THE ARMY AND NAVY—THE WAR PARTY.
I.
Prussia is before all else a military State, and since 1871 Prussian
militarism has laid its heavy hand upon Southern Germany, the
inhabitants of which were formerly noted for their peaceful ways. The
warlike spirit of the Prussians is the fruit of the statesmanship
pursued by their rulers, those Electors of Brandenburg who afterwards
became Kings of Prussia. The Elector of the Thirty Years’ War period,
George William, had played but a humble part in that struggle. His sole
desire was to keep his States independent, free from the grasp of the
Swedes and of the Imperial troops, and he trimmed ingloriously between
Gustavus Adolphus and Ferdinand II. The Great Elector, Frederick
William, was the first to embody the territorial ambitions of his
house. In order to realize them, he saw the necessity of a powerful
standing army, out of all proportion to the size and status of his
Electorate. These troops enabled him to figure among the adversaries
of Louis XIV., and, at the Battle of Fehrbellin, to strike a deadly
blow at the power and reputation of the Swedes in Germany. The Prussian
army had now vindicated itself as an effective fighting force. It was
the means by which this martial prince extended his territory and made
it large enough to be converted into a kingdom under his successor,
Frederick I., who obtained a royal crown from the Emperor Leopold as
the price of his military and financial support.
The second King of Prussia, Frederick William I., although not of an
enterprising nature, applied himself to enlarging and perfecting the
instrument which, in the hands of his son Frederick II. (the Great),
was destined to become the finest army in Europe and the model that
other nations did their best to copy. After fighting victoriously,
however, under the command of a great leader, against a coalition of
three powerful monarchies, and showing itself more than a match for
the best troops that Russia, Austria, and France could muster, the
Prussian army suddenly lost its pre-eminent position. The eclipse was
so complete that it seemed at first to be final.
The Prussians were repulsed at Valmy, and afterwards proved helpless
against the conscripts of the Republic. In spite of this, their
military prestige was not yet seriously impaired. Thanks to the genius
of Napoleon and the wonderful efficiency of his soldiers, it was
entirely shattered in the campaign of 1806. It was not only the battle
of Jena, but another humiliating defeat, inflicted the same day by one
of Napoleon’s subordinates on the King of Prussia’s troops, that proved
the decadence of the latter and the incapacity of their generals,
trained in the school of Frederick the Great. The disaster of Jena is
readily acknowledged in Berlin, but the German historians have little
to say about the day of Auerstädt, the true Nemesis for Rossbach.
Prussian militarism raised its head once more during the war of
liberation. It was the life and soul of the resistance to Napoleon,
and contributed its share towards the final deliverance. Still, we
must beware of overrating the part played by Blücher, Scharnhorst,
Gneisenau, Yorck, Bülow, and the other generals of Frederick William
III. in 1813 and 1814 The Corsican was vanquished by his own
blunders—the exhausting war in the Peninsula, where the best blood of
France was spilt to no purpose, and the ill-fated Russian campaign.
During the early summer of 1813, the Russians and the Prussians,
in several hard-fought battles, met with nothing but defeat. The
emancipation of Germany would have been far from assured, if Austria,
who had completed her preparations, had not joined hands with Russia
and Prussia to overwhelm Napoleon. During the wars of the French
Empire, it is the Archduke Charles and the Austrian troops, not the
Prussian armies, that can claim the honour of having offered the most
stubborn resistance to the great conqueror. In the same way, during
the Hundred Days, old Blücher—“Marshal Forward,” as the Germans call
him—is not entitled to the first place among the heroes of Waterloo.
The chief glory may fairly be assigned to Wellington and to the bulldog
tenacity of the British.
