war with the full effect of our national strength, it must be a war
which satisfies all who take part in it, all who sacrifice anything
for it, in short the whole nation. It must be a national war, a war
carried on with the enthusiasm of 1870, when we were foully attacked.
I still remember the ear splitting, joyful shouts in the station at
Köln. It was the same all the way from Berlin to Köln, in Berlin
itself. The waves of popular approval bore us into the war, whether or
no we wished it. That is the way it must be, if a popular force like
ours is to show what it can do. It will, however, be very difficult to
prove to the provinces and the imperial states and their inhabitants
that the war is unavoidable, and has to be. People will ask: "Are you
so sure? Who can tell?" In short, when we make an attack, the whole
weight of all imponderables, which weigh far heavier than material
weights, will be on the side of our opponents whom we have attacked.
France will be bristling with arms way down to the Pyrenees. The same
will take place everywhere. A war into which we are not borne by the
will of the people will be waged, to be sure, if it has been declared
by the constituted authorities who deemed it necessary; it will even
be waged pluckily, and possibly victoriously, after we have once
smelled fire and tasted blood, but it will lack from the beginning the
nerve and enthusiasm of a war in which we are attacked. In such a one
the whole of Germany from Memel to the Alpine Lakes will flare up like
a powder mine; it will be bristling with guns, and no enemy will dare
to engage this _furor teutonicus_ which develops when we are attacked.
[Illustration: ANTON VON WERNER WILLIAM I ON HIS DEATHBED]
We cannot afford to lose this factor of preëminence even if many
military men--not only ours but others as well--believe that today we
are superior to our future opponents. Our own officers believe this to
a man, naturally. Every soldier believes this. He would almost cease
to be a useful soldier if he did not wish for war, and did not believe
that we would be victorious in it. If our opponents by any chance are
thinking that we are pacific because we are afraid of how the war may
end, they are mightily mistaken. We believe as firmly in our victory
in a just cause as any foreign lieutenant in his garrison, after his
third glass of champagne, can believe in his, and we probably do so
with greater certainty. It is not fear, therefore, which makes us
pacific, but the consciousness of our strength. We are strong enough
to protect ourselves, even if we should be attacked at a less
favorable moment, and we are in a position to let divine providence
determine whether a war in the meanwhile may not become unnecessary
after all.
I am, therefore, not in favor of any kind of an aggressive war, and if
war could result only from our attack--somebody must kindle a fire, we
shall not kindle it. Neither the consciousness of our strength, which
I have described, nor our confidence in our treaties, will prevent us
from continuing our former endeavors to preserve peace. In this we do
not permit ourselves to be influenced by annoyances or dislikes. The
threats and insults, and the challenges, which have been made have, no
doubt, excited also with us a feeling of irritation, which does not
easily happen with Germans, for they are less prone to national hatred
than any other nation. We are, however, trying to calm our countrymen,
and we shall work for peace with our neighbors, especially with
Russia, in the future as well as in the past. When I say especially
with Russia, I express the opinion that France is offering us no
assurances of success in our endeavors. I will, however, not say that
these endeavors are of no use. We shall never pick a quarrel, nor ever
attack France; and in the many little incidents which the liking of
our neighbors for spying and bribing has occasioned we have always
brought about a very courteous and amicable settlement. I should
consider it criminal if we were to enflame a great national war for
such bagatelles. These are instances when one should say: "The
cleverer of the two will yield."
I am referring, therefore, especially to Russia, and here I have the
same confidence of success which I expressed a year ago, and which
this liberal sheet printed in such large type, without any "running
after," or as a German paper very vulgarly called it, "Kow-towing" to
Russia. That time has passed. We no longer sue for love, either in
France or in Russia! The Russian press and the Russian public opinion
have shown the door to an old powerful and reliable friend, which we
were. We do not force ourselves on anybody. We have tried to
reestablish the old intimate relations, but we are running after
nobody. This does not prevent us, however, from observing the
treaty-rights which Russia has with us; on the contrary, it is an
incentive to us to do so.
These treaty rights comprise some which not all our friends recognize
as such. I mean the rights concerning Bulgaria which we won for Russia
in the Congress of Berlin, and which were not contested until 1885.
