, was more and more cordially adopted. In a
sense this was a perfectly natural and logical programme, and amid the
surrounding European conditions excusable--as I shall point out
presently. But before long it became a weird enthusiasm, almost an
obsession. It was taken up over the land, and repeated in a thousand
books and on as many platforms. One of these propagandists was General
von Bernhardi, who entered in more detail into the technical and
strategical aspects of the programme. The rude and almost brutal
frankness of both writers may be admired; but the want of real depth and
breadth of view cannot be concealed and must be deplored. The arguments
in favour of force, of unscrupulousness, of terrorism are--especially in
Bernhardi[14]--casuistical to a degree. They are those of a man who is
determined to press his country into war at all costs, and who will use
any kind of logic as long as it will lead in his direction. The whole
movement--largely made possible by the political ignorance of the
mass-people, of which I have spoken in a former chapter--culminated in
an extraordinary national fever of ambition; and in the announcement of
schemes for the Germanization of the world, almost juvenile in the want
of experience and the sense of proportion which they display. It would
not be fair to take one writer as conclusive; but as a _specimen_ of the
kind of thing we may quote the following extract (given by Mr. H.A.L.
Fisher, the Oxford historian, in his able brochure _The War: Its Causes
and Issues_) from the writings of Bronsart von Schellendorf: "Do not let
us forget the civilizing task which the decrees of Providence have
assigned to us. Just as Prussia was destined to be the nucleus of
Germany, so the regenerated Germany shall be the nucleus of a future
Empire of the West. And in order that no one shall be left in doubt, we
proclaim from henceforth that our continental nation has a right to the
sea, not only to the North Sea, but to the Mediterranean and Atlantic.
Hence we intend to absorb one after another all the provinces which
neighbour on Prussia. We will successively annex Denmark, Holland,
Belgium, Northern Switzerland, then Trieste and Venice, finally Northern
France from the Sambre to the Loire. This programme we fearlessly
pronounce. It is not the work of a madman. The Empire we intend to found
will be no Utopia. We have ready to our hands the means of founding it,
and no coalition in the world can stop us."
Bronsart von Schellendorf (1832-91) was one of the Prussian Generals who
negotiated the surrender of the French at Sedan. He became Chief of the
Staff, and War Minister (1883-9), and wrote on Tactics, etc. His above
utterance, therefore, cannot be neglected as that of an irresponsible
person.
There is, as I have already had occasion to say, a certain easygoing
absurdity in the habit we commonly have of talking of nations
--"Germany," "France," "England," and so forth--as if they were
simple and plainly responsible persons or individuals, when all the time
we know perfectly well that they are more like huge whirlpools of
humanity caused by the impact and collision of countless and often
opposing currents flowing together from various directions. Yet there is
this point of incontestable similarity between nations and individual
persons, that both occasionally go mad! If Germany was afflicted by a
kind of madness or divine _dementia_ previous to the present war,
Britain can by no means throw that in her teeth, for Britain certainly
went mad over Mafeking; and it was sheer madness that in 1870 threw the
people of France and Napoleon III--utterly unready for war as they
were, and over a most trifling quarrel--into the arms of Bismarck for
the fulfilment of his schemes.
But that some sort of madness did, in consequence of the above-mentioned
circumstances, seize the German people shortly before the outbreak of
the present war we can hardly doubt, though (remembering the proverb) we
must not put the blame for that on her, but on the gods. It was a heady
intoxication, caused largely, I believe, by that era of unexampled
commercial prosperity following upon a period of great political and
military expansion, and confirmed by the direct incitement of the
military and political teachers I have mentioned. All these things,
acting on a people unskilled in politics--of whom Bernhardi himself says
"We are a non-political people"[15]--had their natural effect. But it
seems part of the irony of fate that at this very juncture Germany
should have fallen under the influence of a man who of all the world was
perhaps least fitted to guide her steadily through a difficult crisis.
"We all know the Kaiser," says Mr. Fisher, "the most amazing and amusing
figure on the great stage of politics. The outlines of his character are
familiar to everybody, for his whole life is spent in the full glare of
publicity. We know his impulsiveness, his naïveté, his heady fits of
wild passion, his spacious curiosity and quick grasp of detail, his
portentous lack of humour and delicacy, his childish vanity and
domineering will. A character so romantic, spontaneous, and robust must
always be a favourite with the British people, who, were his lunacies
less formidable, would regard him as the most delectable burlesque of
the age."