A long second period of decadence set in for Prussian militarism after
1815, under the peaceful reigns of Frederick William III. and William
IV. Its decline was particularly apparent at the time of the inglorious
Convention of Olmütz. To William I. fell the task of re-forging the
chain of great Hohenzollern warrior-princes, broken at the death of
Frederick the Great. Not that he himself was endowed with the talents
of a commander-in-chief; when it came to actual fighting he was merely
a soldier. But he had a faculty more precious in a king than the art
of leading an army: he was an excellent judge of men, and could choose
the most suitable tools for carrying out the plans he had sanctioned.
William I. made Bismarck head of the Prussian ministry, leaving him
a free hand for conducting the bold policy that was to establish the
greatness of the Prussian royal house on the basis of German unity, and
then gave him two indispensable fellow-workers—Roon, the reorganizer
of the army, and Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff. Strictly
speaking, the future Field-Marshal did not evolve any new system of
strategy, but he had absorbed the teachings of Frederick the Great and
the object lessons of Napoleon so thoroughly that he became in his turn
a master in the art of war.
As for Prussian militarism, or, in other words, the military caste,
the victories of 1866 and 1870 completely turned its head. It came to
regard itself as the very embodiment of the nation. Never had it been
more powerful or more domineering than in the generation preceding the
present war. Woe to the civilian who ventured to criticise the army, or
got in an officer’s way on the pavement, or did not cringe before the
fiat of a corps commander! The recent Zabern affair showed us that the
German military can allow themselves anything. On this occasion, public
opinion finally gave its verdict in their favour, notwithstanding the
protests (speedily silenced!) of the Reichstag.
II.
In striving to maintain the whole German army at the high level
attained by the Prussian, William II. has followed in the footsteps
of his grandfather. He has not, however, been so happy in his choice
of men; Moltkes and Roons are hard to find at any time. During his
reign, as during that of William I., the Great General Staff and the
War Office have worked in close unison. The former, to which officers
are appointed after a careful sifting, has to make elaborate plans
for strategical operations against whatever enemy the German army
may have to face; the latter’s task is to organize and improve the
forces, and to introduce and defend in the Reichstag the war budget
and any military measures that may be required. To these two bodies
we must add a third, more secret in its workings, less easy to trace,
but in certain cases a decisive factor—the Emperor’s war Cabinet. The
promotion and retirement of officers is one of its most formidable
functions. After the annual manœuvres, it carries out the sentences
passed by the sovereign upon those who have failed through incapacity,
illness, or bad luck. In the Emperor’s name it may intervene in any
question that concerns the service. Its influence is even extended to
foreign affairs, if the army is called upon to play a part in their
shaping.
Soon after the opening of the twentieth century there began to
appear, chiefly in Prussia, a steady drift of opinion in favour of
fresh European conflicts. The adherents of this creed were known
abroad under the comprehensive name of “war party.” They were drawn,
in the first place, from the field-marshals and “colonel-generals”
(_Generalobersten_), the generals on the active list, the aides-de-camp
of the Emperor, the hotheads of the Staff, and the more ambitious
officers of all grades. To these must be added the retired army
men, reactionary squireens who lived on their estates, and saw the
ever-growing taxation accompanied by a rise in the national wealth, in
the standard of comfort and luxury, while their own incomes could not
show a corresponding advance. These malcontents held that a little
blood-letting would be of great service in purifying and strengthening
the social body, and in restoring to the patrician caste that
preponderance which was its due, and which seemed likely to be usurped
by the self-made plutocrats of industry and commerce.
Apart from the military element, which naturally carried most weight,
the war party included a large number of civilians—the majority of the
high Prussian officials; the true-blue Conservatives in the Reichstag
and the “Conservative Imperialists,” together with the members of
other middle-class groups; and the patriotic writers, the journalists,
the intellectual cream of the universities and schools. All these
were obsessed with the vision of a Germany subjugating the world by
her arms, as she thought to have already conquered it by her superior
culture and her incomparable science. Their unhealthy ambitions were
encouraged by a cantankerous Press, jealous of the races that embody
the civilization of the past, and choosing to regard them as decadent
rivals of the noble Germanic stock, which was destined to give an
enslaved world the opportunity of enjoying the civilization of the
future.