There is no question for me, who was instrumental in preparing the
congressional decisions, and who joined in signing them, that all of
us were of the opinion at that time that Russia should have a
predominating influence in Bulgaria, after the latter had renounced
East Roumelia, and she herself had given the modest satisfaction of
reducing by 800,000 souls the extent of the territory under her
influence until it included only about three million people.
Following this interpretation of the Congress, Russia until 1885
appointed the prince, a close relative of the imperial house, of whom
at that time nobody believed, or could believe, that he would wish to
be anything but a faithful adherent of the Russian policy. Russia
nominated the minister of war and a great many officers; in short it
was governing in Bulgaria. There was no doubt of this. The Bulgarians,
or some of them, or the prince--I do not know which--were not
satisfied with it. A _coup d'état_ took place--a defection from
Russia. Thus an actual condition has ensued which we are not called
upon to remedy by a recourse to arms, but which cannot in theory alter
the rights which Russia took home from the Congress of Berlin. Whether
there will be difficulties, if Russia should wish to procure her
rights by force, I do not know. We shall neither support nor counsel
violent means, nor do I believe that they are being contemplated--I am
quite sure they are not. If, however, Russia should try her luck along
diplomatic lines, possibly by suggesting the intercession of the
Sultan, the suzerain of Bulgaria, I deem it the duty of a loyal German
policy to cling to the decisions of the Congress of Berlin, and to
interpret them as all of us, without an exception, interpreted them at
that time. The public feeling of the Bulgarians can alter nothing in
this, so far as I am concerned. Bulgaria, the tiny little country
between the Danube and the Balkans is not an object of sufficient
size, I assure you, to attach to it any importance, or to push Europe
for its sake into a war, from Moscow to the Pyrenees, from the North
Sea to Palermo, when no one can foresee its end. After the war we
would conceivably not even know for what we had been fighting.
I may, therefore, declare that the hostility against us shown in the
Russian public opinion, and especially in the Russian press, will not
deter us from supporting, at Russia's request, any diplomatic steps
she may take to regain her influence in Bulgaria. I intentionally say,
at her request. Formerly we have, at times, endeavored to fulfil her
wishes when they had been only confidentially suggested, but we have
seen that some Russian papers immediately tried to prove that these
very steps of the German diplomacy had been the most inimical to
Russia. They actually attacked us for having fulfilled the wishes of
Russia even before they had been expressed. We did this also in
the Congress of Berlin; but it will not happen again. If Russia will
officially request us to support with the Sultan, as suzerain of
Bulgaria, the steps which she may take in her desire to reëstablish in
Bulgaria conditions according to the decisions of the Congress, I
shall not hesitate to advise His Majesty the Emperor to do so. Our
sense of loyalty to our neighbor demands this, for we should cherish
neighborly relations with him, let the present feelings be what they
may. Together we should protect the monarchical institutions which are
common to both of us, and set our faces, in the interest of order,
against all the opponents of it in Europe. Russia's monarch, moreover,
fully understands that these are the duties of the allied monarchs. If
the Emperor of Russia should find that the interests of his great
empire of one hundred million people demand war, he will wage it, I do
not doubt. But I do not believe that these interests can possibly
demand a war against us, nor do I believe that these interests demand
war at the present time at all.
To sum up: I do not believe in an immediate interruption of peace, and
I ask you to discuss this bill independently of such a thought or
apprehension, looking upon it as a means of making the great strength
which God has placed in the German nation fully available. If we do
not need all the troops, it is not necessary to summon them. We are
trying to avoid the contingency when we shall need them.
This attempt is as yet made rather difficult for us by the threatening
newspaper articles in the foreign press, and I should like to admonish
these foreign editors to discontinue such threats. They do not lead
anywhere. The threats which we see made--not by the governments, but
by the press--are really incredibly stupid, when we stop to reflect
that the people making them imagine they could frighten the proud and
powerful German empire by certain intimidating figures made by
printer's ink and shallow words. People should not do this. It would
then be easier for us to be more obliging to our two neighbors. Every
country after all is sooner or later responsible for the windows which
its press has smashed. The bill will be rendered some day, and will
consist of the ill-feeling of the other country. We are easily
influenced--perhaps too easily--by love and kindness, but quite surely
never by threats! We Germans fear God, and naught else in the world!