However the British generally may regard him, it is certain that the
German nation accepted him as their acclaimed leader. Clever,
good-looking, versatile, imperious, fond of the romantic pose, Wilhelm
was exactly the hero in shining armour that would capture the enthusiasm
of this innocent people. They idolized him. And it is possible that
their quick response confirmed him in his rather generous estimate of
his own capabilities. He dismissed Bismarck and became his own Foreign
Secretary, and entered upon a perilous career as Imperial politician,
under the aegis of God and the great tradition of the Hohenzollerns, a
career made all the more perilous by his constant change of rôle and his
real uncertainty as to his own mind. His "seven thousand speeches and
three hundred uniforms" were only the numerous and really emblematic
disguises of a character unable to concentrate persistently and
effectively on any one settled object. With a kind of theatrical
sincerity he made successive public appearances as War Lord or William
the Peaceful, as Artist, Poet, Architect, Biblical Critic, Preacher,
Commercial Magnate, Generalissimo of land forces and Creator of a World
Navy; and with Whitman he might well have said, "I can resist anything
better than my own diversity."
If Wilhelm II was popular (as he was) among his own mass-people, it may
well be guessed that he was a perfect terror to his own political
advisers and generals. Undoubtedly a large share of responsibility for
the failure of German diplomacy before the war, and of German strategy
during the war, must be laid to the account of his ever-changing plans
and ill-judged interferences. It is difficult, indeed, to imagine a
character more dangerous as a great nation's leader. But out of dangers
great things do often arise. A kind of fatality, as I have said, has
enveloped the whole situation, and still leads on to new and pregnant
evolutions for the German people and for the whole world. Germany will
in the end be justified, but in a way far different from what she
imagined.
Up to the period of Germany's rising commercial prosperity Germany and
England had been on fairly friendly terms. There was no particular cause
of difference between them. But when Commercial and Colonial expansion
became a definite and avowed object of the former's policy, she found,
whereso she might look, that Britain was there, in the way--"everywhere
British colonies, British coaling stations, and floating over a fifth of
the globe the British flag." Could anything be more exasperating? And
these "absent-minded beggars" the English, without any forethought or
science or design, without Prussian organization or Prussian bureaucracy
and statecraft, had simply walked into this huge inheritance without
knowing what they were doing! It certainly was most provoking. But what
England had done why should not Germany do--and do it indeed much
better, with due science and method? Britain had shown no scruple in
appropriating a fifth part of the globe, and dealing summarily with her
opponents, whether savage or civilized; why should Germany show scruple?
And it must be confessed that here Germany had a very good case.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And if Germany, approving
Britain's example, could only show herself strong enough to imitate it
in actual fact, Britain at least could not blame her. Besides, in her
internal industrial development Germany was already showing her equality
with England. In her iron and steel manufactures, her agricultural
machines, her cutlery, her armament works, her glass works, her aniline
dyes, her toys, and her production of a thousand and one articles (like
lamps) of household use, she was showing a splendid record--better in
some ways than England. For while England was losing ground, Germany was
gaining all the time. England was becoming degenerate and lacking in
enterprise. The Zeiss glassworks at Jena have now become the centre of
the optical-glass industry of the world. Carl Zeiss, the founder, tried
hard at one time to get the English glass-makers to turn out a special
glass for his purpose, with very high refractive index. They would not
trouble about it. Zeiss consequently was forced to take the matter up
himself, succeeded at last in getting such glass made in Germany, and
"collared" the trade. The same happened in other departments.
A certain amount of friction arose. The Germans at one time, knowing the
English reputation for cutlery, marked their knives and razors as "made
in Scheffield." The English retaliated in what seemed an insulting way,
by marking the Fatherland's goods as "made in Germany." With Germany's
success, commercial jealousy between the two nations (founded on the
utterly mistaken but popular notion that the financial prosperity of
the country you trade with is inimical to your own prosperity) began to
increase. On the German side it was somewhat bitter. On the English
side, though not so bitter, it was aggravated by the really shameful
ignorance prevailing in this country with regard to things German, and
the almost entire neglect of the German tongue in our schools and
universities and among our literary folk. As an expression (though one
hopes exceptional) of commercial jealousy on our side I may quote a
passage from a letter from a business friend of mine in Lancashire. He
says: "I remember about a _fortnight before_ the war broke out with
Germany having a conversation with a business man in Manchester, and he
said to me that we most certainly ought to join in with the other
nations and sweep the Germans off the face of the earth; I asked him
_why_, and his only answer was, '_Look at the figures of Germany's
exports; they are almost as high as ours_!' All he had against them was
their enterprise--commercial jealousy."