The war party was faithfully supported by the _Wehrverein_ (Union of
Defence), a military league which in the space of a few years spread
its powerful roots over the whole of Germany. The _Wehrverein_ did not
confine itself to the task of defending the lawful interests of the
army. The proposals put forward at its periodical meetings dealt not
only with reforms that seemed desirable in the supply of munitions,
in the organization of troops, and in the technical departments, but
also with the political designs that the army would be called upon to
carry out. Finally, the warlike spirit was kept alive among the lower
classes by numerous associations of veterans, the _Kriegsvereine_ (War
Leagues). Their ominous name is enough to show that they strove their
hardest to counteract the growing force of pacific tendencies among a
nation in which the amazing development of its industry and commerce
had bred a feverish desire to amass wealth.
The demands of the war party found expression in a literature that was
half political, half military. The writers openly advocated a European
conflict as the only means of completing the work of Bismarck—that
is to say, of giving Germany her rightful place at the head of the
nations. A typical product of this school is the now celebrated book by
the retired cavalry general, Friedrich von Bernhardi, entitled _Germany
and the Next War_. In spite of the lofty moral and philosophical tone
that he often adopts, the author is more daring and outspoken than any
of his fellow-scribes. Among all that has been published in the last
few years regarding the crucial question of Germany’s future, this
book of Bernhardi’s has proved the most prophetic, for war has been
declared for the very reasons to which he drew attention and for the
very objects which he advocated. The foreign public was unwise in not
paying more attention at the time to these danger-signals. The work of
the military philosopher has become a text-book for German patriots;
his sophisms have poisoned the mind of the present generation.
The hothouse atmosphere in which politics were carried on for three
years before the war was calculated to force the growth of the
war party, and these fanatics never ceased egging on the Imperial
Government towards the goal of their multifarious efforts. There is no
doubt, moreover, as to their sway over the mind of a monarch who lends
a willing ear to advice that chimes in with his own ambitions. Although
the party has no regular organization, although it has worked in the
dark, trying to disclaim all responsibility, it must be regarded, after
the Emperor, as one of the chief agents in the present catastrophe.
III.
Before the war, the Chief of the General Staff, after the retirement
of Count von Schlieffen, was General von Moltke, nephew of the great
Field-Marshal. Was it merely his professional merits that determined
the Emperor’s choice, or had he partly to thank the famous name that
he bears? Those who know him lean towards the latter view. Defects
and vices, however, are more often inherited than talents, and a
name is not a fetish that brings victory. Physically, General von
Moltke does not resemble his uncle, the spare old man of the most
familiar portraits. He is tall, massive, and powerfully built, with a
haughty face and a disdainful expression. Notwithstanding his chilly
politeness, the scorn that every typical Teuton feels for foreigners
can be read in his eyes.
As to the moral outlook of this leading figure in the military world,
a passage from a report by M. Jules Cambon, dated 6th May 1913, will
suffice to give an idea: “‘We must throw overboard,’ said General von
Moltke before some of his countrymen, ‘all the stock commonplaces about
the responsibility of the aggressor. As soon as there is a ten-to-one
chance in favour of war, we must forestall our opponent, commence
hostilities without more ado, and mercilessly crush all resistance.’”
It was not merely a rapid assault that the General recommended, but
a surprise attack before the declaration of war, as if, in a duel,
one were to strike one’s opponent before he had had time to assume a
posture of defence. The sudden violation of Belgian neutrality, after
our Government had been allowed one night to think matters over, was
one of these murderous blows approved by the Chief of the General Staff.
