During the Somme offensive in August of that year I was talking to a
German general--his name won't matter. The man could not understand why
almost the entire world should be the enemy of Germany. I had just
returned to Central Europe from a trip that took me through Holland,
Denmark, and parts of Norway; I had read the English, French, and
American newspapers, with those of Latin Europe and Latin America thrown
in, and I was not in a position to paint for the soldier the picture he
may have been looking for. I told him that the outlook was bad--the
worst possible.
He wanted to know why this should be so. I gave him my opinion.
Not far from us was going on a drumfire which at times reached an
unprecedented intensity. The general looked reflectively across the
shell-raked, fume-ridden terrain. He seemed to be as blue as indigo.
"Tell me, Mr. Schreiner, are we really as bad as they make us out to
be?" he said, after a while.
The question was frankly put. It deserved a frank reply.
"No," I said, "you are not. Slander has been an incident to all wars. It
is that now. The fact is that your government has made too many
mistakes. War is the proof that might is right. Your government has been
too brutally frank in admitting that and suiting its action accordingly.
Belgium was a mistake and the sinking of the _Lusitania_ was a mistake.
You are now reaping the harvest you sowed then."
My questioner wished to know if _sans_ Belgium, _sans Lusitania_ the
position of Germany would be better.
That question was highly hypothetical. I replied that an opinion in that
direction would not be worth much in view of the fact that it could not
cover the actual causes of the war and its present aspects, of which the
case of Belgium and the work of the submarine were but mere incidents.
"Seen objectively, I should say that the invasion of Belgium and the use
of the submarine against merchantmen has merely intensified the world's
dislike of much that is German. I doubt that much would have been
different without Belgium and without the _Lusitania_," was my reply.
"This war started as a struggle between gluttons. One set of them wanted
to keep what it had, and the other set wanted to take more than what it
had already taken."
Not very long afterward General Falkenhayn, the former German chief of
staff, then commander of the Ninth German Army against the Roumanians,
asked a similar question at dinner in Kronstadt, Transylvania. He, too,
failed to understand why the entire world should have turned down its
thumb against the Germans. My reply to him was more or less the same.
A regular epidemic of introspective reasoning seemed to be on. At the
Roumanian end of the Törzburger Pass I lunched a few days later with
Gen. Elster von Elstermann. He also wanted to know why the Germans were
so cordially hated. Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen, whose guest I was at
Heltau, at the head of the Vörös Torony gorge, showed the same interest.
"It seems that there is nothing we can do but make ourselves respected,"
he said, tersely. "I am one of those Germans who would like to be loved.
But that seems to be impossible. Very well! We will see! We will see
what the sword can do. When a race has come to be so thoroughly detested
as we seem to be, there is nothing left it but to make itself respected.
I fear that in the future that must be our policy."
I made the remark that possibly it was not the race that was being
detested. The general is a Bavarian--at least, he was commanding
Bavarian troops.
"So long as these shouters can make common cause with autocratic Russia,
they have no reason to fasten upon the Prussians every sin they can
think of. I am not one of those who think that everything in Germany is
perfect. Far from it. We have more faults than a dog has fleas. Never
mind, though! To lie down and beseech mercy on our knees is not one of
these faults."
I believe that Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen spoke for the army on that
occasion without knowing it. What he said was the attitude of the vast
majority of officers and men.
Shortly before I had interviewed Baron Burian, then Austro-Hungarian
Minister of Foreign Affairs, on that and related subjects. I will state
here that he was the most professorly foreign minister I have met. His
voice never rose above the conversational tone. Though a Magyar, he was
evenness of temper personified.
"I suppose there is nothing we can do in that direction," he said,
slowly. "What the world wishes to believe it will believe. We cannot
change that. Whether it is true or not has nothing to do with the cause
and the outcome of this war. And what difference will it make in the end
whether we are called barbarians or not? I know that a good many people
resent what they say in the Entente newspapers, and I suppose the
Entente public resents a great deal of what is being said in our
newspapers. That is a small matter. There is nothing to be done, for
what we could do would be a waste of effort. Let them talk. No! There is
nothing I wish to say in connection with that. Our position is quite
defensible. But to defend it would merely stir up more talk. By the time
the hostile American newspapers have taken care of all that is being
said against us, they must have used so much paper that it would be a
shame to get them to use more on refutation."