On the other hand, the head of a large warehouse told me only a few days
later that when travelling in Germany for his firm some fifteen years
ago he had a conversation with a German, in the course of which he (the
Englishman) said: "I find your people so obliging and friendly that I
think surely whatever little differences there are between us as nations
will be dispelled by closer intercourse, and so all danger of war will
pass away." "No," replied the German, "you are quite mistaken. You and I
are friendly; but that is only as individuals. As nations we shall never
rest till we have war. The English nation may well be contented because
they have already _got_ all the good things of the Earth--their trade,
their ports, their colonies; but Germany will not allow this to go on
for ever. She will fight for her rightful position in the world; she
will challenge England's mercantile supremacy. She will have to do so,
and she will not fail."[16]
Thus the plot thickened; the entanglement increased. The Boer War roused
ill-feeling between England and Germany. The German Navy Bill followed
in 1900, and the Kaiser announced his intention of creating a sea-power
the equal of any in the world. Britain of course replied with her Navy
Bills; and the two countries were committed to a mad race of armaments.
The whole of Europe stood by anxious. Fear and Greed, the two meanest of
human passions, ruled everywhere. Fear of a militarist Germany began to
loom large upon the more pacific States of Europe. On the other hand,
the fatality of Alsace-Lorraine loomed in Germany, full of forebodings
of revenge. France had found a friend in Russia--a sinister alliance.
Britain, convinced that trouble was at hand, came to an understanding
with France in 1904 and with Russia in 1907. The Triple Entente was born
as a set-off against the Triple Alliance. The Agadir incident in 1911
betrayed the purely commercial nature of the designs of the four Powers
concerned--France, Spain, England, and Germany--and a war over the
corpse of Morocco was only narrowly avoided. Germany felt quite
naturally that she was the victim of a plot, and thenceforth was
alternately convulsed by mad Ambition and haunted by a lurking Terror.
And now we come to the last act of the great drama. So far the
relations of Germany with Russia had not been strained. If there was any
fear of Russia, it was quite in the background. The Junkers--themselves
half Slavs--had supplied a large number of the Russian officials, men
like Plehve and Klingenberg; the Russian bureaucracy was founded on and
followed the methods of the German. The Japanese War called Russia's
attention away to another part of the world, and at the same time
exposed her weakness. But if Germany was not troubled about Russia, a
different sentiment was growing up in Russia itself. The people there
were beginning to hate the official German influence and its hard
atmosphere of militarism, so foreign to the Russian mind. They were
looking more and more to France. Bismarck had made a great mistake in
the Treaty of Berlin--mistake which he afterwards fully recognized and
regretted. He had used the treaty to damage and weaken Russia, and had
so thrown Russia into the arms of France.
A strange Nemesis was preparing. The programme of German
expansion--natural enough in itself, but engineered by Prussia during
all this long period with that kind of blind haughtiness and overbearing
assurance which indeed is a "tempting of Providence"--had so far not
concerned itself much about Muscovite policy; but now there arose a
sudden fear of danger in that quarter. Hitherto the main German
"objective" had undoubtedly been England and France, Belgium and
Holland--the westward movement towards the Atlantic and the great world.
But now all unexpectedly, or at any rate with dramatic swiftness, Russia
appeared on the scenes, and there was a _volte face_ towards the East.
The Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 broke out. Whatever simmerings of
hostility there may have been between Germany and Russia before, the
relations of the two now became seriously strained. The Balkan League,
formed under Russian influence, was nominally directed against Turkey;
but it was also a threat to Austria. It provided a powerful backing to
the Servian agitation, it was a step towards the dissolution of Austria,
and it decisively closed the door on Germany's ambition to reach
Salonika and to obtain a direct connection with the Baghdad Railway.