In the summer of 1913 General von Heeringen, who was far from popular
in Parliament, gave up his post as head of the War Office. His
successor, General von Falkenhayn, is exceptionally young for his
rank and position. Who would have foretold such a rapid rise for this
officer at the time when, heavily in debt and threatened with dismissal
from the army, he had the good fortune to become attached to the China
expeditionary force of 1900? His luck being backed by intelligence, he
came under the favourable notice of Marshal von Waldersee, the leader
of the expedition. Falkenhayn’s debts were paid, and he recovered
his place in the good books of the Emperor. A finely chiselled face,
brilliant but disconcerting eyes, great fluency of speech (as he showed
by getting a hearing in the Reichstag for his defence of the outrages
committed by officers at Zabern)—these are the most salient features of
this newcomer in the political world of Berlin. His restless ambition
and his rivalry with General von Moltke, who was apt to lord it over
him in his early days at the War Office, have only come to light since
the outbreak of the war.
On the evening of November 6, 1913, at a dinner given to King Albert at
Potsdam, the Chief of the General Staff said to the Belgian military
attaché: “War with France at an early date is inevitable, and the
victory of the German army is certain, even if it is purchased by
tremendous sacrifices and by a few preliminary set-backs. Nothing can
stop the _furor teutonicus_ once it has been let loose. The German
nation will rise as one man to take up the gauntlet which the French
people will have the insane foolhardiness to throw down.” The General
omitted to add—the remark was, from his point of view, too trite a one
to make—that the war of 1870, with its relatively small armies, would
be mere child’s play in comparison with the struggle which Germany was
preparing. He also forbore to speak of the ferocious methods which the
German generals would be ordered to employ.
It was not unknown abroad, however, at any rate among jurists familiar
with the work of the Hague Conferences, that there existed in Germany
a “Code for War on Land” (_Kriegsgebrauch im Landeskriege_), published
in Berlin by the Staff in 1902. The handbook, it was realized, had
been written in quite a different spirit from that which animated the
labours of the two Conferences. This special war-code for the use of
German officers openly condemned all humanitarian ideas, all tender
regard for persons or property, as incompatible with the nature and
object of war; it authorized every means of attaining that object,
and it left the choice and practice of those means to the entire
discretion of the corps commanders. Still, however uneasy the exponents
of international law may have felt as to the spread of such theories
in Germany, they were reassured by the Imperial Government’s solemn
acceptance of the 1907 Hague Convention and of the moral principles
laid down therein. Accordingly it is with feelings of surprise and
horror, shared by the whole civilized world, that they look on at the
war waged in the Emperor’s name.
The conduct of this war has indeed been ruthless in the extreme.
Almost from the very outset the invader has worked as much havoc
as possible, in order to terrorize the inhabitants and to reduce
them more quickly to submission. The Germans of 1870 had shown too
much tenderness towards the civilian, too much respect for historic
monuments, too much consideration for private property. Murder, arson,
and pillage have followed in the wake of their descendants. We have
learnt how detachments of soldiers, specially drafted for this purpose
from the engineers’ corps, used various incendiary appliances to
destroy unoffending little towns and villages—Louvain, Tamines, Rethy,
and other places in Belgium, and Orchies in France. Belgium was the
first victim of this _furor teutonicus_ of which General von Moltke
boasted—Belgium, who, after putting up a heroic fight against her
violators, expected to be treated as a conquered country, but not to be
flung as a prey to the disciplined brutes of the invading army. This is
one of the processes on which the General relied for winning an early
victory, that victory of which he spoke with the faith of a zealot.
It has turned out, however, that these abominable methods, instead of
forcing the Belgians to confess themselves beaten, have only steeled
them to a more vigorous resistance.
Were there not other secret processes, other revelations of
frightfulness, that the German General Staff had up its sleeve? Among
the hidden weapons that it has wielded with the greatest effect is
its vast network of spies, established among Germany’s neighbours,
among all her supposed enemies, at every point where it could be of
any service. The foresight displayed in this system, the perfection to
which it was brought, were marvellous. Even the level-headed English
were almost thrown off their balance, when they found out how well
these emissaries had done their work, not only round the coast of
Britain, but even at the uttermost ends of the Pacific, on the distant
shores of Chile.