Dr. Arthur Zimmermann, at that time Under-Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, was more aggressive when I suggested the subject for the
substance of an interview. Backing his position with certain documents
that were found in the Belgian state archives, according to which there
was some understanding between the British, French, and Belgians for the
contingency of a German invasion, he held that Germany was entirely
right in demanding access to France through Belgian territory. He was
not sure, however, that doing this had been a good move politically. The
military necessity for the step was something he could not judge, he
said.
Doctor Zimmermann said that the sinking of the _Lusitania_ was a bad
blunder. Responsibility for the act he would not fix, however. The thing
was not within his province. So far as he knew, it had not been the
intention to torpedo the ship in a manner that would cause her immediate
sinking. If a ship was torpedoed in the fore or aft holds she would
float for hours and might even be able to reach port under her own
steam.
"There is a great deal of mania in this Germanophobe sentiment that is
sweeping the world," he said. "For the time being, we are everybody's
_bête noire_. The world must have somebody on whom it can pick. Right
now we are that somebody. Quite recently, during the Boer War, it was
Great Britain. During the Japanese War the entire world, Germany
excepted, made common cause with the Japs against the Russians,
forgetting somehow that this was a war of the yellow race against the
white. To-day we are it. To-morrow it will be somebody else. It is
always fashionable to hate somebody."
That was the cool, diplomatic view of it.
But the Central European public was more inclined to take the view of
the officer I had met on the Somme front. It was chagrined,
disappointed, grieved, stunned.
The question was asked whether the invasion of Belgium had been really
necessary. Many held that the German general staff should have
concentrated a large force on the Belgian border, with orders not to
invade the country until the French had done so.
There can be no doubt that this would have been the better policy. The
contention of the German government that the French contemplated going
through Belgium and had for the act the consent of the Belgian
government and the acquiescence of the British government will not
invalidate my assertion in the least. Granted that such an agreement had
been really made for the purpose of giving the French army certain
tactical advantages, it would be the policy of any wise and calm
government to wait for the execution of the plan. There would be no
Belgian question at all to-day if the Germans had given the French the
chance they are said to have sought. That the French reached out for the
German border _via_ Belgium would not have made the least difference in
the sum of military operations, since it was first a question of keeping
the French army out of Germany, and, secondly, of defeating the French
forces wherever met.
The few days gained, and the slight military advantages alleged to have
been procured, were certainly not worth what Belgium was in the end to
cost the Germans. This is all the more true when it is considered that
the reduction of Liège and other Belgian fortifications might have never
become a necessity, in view of the fact that the documents found in
Brussels have never convinced me that the Belgian government was acting
in bad faith.
It seems that many have overlooked the fact that, between tentative
arrangements made by the Belgian general staff and the allied
governments and an authorization by the Belgian parliament that war
should be declared against Germany, there is a great difference. The
former existed; the latter had yet to be obtained. In case it had been
obtained, in order to give the French troops marching through Belgium
the status they needed, there was still time for the Germans to do what
they did, under martial conditions that would have declared the French
troops in Belgium mere raiders, on the one hand, and Belgium a violator
of her neutral status, on the other. Belgium permitting the use of her
territory by French troops about to fall upon Germany would have been
obliged to also admit German troops, or declare war against Germany.
That case is so simple that few can understand it, as a rule.
That such might have been the initial events of the war began finally to
dawn upon all thinking Germans. It occurred to many now that there was
ample front in Alsace-Lorraine; so much, in fact, that the French
succeeded in taking and holding quite a little of it. There was, also,
Luxembourg.
Though mobilizations are like the avalanche that starts at the
mountain-top and thereafter obeys but one law, gravity, it was not
impossible for the German general staff to divert south-ward the troops
bound for the Belgian border. A day might have been lost. But even that
seems uncertain, since troops were needed along the Belgian border,
anyway, in view of what Berlin claims to have known. No matter how the
thing is looked at, in the end it resolves itself into the question
whether or not there was a difference in meeting French troops in
Belgium or on their own soil. It was the objective of the Germans to
defeat the French army. Whether that was done in the line of the French
fortifications along the Franco-Belgian border, as came to pass, or
whether that was done in the line of the fortifications along the
German-Belgian border, could make little difference to a government and
general staff able to think on its feet.
Since governments at war must of necessity take it for granted that only
the men at the head of affairs have the right to think, this aspect of
the invasion of Belgium has been but rarely treated in public print in
Germany. I will say, however, that several military writers have
attempted to speak on the subject, and have usually been called to task
for their hardihood.