It is this fear of God which makes us love and cherish peace. If in
spite of this anybody breaks the peace, he will discover that the
ardent patriotism of 1813, which called to the standards the entire
population of Prussia--weak, small, and drained to the marrow as it
then was--has today become the common property of the whole German
nation. Attack the German nation anywhere, and you will find it armed
to a man, and every man with the firm belief in his heart: God will be
with us.
MOUNT THE GUARDS AT THE WARTHE AND THE VISTULA!
September 16, 1894
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D.
[On September 16, 1894, when Bismarck was no longer chancellor, 2,200
Germans from the province of Posen appeared in Varzin to thank him for
his devoted work in the service of the national idea, and to gather
courage from him in their fight against the Polish propaganda which
had gained strength under the new régime at court. The aged
farm-manager, Mr. Kennemann, was the leader and spokesman of the
visitors.]
Gentleman! First I must ask your indulgence, since for two days I have
been upset by an unpolitical enemy called lumbago, an old acquaintance
of mine for sixty years. I hope to get the better of him soon, and
then to be able to stand again fully erect. At present, I must
confess, I am hampered by him.
I begin by replying to the words of the previous speaker with thanks
for the honor done me, addressing myself first of all to him, but then
also to you. The previous speaker is as old as I. We were both born in
1815, and different walks of life have brought us together again here
in Varzin after almost eighty years. The meeting gives me great
pleasure, although I have not run my course as safe and sound as Mr.
Kennemann. When I claim to be an invalid of hard work, he may perhaps
claim the same. But his work was possibly healthier than mine, this
being the difference between the farmer and the diplomat. The mode of
life of the latter is less healthy and more nerve-racking. To begin
with, then, I am grateful to you, gentlemen, and I should be even
more grateful, if we were all to put on our hats. I have lost in the
course of years nature's own protection, but I cannot well cover my
head if you do not do the same.
I thank you that you have spared no exertion to show your national
sentiments in this way. The exertion was considerable, a night in the
train, a second night on the way back, insufficient meals, and
inconveniently crowded cars. The fact that you have stood all this and
were not deterred by it attests the strength of your national feeling,
which impelled you to bear witness to it here. That you did it here
greatly honors me, and I recognize in it your appreciation of my part
in the work of establishing the conditions which we are enjoying in
Germany today, after years of disunion. These conditions may be
imperfect, but "the best is the enemy of the good." At the time when
we shaped these conditions we never asked: "What may we wish?" but
"What must we have!" This moderation in our demands for union was one
of the most important preliminaries of success. By following this path
we have reached the results which have strengthened the pledge that
your home will remain united with the German empire and the kingdom of
Prussia. The proportion, in the meanwhile, of Germans in the
foundation of our structure to the less reliable--I will not say
loose--Polish element has become decidedly more favorable for the
Germans. Our national figures are forty-eight million Germans and two
million Poles; and in such a community the wishes of the two million
cannot be decisive for the forty-eight million, as must be apparent,
especially in an age when political decisions are dependent on a
majority vote as a last resort. The forces which guarantee the union
of these territories are strong enough both in the parliament and in
the army to assure it, and no one can doubt that the proper
authorities are ready to use these forces at the right time. No one
mistakes the meaning, when the announcement is made from the highest
quarters: "Ere we shall yield again Alsace, our army will have to be
annihilated" (and words to this effect have been spoken). The same
thing is true, to an even stronger degree, of our eastern frontier. We
can spare neither, Posen even less than Alsace, and we shall fight, as
the Emperor has said, to the last man, before we renounce Alsace, this
protection of our Southern states. Yet Munich and Stuttgart are not
more endangered by a hostile position in Strassburg and Alsace than
Berlin would be endangered by a hostile position near the Oder. It
may, therefore, be readily assumed that we shall remain firm in our
determination and sacrifice, if it should become necessary, our last
man and the last coin in our pockets for the defense of the German
eastern frontier as it has existed for eighty years. And this
determination will suffice to render the union between your province
and the empire as positively assured as things can be in this world.