IV.
But the advantages which, according to our opponents, were destined
to ensure their triumph, were the superiority of their strategy and
tactics, and the careful preparation of their army down to the last
detail, far beyond anything that their rivals had achieved.
“The idea is prevalent abroad,” said General von Moltke in 1910 to
General Jungbluth, the commander of King Albert’s household troops,
“that our General Staff is constantly preparing plans of campaign,
with an eye to all the possibilities of a European war. This is a
mistake. We occupy ourselves with the question of the transport,
concentration, and provisioning of our troops, and the employment of
the new means of communication. You would be astonished if you saw
the offices of our General Staff. They look like the head offices of
a railway.” The only conclusion to be drawn from these words is that
the plan of the 1914 campaign, the plan for an invasion of France and
a rapid onslaught, had long since been worked out, and was reposing
in a secret drawer somewhere in the Königsplatz building. We may even
surmise that the march on Paris, pursued across the central plains of
Belgium and the valley of the Meuse in order to turn the defences of
the French frontier, had been traced by the aging, but still steady,
hand of Marshal von Moltke. It is characterized by those wide-sweeping
movements that he loved; in fact, the whole scheme bears the impress of
his personality. Nevertheless, the methods by which it was carried out
and the idea of an ultimatum to an unsuspecting neutral country must
be ascribed to his nephew. I have good grounds for believing this, in
view of Herr Zimmermann’s last words to me on the 5th of August: “Since
the mobilization, all the power has been in the hands of the military
authorities; all the decisions issue from them.” By this statement he
implied that the responsibility for the invasion of Belgium lay with
the General Staff and with its chief.
The General Staff and the War College for the training of officers
had clung faithfully to the strategy which had led to the victories of
the past—that of bringing up superior forces with all speed to a given
point, and in this way breaking the enemy’s line of defence; or that of
outflanking and surrounding one of his wings, and thus overcoming his
resistance by a flank attack. This method of going to work presupposes
an offensive. Moltke, like Napoleon, held that merely by taking the
offensive one has gone halfway towards winning the battle. These maxims
were in harmony with the old Prussian traditions, as well as with
the qualities instilled into the Prussian or Prussianized soldier,
and, finally, with the speedy mobilization of the Imperial army. The
decisive victories which in the space of a fortnight had brought the
Bulgarians almost to the gates of Constantinople, once more bore
witness, so the Germans asserted, to the value of this strategy. Had
not the King of Greece, it was added, publicly paid a tribute to the
instruction received by him at the Berlin Staff College, on the day
when, like a good pupil at a prize-giving, he had been presented with a
field-marshal’s baton by the Emperor in person?
The Manchurian campaign, it is true, had warned the world—as was noted
at the time by military writers—that a revolution was taking place
in the art of war. It revealed a new system of strategy and tactics,
applied by the Russians and Japanese on a front of enormous length—long
parallel lines of trenches, where both sides burrowed themselves in
for weeks, before there was any possibility of striking a decisive
blow. The experts of Berlin, however, would not hear of this war of
moles. They were confident, even now, of making an attack on France
with a rapidity that nothing could withstand. They went on dreaming
only of whirlwind offensives, of whole armies forced to capitulate, of
fresh Sadowas and Sedans.
While the German strategy was still looked upon with general
admiration, the case was different as regards the tactics, particularly
the use of infantry, which was much discussed by foreign officers
resident in Berlin. One of them, on returning from the great manœuvres
of 1913, confessed to me his astonishment at the fighting methods to
which the infantry were trained. “They still go in for the assault
in close formation,” he said, “the _Sturmangriff_, which used to be
successful. But nowadays, on a battlefield swept by artillery and
machine-guns, these close formations would give the other side as good
a target as they could wish for. If an attack were led in this way
against an enemy who is under cover or is himself determined not to
give ground, there would soon be nothing left of it but a heap of dead
bodies.”
