Semi-Official Statement in The London Times, Sept. 6.
The declaration of the Allied Governments that they will not conclude
peace separately during the war or demand terms of peace without
previous agreement with each other is an opportune counterstroke to the
campaign initiated by Germany for the purpose of detaching France from
Russia and especially from Britain. Overtures in this sense have
doubtless been made to France.
The German Government has not yet realized the strength of the moral
forces it has ranged against itself by its wanton attack upon European
civilization. It appears to imagine that, after having been sufficiently
"punished" for her temerity in opposing the Kaiser's hosts, France would
be open to a bargain, under which she would be "let off" lightly on
condition that she should agree to become the ally of Germany.
This idea has been clearly expressed of late in the German press. It is
based on the belief that the war was prepared by skillful British
intrigues inspired by jealousy of Germany. German statesmen cannot
conceive that nations should fight for any cause loftier than material
"interests." Hence the constant mistakes of their diplomacy and its
failure to foresee that little Belgium would resist German pretensions
or that England would go to war for "a scrap of paper." Now they imagine
that the determination of France to fight to the last in defense of her
honor and her superior civilization can be undermined by an offer to
mitigate the material losses she may suffer from the war.
The German view was most clearly expressed in the remarkable dispatch to
the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant from its Berlin correspondent, which
was reproduced in The Times of yesterday. Politicians in Berlin, he
wrote,
see in England the land which has brought about the outbreak of the
war by finely played intrigue, in order to let dangerous Russia
bleed herself to death, to the end that against Germany, even a
victorious Germany, she may herself acquire great advantages, both
in trade and on the sea, and in order to make France entirely
dependent upon her. The consequence of this opinion is in the
highest degree remarkable. Whether you speak with a politician or
with a porter or shoemaker, the same wish will always be expressed.
We must, when we have beaten France, offer her peace on very
acceptable terms in order to make her our ally to fight--against
England.
The German error, which the declaration of the Allies should go far to
correct, is all the more remarkable in view of the stipulations of the
Austro-German Treaty of Alliance. Concluded in 1879 by Bismarck and
Andrássy, this treaty still governs the relationship between Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Its first clause runs:
Should, contrary to the hope and against the sincere wish of the
two high contracting parties, one of the two empires be attacked by
Russia, the high contracting parties are bound to stand by each
other with the whole of the armed forces of their empires, and, _in
consequence thereof, only to conclude peace jointly and in
agreement_.
However low the German estimate of the moral cohesion of France, Russia,
and England, German statesmen must be singularly lacking in shrewdness
if they suppose the Allies to be less alive than were Bismarck and
Andrássy to the need for complete co-operation between allies, not only
in war, but also in the negotiation of peace.
The futile German campaign for the detachment of France from her allies
is, indeed, the most striking indication yet forthcoming of the
misgivings with which the resolute action of the Allies is beginning to
inspire the Kaiser and his Government.
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