We confined our demands to what was necessary for our existence and
what enabled the big European nation which we are to draw a free
breath. We did not include territories where German used to be spoken,
when this had been largely due to a propaganda of the German courts.
More German used to be spoken in the East, North-east, and elsewhere
than today. Remember our ally, Austria, and how familiar German was
there in the days of Joseph II. and of the Empress Maria Theresa, when
German was a greater force in parts of Hungary than it is or can be
today. But, for everything we gave up in the shape of a linguistic and
outward union, we have found rich compensation in the intensity of a
closer union. If the older gentlemen will think back to the time
before Emperor William I., they will realize that the lack of love
among the various German tribes was much greater at that time than it
is today. We have made notable progress in this direction, and, when
we compare the unequivocal expressions of opinion from Bavaria and
Saxony today with the familiar sentiments of earlier times, we must
say that Germany, which for the past one hundred years had lagged
behind the other people of Europe in national development, has rapidly
caught up with them. Forty years ago we were far behind all other
nations in national feeling and love of one another. Today we are no
longer behind them.
Our fellow-countrymen from the Rhine, from the Alpine lake and the
Saxon Elbe are attached to one another in affectionate sympathy, not
only when they meet abroad, but also at home. A united people has been
created in a remarkably short time. This proves that the medical cure
which we employed, although it was of blood and iron, lanced only a
sore, which had come to a head long ago, and that it gave us speedy
comfort and good health. God grant that the cure will be lasting and
subject to no change. How far reaching it is has been proved by the
testimonials which I have received since I gave up my office. They
have come from all people,--from Baden, Bavaria, Saxony, Suabia,
Hessen, and from all the districts of Prussia outside the provinces of
Frederick the Great. These entirely voluntary manifestations, which
were arranged by no one, and which not infrequently came to me at
rather inconvenient and inopportune times, have impressed me with the
existence of national harmony. Every one of them has given pleasure to
my patriotic heart, and has borne witness to a common feeling existing
in all German races--this much I wished to say concerning the
stability of the political and national union of your province today.
We often sing "Firm is the stand of the faithful guards on the Rhine,"
but they are standing equally firm at the Warthe and the Vistula. We
cannot spare an acre of land in either direction, for the sake of
principle if for nothing else. The previous speaker referred to the
attempts which had been made, as a result of the movement of 1848, to
shake loose the union in which we were then living in Prussia and
Germany, and to disregard our boundary lines. These attempts of
satisfying the wishes of our Polish neighbors ended with the action
of the Prussian general von Colomb, who closed the gates of Posen
to the Polish troops which, in response to promises made in Berlin,
had been raised under the Prussian General von Willisen. We were
obliged to conquer with Prussian troops, and in a bloody war, the
army of the insurgents who fought bravely and honorably. I wish to
add that even that war was not fought with the Polish people as such,
but with the Polish nobility and their following. I remember speaking
to some Polish soldiers of the 19th regiment, I believe, in Erfurt
at that time, that is in 1850, who called the opponents only
"_Komorniks"_--the Polish word for "contract-laborers." We should,
then, not deceive ourselves into believing that even today the number
of those who are opposed to the two races in Posen and in West Prussia
living together peacefully is as large as statistics may claim.
This brings me to the second point touched upon by the previous
speaker, the two races living together peacefully. I believe that many
of you have in your employ laborers and servants who speak Polish, and
that you are of the opinion that no danger comes from this lower
social stratum of the population. Living together with them is
possible, and no disturbance of the peace starts with them. They do
not promote any movements hostile to us. I do not even mention the
fact that they are possibly of another race than the nobility, whose
immigration into the Slavic districts is lost in the obscure past. The
statistical numbers, therefore, of those opposed to a peaceful
communion of both races must be lessened by the large number of
laborers and farmers. The lower classes are, in the bulk, satisfied
with the Prussian government, which may not be perfect always, but
which treats them with greater justice than they were accustomed to in
the times of the Polish republic of nobles. They are satisfied with
this. It was not part of my programme that the commission on
colonization should pay special attention to small holdings of
German-speaking settlers. The Polish peasants are not dangerous, nor
does it make any difference whether the laborers are Polish or
German. The chief thing was to create crown-lands among the big
estates, and to rent them to men whom the State could permanently
influence. The desire for quick sales and colonization emanated from
other competent quarters than myself. It was impossible for me to
supervise these measures after I had instigated them.