Germany and Austria all at once found themselves isolated in the midst
of Europe, with Russia, Servia, France, and England hostile on every
side. It was indeed a tragic situation, and all the more so when viewed
as the sorry outcome and culmination of a hundred years of Prussian
diplomacy and statecraft.
Why under these circumstances Austria (with Germany of course behind
her) should have dictated most insulting terms to Servia, and then
refused to accept Servia's most humble apology, is difficult to
understand. The only natural explanation is that the Germanic Powers on
the whole thought it best, even as matters stood, to precipitate war;
that notwithstanding all the complications, they thought that the
long-prepared-for hour had come. The German White Book puts the matter
as a mere _necessity_ of self-defence. "Had the Servians been allowed,
with the help of Russia and France, to endanger the integrity of the
neighbouring Monarchy much longer, the consequence must have been the
gradual disruption of Austria and the subjection of the whole Slav
world to the Russian sceptre, with the result that the position of the
German race in Central Europe would have become untenable"; but it is
obvious that this plea is itself untenable, since it makes a quite
distant and problematic danger the excuse for a sudden and insulting
blow--for a blow, in fact, almost certain to precipitate the danger! How
the matter was decided in Berlin we cannot at present tell, or what the
motives exactly were. It seems rather probable that the Kaiser threw his
weight on the side of peace. The German Executive at any rate saw that
the great war they had so long contemplated and so long prepared for was
close upon them--only in an unexpected form, hugely complicated and
threatening. They must have realized the great danger of the situation,
but they very likely may have thought that by another piece of bluff
similar to that of 1908-9 they might intimidate Russia a second time;
and they believed that Russia was behindhand in her military
preparations. They also, it appears, thought that England would not
fight, being too much preoccupied with Ireland, India, and other
troubles. And so it may have seemed that Now was the psychological
moment.
Austria opened with war on Servia (28th of July), and the next day
Russia declared a considerable though not complete mobilization. From
that moment a general conflagration was practically inevitable. The news
of Russia's warlike movement caused a perfect panic in Berlin. The
tension of feeling swung round completely for the time being from enmity
against England and France to fear of Russia. The final mobilization of
the Russian troops (31st of July) was followed by the telegrams between
the Kaiser and the Tsar, and by the formal mobilization (really already
complete) of the German Army and Navy on the 1st of August. War was
declared at Berlin on the 1st of August, and the same or next day the
German forces entered Luxemburg. On August 4th they entered Belgium, and
war was declared by England against Germany.
* * * * *
Looking back at the history of the whole affair, one seems to see, as I
have said, a kind of fatality about it. The great power and vigour of
the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been
broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. It fell to Prussia to become the centre of
organization for a new Germany. The rich human and social material of
the German States--their literary, artistic, and scientific culture,
their philosophy, their learning--clustered curiously enough round the
hard and military nucleus of the North. It was perhaps their instinct
and, for the time, their salvation to do so. The new Germany, hemmed in
on all sides by foreign Powers, could only see her way to reasonable
expansion and recognition, and a field for her latent activities, by the
use of force, military force. A long succession of political
philosophers drilled this into her. She embarked in small wars and
always with success. She became a political unity and a Great Power in
Europe. And then came her commercial triumph. Riches beyond all
expectation flowed in; and a mercantile class arose in her midst whose
ideals of life were of a corresponding character--the ideals of the
wealthy shopkeeper. What wonder that, feeling her power, feeling herself
more than ever baulked of her rights, she cast her eyes abroad, and
coveted the imperial and commercial supremacy of the world?
In this she had the example of Britain before her. Britain had laid land
to land and market to market over the globe, and showed no particular
scruple in the matter. Why should not Germany do the same? It was true
that Britain always carried the Bible with her--but this was mere
British cant. Britain carried the Bible in her left hand, but in her
right a sword; and when she used the latter she always let the former
drop. Germany could do likewise--but without that odious pretence of
morality, and those crocodile tears over the unfortunates whom she
devoured. It was only a question of Might and Organization and Armament.
So far Germany seems to have had a perfectly good case; and though we in
England might not like her ambitions, we could not reasonably find fault
with motives so perfectly similar to our own. We might, indeed, make a
grievance of the frank brutality displayed in her methods and the
defence of them; but then, she might with equal right object to our
everlasting pretence of "morality," and our concealment of mercenary
and imperial aims under the cloak of virtue and innocence. One really
must confess that it is difficult to say which is the worse.