IS IT THE PEOPLE'S WAR?
German Socialism--German Unity--A Reverse Political System--Business
Men without Political Influence--A Voice from the People--The German
War Lord.
In America there is no greater conflict of opinion than over the
question of the relations of the German people to the present war.
There are those who declare most emphatically that when the German
people once understand this war there will be revolution in Germany,
uprising of the socialists, and the sure overthrow of the Hohenzollern
dynasty.
Such opinions are not well based, and their authors do not understand
the German temperament, the principles of German government, German
organization, or German Socialism.
Socialism in Germany is neither of the destructive order of that in
Russia, nor of the wild varieties found in America; nor has it even the
order of the Socialism of England. Twenty years ago the Socialism of
Germany might be recorded as against the invasion of Belgium, and the
bonds of Socialism existing between Belgium, France, and Germany might
have interfered with the war programme.
But Socialism in Germany has passed the stage of labor-agitation.
Indeed, it has been transformed in the reign of the present Kaiser from
agitation against capitalism within the empire to agitation for the
expansion of Germany in the territory of its neighbors throughout the
world, that German labor may, through German arms, enter into and
possess the land without. German Socialism is thus allied with German
militarism, and it has also become the respectable party of opposition
in the Reichstag. The middle classes of Germany of late years have
voted for Socialistic candidates whenever they disagreed with the
government. It is the party of protest and of opposition. It is a
party of the empire, not of any world socialistic movement.
Germany is thoroughly knit together in support of its government and
its Kaiser. The German people do not seek a constitutional government
like England, or a republican form of government like France or the
United States. They believe their situation and safety in the middle
of Europe call for a more autocratic form of government, and one not
too quickly responsive to popular sentiment.
Germany was made by Bismarck and the armies of Von Moltke supporting
the Hohenzollern dynasty. This made Prussia the center of Germany
industrially, financially, and as a military power, and at the heart
and seat of power, in both industry and finance, sits the same dynasty.
The Emperor is the center of industry, finance, and military
power,--three degrees of empire, each distinct in itself, but each
intertwined with the others, but so intertwined that the word of power,
command and influence comes down from the military seat of power
through finance and into industry. Industry does not speak back
through the powers of finance to the military center. The flow of the
German dispensation of power or of governmental organization runs
downward from the Kaiser. No power goes up from the people or industry
or finance to the war lord at the center.
The Germans know no other system of government. Outside of Prussia, in
the more than thirty states of Germany, there was the local reign. Now
over all is the reign of the Kaiser. The present generation has seen a
united Germany become great among the nations of the earth. The
English-speaking people cannot appreciate the feudalism and the fealty
of the German people to their war lord. They say, "Are not the German
people great thinkers; do they not know that the power of government is
from the governed?" It is inconceivable to them that the Germans
should have a reverse system.
My last word from Germany was with an American lady who has been more
than one hundred days nursing the wounded from the battle-line, and
she, singular as it may appear, assisted on both sides of that
battle-line. She assisted to dress the wounds of French soldiers where
the lacerations of shrapnel had broken one entire side of a human
system, face, eye, ear, jaw, arm, leg; yet that soldier lived. She
dressed wounds where more than twenty bullets pierced a single human
frame. Yet that soldier will go back to the front. French boys in
their 'teens had died in her arms at the hospital,--the hospital where
thousands of wounded pass through every month,--and she had taken back
to the parents in Paris the dying message. She had been in the German
and the French trenches on the line of battle. She had crossed the
lines and been under arrest. She had seen the horrible picture of
freight-loads of German corpses on German railroads,--corpses
unhelmeted, with uncovered faces, but in boots and uniform, tied like
cordwood in bunches of three and standing upright on their way to the
lime-kilns. She had nursed the wounded German soldier in his delirium,
crying in German, which she well understood, over the horrors which
still pursued him as he remembered the face of the wife and saw the
agony of the children as he stood in line and by direction of his
superior officer shot the husband dead. He moaned in his delirium over
the picture. The faces of the wife and children haunted him, but he
cried out that his superior officer had ordered him to do it; and she
said, "No, these people are not responsible; the dogs of war have
driven them as sheep into the slaughter-pens. They are beaten, but
fight for the Fatherland. It is their duty and they obey."
And how has it all come about? Simply thus: The Saxon was a Saxon, the
Bavarian was a Bavarian; each suddenly found himself a German and part
of a world-power. Bismarck and Von Moltke had a policy for the
Hohenzollerns; it was a united Germany, and they left it a defensive
Germany.
There was not in the brain of Bismarck or of Von Moltke, or of the
Emperor under whom they prosecuted the wars against Austria, Denmark,
and France, any idea of Germany as the Conqueror of the world.
"Never be at enmity with the Russian Bear," was the saying at the time
of Bismarck and before. "Always contrive that yours shall be a
defensive war; let the other party attack," was the declaration of
Bismarck.
The policy of Bismarck was: "If you have an enemy, make friends with
all the other powers, so that your enemy be isolated diplomatically and
politically."
The present Kaiser has reversed every one of the great policies of
Bismarck and of his ancestors that made a united and great Germany.
There is not a language in the world to-day outside the Teutonic that
speaks the praise of Germany. Defensive German alliances are broken
because the present Kaiser insisted that offensive and defensive are
one and the same. In offensive action the Triple Alliance breaks;
while the Triple Entente becomes, for defense, nine nations instead of
three.
The German people are not responsible for this situation. Their form
of government has not yet permitted full, free, and effective
expression of opinion; nor does the German seek full political
expression. He loves his fireside and his family, and prefers his home
ease and philosophy. He has confidence in his Kaiser and his
government; and his whole training for a generation has been to make
him an obedient part of a military power.
It is gratifying to find that not the German people, but the German
Kaiser, is responsible for this war; and it is also gratifying to find
that there are doubts as to his full mental responsibility.
I have had closer associations with the German people than with the
French, and have liked them better as a people: they are so
industrious, efficient, and ambitious in the world's work. I know the
German country better than the country of France or England. I think I
understand something of the over-self-sufficiency of the English, and I
have no prejudice against the Germans, or even their form of
government, which may be better adapted to their needs than a broader
democracy. But of the German modern war-philosophy the world outside
can hold but one opinion. It might have been supported as a purely
tentative or speculative philosophy, but it could have been promoted in
practice only by a crazy ruler. I was not therefore surprised to find
circulated in Paris an article by an American physician which I had
permitted to be published in America at the outbreak of the war,
showing the mental weaknesses and hereditary taints of Germany's war
lord.
I recall him from memory of bygone years, and as I saw him in Berlin
when his grandfather was still on the throne--a young man of about
twenty, returning from the races and dashing through the Tiergarten
holding the reins of six coal-black horses.
I said to myself: "That young man will cut a dash yet." And I still
see, in higher light than before, those six coal-black horses--the
horses of death.
Recently I read pages of his writings, speeches, and declarations, and
there is not for the world an uplifting or new thought within them all.
What appears to be new is the echo of an age that was supposed to be
long past--when might was rule and valor was religion.
"There is but one will, and that is mine," said the Kaiser, addressing
his soldiers; but it has been the keynote to his diplomacy wherever it
has appeared, either in pushing a commercial treaty on Russia in her
hour of distress, forcing Italy into the Triple Alliance, or dictating
the terms of the Austrian ultimatum to Servia, so that it would be
impossible of fulfilment.
What is there of world-progress in the declaration of the present
German Emperor, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the
Kingdom of Prussia,--
"In this world nothing must be settled without the intervention of
Germany and of the German Emperor."