The difficulties which I met in the forty years of my Polish diplomacy
did not start with the masses of Polish laborers and peasants, but
were, I believe, occasioned largely, if not exclusively, by the Polish
nobility with the assistance of the Polish clergy. Perhaps this latter
term is too narrow, for I know of instances when German priests
assisted in the Polish propaganda for the sake of peace. This is a
peculiarity of our race--and I do not exactly wish to condemn it--that
we often place our religion above our nationality. The very opposite
is true of our opponents, the Poles and the French people, who regard
their nationality more highly than their religion. We are suffering
from this habit. We possess, however, a certain material
counter-weight, provided the State government unreservedly supports
the German element. The religious element has great weight in the
family circle and among women, especially the Polish women, whom I
have always greatly admired. The minister has a freer access to them
than the local governor or the judge. There will, however, always be a
powerful weight in the scales, when the Prussian government exercises
its influence with firm determination and so clearly that doubts for
the future are impossible. _Vestigia terrent!_ we may say, when with
1848, no--not 1848, I mean 1831-32--the attention paid to the Polish
nation became almost more pronounced in Germany than that given to the
German element. Since then we have surely been able to register
progress in our politics. Now I must ask your indulgence for a moment
on account of my lumbago. (Voices: Sit down, Your Highness.) Sitting
down does not help me. I know this visitor from years of experience. I
was speaking of the possibility of having the two races living
peacefully side by side. This is not impossible, for in Switzerland we
see three different nationalities--the German, Italian, and French
Swiss--deliberate quietly and without bitterness on matters of joint
interest. In Belgium we see the Germanic Flemish form a united State
with the Gallic Walloons, and we perceive that it is possible under
circumstances to live peacefully together even with the Poles, when we
remember East Prussia, where the Polish Masures, the Lithuanians, and
the Germans work together harmoniously. Because nobody has incited the
people there, no national ill feeling has appeared among them. It is
true, to be sure, that the Catholic priest, with his peculiar
interests, is unknown there. But look at your neighbors in Upper
Silesia. Have the two races not lived there in peaceful communion for
centuries, although the religious differences exist there also? What
is it, then, that Silesia has not, and that has made it possible for
us to live there, through centuries, in religious harmony? I am sorry
to have to say it, it is the Polish nobility and the clergy of the
Polish propaganda. The Polish nobles are, no doubt, very
influential--more so with the Poles than the Germans--but the
statistical figures are much larger than the actual number of our
aggressive Polish opponents with whom we have to count.
The nobles are thinking of the time when they were all-powerful, and
they cannot give up the memory of conditions when they ruled the king
as well as the peasants. The Polish nobles, however, are surely too
highly educated to believe that the conditions of the old Polish
republic of nobles could ever return, and I should be astonished if
the Polish peasants knew the history of Poland so badly that they did
not recoil from the possibility of a return to the old state of
affairs. The peasants must say to themselves that a "wet year," as the
farmers put it, would be their lot if the nobles regained their power.
Among the national-Polish representatives that are elected, you
generally meet only noblemen. At least I cannot remember having seen
a Polish farmer as a representative in the Reichstag or in the diet.
Compare this with the election results in German districts. I do not
even know whether there are Polish burghers in our sense of the word.
The middle classes in the Polish cities are poorly developed.
Consequently, when we reduce our opponents to their proper size, we
grow more courageous in our own determination; and I should be very
glad if I could encourage those who on their part are adding to the
encouragement of the Polish nobles. I feel, gentlemen, that I am of
one mind with you, who have traveled the hard road hither. I have no
influence with other elements, but we shall not give up hope in spite
of all vicissitudes.