To-day the average German is not at all sure that "Belgium" was
necessary. He has no interest in Belgium, differing in this from his
industrial and commercial lords. Most men and women with whom I
discussed the subject were of the opinion that "one Alsace-Lorraine is
enough."
The greatest shock the German public received was the news that the
_Lusitania_ had been sunk. For a day or two a minority held that the
action was eminently correct. But even that minority dwindled rapidly.
For many weeks the German public was in doubt as to what it all meant.
The thinking element was groping about in the dark. What was the purpose
of picking out a ship with so many passengers aboard? Then the news came
that the passengers had been warned not to travel on the steamer. That
removed all doubt that the vessel had not been singled out for attack.
The government remained silent. It had nothing to say. The press,
standing in fear of the censor and his power to suspend publication, was
mute. Little by little it became known that there had been an accident.
The commander of the submarine sent out to torpedo the ship had been
instructed to fire at the foreward hold so that the passengers could get
off before the vessel sank. Somehow that plan had miscarried. Either a
boiler of the ship or an ammunition cargo had given unlooked-for
assistance to the torpedo. The ship had gone down.
The defense made by the German government was based largely on points in
international law that govern the conduct of raiding cruisers. But the
submarine was not a cruiser. It could not save many lives under any
circumstances.
People shook their heads and said nothing. It was best to say nothing,
since to speak was treasonable.
Nothing weaned the German public so much away from the old order of
government as did the _Lusitania_ affair. The act seemed useless,
wanton, ill-considered. The doctrine of governmental infallibility came
near being wrecked. The Germans began to lose confidence in the wisdom
of the men who had been credited in the past with being the very
quintessence of all knowledge, mundane and celestial. Admiral Tirpitz
had to go. Germany's allies, too, were not pleased. In Austria and
Hungary the act was severely criticized, and in Turkey I found much
disapproval of the thing.
While the greater part of the Central European public accepted that
there had been some necessity for the sinking of the ship, seeing that
she carried freight of a military character, there were many who thought
that in such cases politics and not military necessity should govern
conduct. These people were better politicians than those in the
government. But the others were better militarists and militarism was in
control, being seated more firmly as each day brought more enemies, open
and potential. The case was much like that of a family that may have
difficulties within, but which would set in concerted action upon any
outsider who might think it well to intervene.
This was to be the fundamental quality of German public sentiment
throughout the course of the war. As the ring of enemies grew stronger
and tightened more upon the military resources of the empire, the public
grew harder and harder. The pressure exerted being concentric, it
grouped the German public closer and harder to its center--the
government. It was no longer the absolute devotion of other years which
the Germans brought their government--hardly that. It was the
determination to win the war despite the government and despite what
others thought and held of that government. The fact that government
there must be is too clear to the German to make him act toward his
_Obrigkeit_ with the impetuousness that has characterized events in
Russia, where this was possible only because for decades many there have
held the view that the time of anarchical society was at hand.
This state of mind made possible the acceptance of the heavy sacrifices
which were demanded by the war. The very private in the trenches felt
that he would have to risk all against a world of enemies.
Self-pity in the individual leads usually to maudlinism. The trait is
not foreign to German temperament. Self-pity in the aggregate is a
totally different thing. It is the quality that makes martyrs of men, so
long as there is an audience. It is sentiment minus all sickly
self-indulgence, and that is fortitude--the thing that will cause men to
adhere to an idea or principle even in the face of the stake at the
_auto da fé_.
It was this spirit, also, that caused the German multitude to bear with
patience the many deprivations and burdens due to the war.
In Austria things were slightly different. The Austrian-German is
probably more of Celtic than of Germanic blood. He is more volatile.
Great issues do not hold his attention long. He becomes easily a slave
to habit.
To the Austrian-German the war was never more than a nuisance. It
interfered with his business; above all, his enjoyments; it drove him
from his favorite café and his clandestine lady-love. It upset life for
him thoroughly. What was the preservation of the Austrian Empire to a
man who shared that empire with Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat,
Italian, Bosniak Mussulman, and in a sense with the Magyar and
Roumanian? The feeling of race interest would have to remain foreign to
such a man, just as it was a stranger to all the others who fought at
his side. Of the ten races in the Dual Monarchy only the Slav group
could understand one another without special study of the other's
language. Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, and Bosniak could with
little difficulty master one another's language. German, so far as it
was not familiar in the form of military commands, was unknown to most
of them. Magyar was a total stranger to Slav and German alike, and
Italian and Roumanian meant nothing to any of these.