To judge by opinions that I heard on all sides in Berlin, German
strategy and tactics have made no advance since 1870; it would seem
that in the eyes of the General Staff they reached their acme at that
date. In the equipment and technical preparation of units, on the other
hand, Germany can point to a continuous record of progress.
V.
During the first years of William II.’s reign, the work of maintaining
Germany’s military superiority bore a twofold aspect—to preserve for
Germany her place in the front rank of European Powers, the place she
had won at the price of two great wars; and to ward off attack, to
keep all possible foes at bay. The army, apparently, was not looked
upon as an instrument of conquest. It did not seem in any real sense
to threaten the Empire’s neighbours, although, with its arrogant
demeanour, it had an air of openly defying them to make any aggressive
move. Has it been the same for the last ten years or so? A mere study
of the most recent military laws will dispel any such notion. The army
has been enlarged, equipped, and trained with a view to making war at
no distant date.
In 1871, it had a peace establishment of eighteen corps or 401,000
men, excluding commissioned and non-commissioned officers. This force
remained unchanged until 1880. Five army bills, passed between 1880
and 1889, aimed at increasing and perfecting its equipment, but the
advance in its numbers, slow at the outset, cannot be said to have kept
pace with the very rapid growth in the population. Before 1913, a
portion of the available contingent had received no military training.
Financial motives and the difficulty of raising new taxes prevented the
successive War Ministers—so the Government declared—from calling up as
many men as they would have liked, and from enlarging the cadres to a
greater extent. These motives suddenly disappeared, as soon as William
II.’s warlike designs took definite shape. Acting under the Emperor’s
orders, the Chancellor did not hesitate to resort to extraordinary
financial measures, such as no other country has ever adopted in time
of peace.
In 1905, the two years’ term of service, which had already been tried
experimentally, was made a permanent institution for the infantry,
and the establishment rose to 505,000 men. In 1911, the bill for the
military quinquennium anticipated only the small increase of 10,000 men
even by 1915, but it introduced important technical improvements in
machine-guns, artillery, supply and transport, and so forth. In 1912,
when the 1911 act had scarcely begun to take effect, a fresh army bill
was proposed. Public opinion was still in a ferment over the events
of the past summer and the aftermath of the Agadir episode. The new
act, taking advantage of this wave of patriotism, at once embodied,
for working purposes, the measures anticipated by the bill of 1911. It
created two new army corps, one for the western frontier, the other
for the eastern, and raised the peace establishment to 544,000 men.
The character of the 1911 and 1912 acts is different from that of the
preceding measures. Their primary object was to improve the quality
of the army. They both tended to make it a more effective instrument
for fighting, and one more ready for immediate use at the outbreak of
hostilities.
One might have supposed that after such marked progress the War
Office would have rested on its laurels. It did nothing of the kind.
Towards the end of 1912, when the Balkan League was winning its first
victories, there set in a current of opinion, strongly encouraged by
the Imperial Government, in favour of demanding reinforcements to fill
up the gaps that still existed. The _Wehrverein_ distinguished itself
by its frantic propaganda on behalf of new armaments. A Press campaign
was organized. The Emperor gave his sanction to the movement, and in a
speech at Königsberg declared that the principle of compulsory service
should be applied on a uniform basis. The Chancellor, following in
his master’s footsteps, announced in February, at the annual meeting
of landed proprietors, that the country must be prepared for fresh
military burdens.
After this official flourish of trumpets, the bill was laid on
the table of the Reichstag on March 18, 1913. It fixed the peace
establishment, officers and non-commissioned included, at 815,000;
the additions were estimated at 4,000 officers, 15,000 N.C.O.’s, and
117,000 men. The increase applied to every arm—infantry, cavalry,
artillery, engineers, and supply and transport corps. It was a mighty
leap! The measures anticipated by the law of 1912 were to come into
force by the end of 1913. Finally, the bill contained a clause trebling
the war treasure kept in reserve for the first requirements of a
mobilization: it was raised from 150,000,000 to 300,000,000 marks
(£15,000,000) in gold, besides 150,000,000 (£7,500,000) in silver.
