By M.J. Bonn.
Prof. Bonn is Professor of Political Economy at the University
of Munich and German Visiting Professor to the University of
California. The following article by him was published on Aug.
8, 1914, in the first week of war.
As long as hostile censors muzzle truth there is no use in discussing
the European military situation. Where the ingenuity of American
newspaper men has failed it would be presumptuous for any one to try.
But the question, Why are we at war? can be answered fairly well by
anybody conversant with the facts of the European situation.
We are not at war because the Emperor, as war lord, has sent out word to
his legions to begin a war of world-wide aggression, carrying into its
vortex intellectual Germany, notwithstanding all her peaceful
aspirations.
I may fairly claim to be a representative of that intellectual Germany
which comes in now for a good deal of sympathy, but I must own that
intellectual Germany, as far as I know about her, thoroughly approves of
the Emperor's present policy.
She approves of it not on the principle merely "Right or wrong, my
country"; she does so because she knows that war has become inevitable,
and that we must face that ordeal when we are ready for it, not at the
moment most agreeable to our enemies. If intellectual Germany wants to
develop the moral and intellectual qualities of the German people she
can do so only if there is peace--real peace--not endangered by the fear
of some sudden and treacherous aggression.
We approve of the war because we realize that such a peace was no longer
possible. Some of our critics are trying to show that we wanted a war,
as we wanted the colonial empire of France.
We have, indeed, refused the demand made by England as the price for her
neutrality--that we should not be allowed to take any part of France's
colonial domains, even in case of complete victory.
We refused this stipulation, not because we were after those colonies,
but because a so-called neutral power tried to impose conditions upon us
she would never have dreamed of asking from France.
If we were hankering after conquest we would have made war long ago. We
would have done so during the Morocco crisis, when Russia had not yet
recovered from the Japanese war; when Turkey was still a mighty empire,
ready to take our side, overawing the Balkan States and threatening
Russia; when Rumania was our ally and when France, trying to swallow up
the independent States of Morocco, but put herself morally in the wrong.
We refrained from war not because England supported France. The
developments of the last week have shown that we are ready to face
England, too, when needs must be. We decided for peace because we were
convinced that no amount of colonial aggrandizement could compensate us
for the dangers and horrors of a big European war.
Our diplomatic methods during those days may have been brusque and
annoying, but our aim was peace. Though we are held up continually as
the disturber of European peace, driven on by a mad desire for
territorial aggrandizement, we are the only big European nation which
has not increased her territory during the last twenty-five years.
Russia tried to steal the Far East and is now going half shares with
England in Persia. England annexed the Boer republics and is playing
with Russia for the Persian States.
France has taken Morocco; Italy, Tripoli; Austria-Hungary has formally
annexed Bosnia.
Even little Servia, who is praised just now as the most just and
God-fearing nation, has succeeded in wresting a large part of Macedonia,
inhabited by Bulgarians, from her Bulgarian allies.
The only conquest we went in for was an exchange of a strip of West
Africa, which we got from France as a kind of hush money, for her
Morocco policy, England, Italy, and Spain having taken their payment in
advance.
We have led no war of aggression for new territories, and we are held up
to moral contempt by all those nations who have taken their shares.
We went to war because we had to keep faith with Austria. We do not and
we did not approve of every step our ally has taken. But our idea of a
faithful alliance is not that you can chuck your partner whenever he has
made a mistake, but that you must stick to him through good and evil.
You may upbraid him privately if you dislike his methods; you may give
him a fair warning, but as long as your bargain exists you must stick to
it.
And our alliance with Austria is not a mere piece of political strategy,
not an unholy alliance like that of republican France with despotic
Russia or Anglo-Saxon England with Mongol Japan.
Our States have a common history. We are, as far as the Austrian Germans
are concerned--about a third of the population of Austria--the same
people. We have, and that is perhaps the most decisive point in the
alliance, nearly the same position on the surface of the globe.
We are both inland empires situated in the centre of Europe, surrounded
by many different nations, all of whom may bear some grudge against us.
As long as our joint frontiers are safe we can stand back to back and
face calmly any unnatural confederation like the present one.
We concluded the alliance with Austria because we wanted to safeguard
ourselves against foreign attack; it has turned out the alliance has
involved us in war. We might have avoided the war at present if we had
broken faith with our ally.
It would not have been difficult for us to find some legal quibbles,
like those which Italy, following a policy of very sober national
egotism, is now earnestly exclaiming to all the world.
If we had done so we should have been knaves, but we should have been
fools as well. For surely nobody can believe that the forces
antagonistic to Germany would have ceased to act if we had left Austria
in the lurch.
Neither France nor Russia nor England would have changed their policy.
They might, moreover, have tried to make Austria join in some future
conspiracy against us.
There are three main causes to which the war is due:
1. The French have never forgotten their defeat in 1870 and 1871. They
have always been thirsting for revenge.
2. We are at war because Russia thinks she has a mission on behalf of
the Slavic world; she feels that mission can only be fulfilled by
smashing Germany, the bulwark of Western idea.
3. We are at war because England has returned to her old political
ideals. She means to enforce anew the balance of power and she wants to
cut down Germany to that normal dead-level which alone, she thinks, is
consistent with her own security.
As far as our antagonism to France is concerned, we have always looked
upon it as a regrettable fact which time, perhaps, might do away with.
We are just enough to understand that a country like France, with a
glorious past, a gallant spirit and an undaunted courage, cannot forget
the blow we dealt her forty-three years ago.
We think we have been right in retaking from her Alsace-Lorraine,
belonging originally to the German Empire. But we look with a kind of
envy upon her who succeeded in denationalizing the people of those
provinces to such a degree that we have not yet been able to make them
Germans once more.
We have always regretted that the two most civilized nations in
Continental Europe should be rent asunder by an unforgotten past.
We hoped that the creation of a wonderful African empire might in the
long run soothe French national feeling. We should have been always
willing to come to an understanding on the existing state of affairs,
but though there have been lucky statesmen in France who tried such a
policy, public opinion was too strong for them. French people preferred
to sacrifice the main ideas on which their republican government is
based and made an alliance with Russia.
Religious, national, and political oppression in Russia against Pole,
Jew, and Finn, against workingman and intellectual, is propped up by the
help of liberal thinking France, whose conservatism threw a Western
glamour over Russian ill-deeds.
We have regretted more than words can say it that France has annihilated
herself as a power for the moral improvement of the universe by making
herself a tool of the Russian Juggernaut.
We read in the papers today that after a small frontier engagement in
Alsace-Lorraine the signs of mourning were taken off from the statues
representing Alsatian towns on Parisian squares.
We know in our innermost hearts that they will have to be attached for a
long time to come to those three emblems of human progress for which
France is supposed to stand, liberty, fraternity, equality, if our arms
are not successful.
We realize that the gallant spirit of the French people has furnished
the mainspring which has made this war possible.
We honor her for her courage. For we know well enough that it is she
alone among the partners who runs real risks. We know that she is not
moved by sordid motives. But as we know her unforgiving attitude, as we
knew that she was helping Russia and egging her on against us; that she
was instigating Britain and Belgium as well as Serb and Rumanian, we had
to take her attitude as what it was; as the firm policy of a patriotic
and passionate people, waiting for the moment when they could wipe out
the memory of 1870, putting nationality to the front, sacrificing their
own ideals of humanity.
Would France have given up this attitude if we had not stood by our
Austrian ally? Would she have broken her word to her Russian friend if
we had been a little more conciliatory?
I think we would commit a libel on French honor and on French patriotism
if we assumed that any step on our part could have prevented her from
trying to redress the state of affairs produced by the events of 1871.
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