I remember philosophizing a bit at the execution wall of the
fortress of Peterwardein in Hungary. To the left of me stood
a little gallows--one of those peculiar strangulation implements they
use in Austria-Hungary--descendant of the Spanish _garrote_, I believe.
On the ancient brick wall were the marks left there by chipping steel
bullets. Many a Serb seditionist had seen the light of day for the last
time in that old moat. More of them were behind the grilled peepholes
of the casemate. That morning two or three had died where I stood.
In that there was nothing unusual, perhaps. But on my right was a large
poster, framed with the Hungarian national colors, red, white, and
green. The poster drew attention to a certain paragraph of the treason
laws. It defined treason poignantly, precisely.
I read the paragraph in German, concluded that the Hungarian said the
same, surmised that the Slav languages in the country did not differ
greatly from one another, found that Roumanian I could almost read, and
saw that the Italian version said the same thing as the German. I
suppose French had been left off the poster for the reason that the
Austro-Hungarian inter-monarchical classes, which now use that language
instead of Latin, as in the days of Marie Therese, did not need to have
their attention drawn to the danger of sedition.
The gallows and execution wall seemed fit companions to that poster. One
might not have missed the other when seeing the one, but still there was
harmony between the two. People who do not understand one another, be
that a question of language or temperament, have no business to live
together. But the thing happens often in wedlock, and governments at
peace and leisure say that it is perfectly feasible from the viewpoints
of state interests.
I found that _Das Reich_--the empire--had no meaning to any member of
the Austro-Hungarian group. But what held that conglomerate together?
The Emperor-King.
Soon I found that nothing had changed in Austria-Hungary since the days
when the Empress-Queen Marie Therese, with her infant son in her arms,
and tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, had implored the Magyar nobles
to come to her assistance against Frederick the Great. The Magyar nobles
tore off their fur _kalpacks_, drew their swords, and cried:
"_Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!_"
That was still the mass psychology in the dual monarchy. The old
Emperor-King called to battle, and that was enough. Later the new
Emperor-King renewed the call, and it was still enough.
What the soldiers did in the trenches the civilian population did at
home--a little half-heartedly at times, a little slovenly occasionally,
but reliably at all times.
"We must help our Macedonian brothers. The Bulgars can no longer remain
deaf to their prayers to be relieved of the oppression of the Serbs,"
said the Bulgarian Premier, Doctor Radoslavoff, to me in February, 1915.
In October of the same year he said during an interview:
"There is not enough room for two strong states on the Balkan peninsula.
Yet there must be a strong state if the Balkan problem is to be
eliminated. That strong state will be either Bulgaria or Serbia. _We_
desire that it be Bulgaria. It will be Bulgaria when the Macedonians are
permitted to join her. The time has come when they can do that. For that
reason we go to war on the side of the Central Powers."
The two statements picture Bulgarian mass psychology exactly. The Bulgar
wanted the Macedonian to be one with him nationally, as he is racially.
He wanted the ancient Bulgar capital of Monastir to lie again within
Bulgarland. With that in perspective he had driven the Turk from the
peninsula; for that purpose he wanted to make the Serb small.
I found the same iron determination throughout Bulgaria and in all walks
of life. The _shope_ farmer, the shepherd in the _planina_, the monks at
Rila Monastir, the fishermen at Varna, the city and towns people, were
all for that idea. And in so stern a manner! To me the Bulgar will
always be the Prussian of the Balkan. He is just as morose, just as
blunt, and just as sincere.
I had occasion to discuss Turkey's entry into the European War with his
Majesty, Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V., Ghazi, Caliph of all the
Faithful, etc., etc., etc.
"They [the Allies] deny us the right to exist," said the old man. "We
have the right to exist and we are willing to fight for that. I have led
a very peaceful life always. I abhor bloodshed, and I am sincere when I
say that I mourn for those who died with the ships [the crews of the
battleships _Bouvet_ and _Irresistible_ whom I had seen go down with
their ships on March 18th, an event which the Sultan had asked me to
describe to him]. It must be hard to die when one is so young. But what
can we do? The Russians want the Bosphorus, this city, and the
Dardanelles. They have never belonged to the Russians. If there is
anybody who has a better right to them than we have, it is the Greeks.
We took these things from them. But we will not give them up to anybody
without the best fight the race of Osmanli has yet put up."
Like Scheherazade, I then continued my account of the bombardment.
Said Halim Pasha, then Grand Vizier, expressed himself somewhat
similarly. He was more diplomatically specific.
"The hour of Turkey was come," he said. "That conflagration could not
end without the Allied fleet appearing off the Dardanelles, and the
Russian fleet off the Bosphorus. That would be the smash-up of the
Ottoman Empire. The Entente governments offered us guarantees that for
thirty years Ottoman territory would be held inviolate by them.
Guarantees--guarantees! What do they amount to! We have had so many
guarantees. When Turkey gets a guarantee it is merely a sign that there
is one more pledge to be broken. We are through with guarantees. We
joined the Germans because they offered none."
All this in the most fluent Oxford English a man ever used. Said Halim
is an Egyptian and somewhat directly related to the Great Prophet in the
line of Ayesha.
Enver Pasha, the Prussian of the Ottoman Empire, Minister of War,
generalissimo, Young Turk leader, efficiency apostle, Pan-German, and
what not, told me the same thing on several occasions.
"Nonsense, nonsense!" he would say in sharp and rasping German. "We are
not fighting for the Germans. We are fighting for ourselves. Mark that!
They told us we'd be all right if we stayed neutral. Didn't believe it.
Nonsense! Russians wanted Constantinople. We know them. They can have
it when we are through with it. It was a case of lose all, win all. I am
for win all. Fired five thousand of the old-school officers to win this
war. Will win it. Country bled white, of course. Too many wars
altogether. First, Balkan War, Italian War. Now this. Better to go to
hell with Germans than take more favors from Entente. Those who don't
like us don't have to. Nobody need love us. Let them keep out of our
way. May go down in this. If we do we'll show world how Turk can go down
with colors flying. This is Turkey's last chance."
It took Talaat Bey, then Minister of the Interior, now Grand Vizier, to
epitomize Turkey for me. He is a man of the plainest of people. When the
Turkish revolution of 1908 came Talaat was earning 150 francs a month as
a telegraph operator in Salonica. He saw his chance, and he and Dame
Opportunity have been great friends ever since. At that, he is not a
lean bundle of nerves like Enver Pasha, his great twin in Young Turkism.
He is heavy, good-natured, thick-necked, stubborn, bullet-headed,
shrewd.
"_Très bien, cher frère_" ("We meet on the same pavement"), he said to
me in the best of Levantine French. "I can't say that this war is any
too popular with some of our people. They have had enough of wars, and
revolutions, and trouble, and taxes, and exploitation by
_concessionnaires_, and all that sort of thing. I suppose I would feel
the same way about it were I a Greek or an Armenian. But I am Turk. We
Turks felt that the European War would be the last of us. The Russians
want Constantinople and its waterways. The Italians want Cilicia,
forgetting entirely that the Greeks have priority in claim. I suppose
Thrace would have gone to the Bulgars when lot was cast for the shreds
of the mantle of the Osmanli, and Great Britain would have taken what
was left, which would have been not so little.
"When a man is up against that he does the best he can. That's what we
are doing. It's a mighty effort, _cher frère_, but there is no way out.
We Turks are not ready yet to bow to the audience. We would still remain
in the play awhile. And we are willing to play accordingly. We have all
confidence in the Germans. Some people don't like them. They are
terrible competitors, I have been told. So far we have not done so
poorly with them. We have abolished the capitulations. That is something
for a start. When this war is over we hope to be more the masters of the
Bosphorus and the Dardanelles than we have been since the days of Grand
Vizier Köprülü. It'll be a hard row to hoe before the end is reached.
But we will come out on top. After that we and the Germans will try to
make something of our natural resources. We will build railroads and
factories, irrigate wherever possible, and establish the finest
agricultural schools to be found anywhere. But we will see to it that
Turkey is developed for the benefit of the Ottoman. Tobacco monopolies
and foreign public-debt administrations we hope to banish."
Such is the aim of the Turk. To speak of mass psychology in the Ottoman
Empire is not possible, for the reason that it has more races than
Austria-Hungary and no central personage to hold them together. The old
Sultan is a myth to fully two-thirds of the Ottoman population. To the
Greeks and Armenians he is no more than any other high official of the
government.