Was the danger really so pressing? Was the storm already brewing on the
frontiers of the Empire? If not, it was hard to justify these hasty
measures, especially the financial part of the scheme, the forced levy,
to cover the enormous expenses, £50,000,000, which these measures would
entail. The explanatory statement, indeed, was far from convincing. It
confined itself to remarking that passing events in the Balkans had
altered the balance of power in Europe. In the war that she might be
compelled to wage, Germany would have only herself to rely upon, and
would have to guard, perhaps against several opponents, frontiers of
great length and largely unprovided with natural defences. Hence the
vital need of employing and organizing all the forces at her disposal.
The main ideas of the bill were: to introduce a uniform system of
military service, with numbers increasing at the same rate as the
population; to improve the quality of the first-line troops—in other
words, the younger section of the army; to arrange for a more speedy
mobilization; and—an object that had always been kept in view—to
perfect the technical equipment. In round numbers, an increase of
63,000 men each year was expected. The 1913 act is full of suggestive
references to telegraphs, telephones, balloons, aeroplanes, and
motor-cars; but it volunteers no information regarding the heavy
artillery and the siege-guns which were destined to startle the world
in 1914. This formidable addition to the destructive power of the
German army was carefully kept secret. The military authorities had for
a long time firmly believed that their army was invincible, and the
possession of such irresistible weapons must have served to strengthen
their confidence.
The Chancellor, in supporting the bill, dwelt more fully on the
ideas set forth in the explanatory statement. In vague phrases, he
hinted that peace was far from secure, raising up bogeys to frighten
his audience—the French jingoes, now more heated than ever, and the
Russian Pan-Slavists, with their ceaseless intrigues. The War Minister
maintained in all seriousness that the new law had no aggressive aim,
that it must be construed, not as a threat to other nations, but as a
guarantee of peace. General von Heeringen was asking us to swallow a
good deal!
As soon as the debate opened at the Budget Committee, it was evident
that the bill was certain to pass. A month later, the committee
approved it, without examining the financial side, and the Government
had to abandon all hope of seeing both parts of the bill, the military
and the financial, passed by the same majority. In the Reichstag, only
the Poles, the Socialists, and the Alsace-Lorrainers ventured to vote
against the military proposals.
The _Wehrverein_, however, was not satisfied. In a meeting held at
Leipzig on May 18, it suggested that two new army corps should be
formed, and recommended, “in order that no enemy should ever again set
his foot on the soil of the Fatherland,” that every care should be
taken to foster the martial and patriotic spirit of the community, the
spirit of the army being that of the nation.
However much we may wish to shut our eyes to the fact, we can hardly
fail to see in the 1913 act a preparation for making war at no
distant date. Its call to arms is as clear as the note of a bugle
that summons men to the fight. Yet Europe, with her eyes riveted on
other visions—the second Balkan War was imminent—paid far too little
attention to the Reichstag debates. Perhaps she was still misled by
the spurious pacifism of the Kaiser. The Triple Entente continued to
harbour the most peaceful intentions, as is attested by impartial
observers who were well-informed as to the state of public opinion
in the three countries and as to the ideals of their statesmen.
The desire to provoke a war, therefore, can only be imputed to that
Government and that nation which were arming to the teeth for battle
and for conquest.
VI.
When one met Grand Admiral von Tirpitz in some official drawing-room
in Berlin, and had a talk with him, one felt oneself in the presence
of an interesting personality—what in England is known as “a strong
man.” Among all the advisers of William II., there was no one who gave
such an impression of strength and authority. With his fan-shaped
beard, his broad forehead and thinning hair above it, his eyes, hard
and piercing even behind double eye-glasses, his imposing figure, that
showed a tendency to stoutness, he would have looked like a great
manufacturer or financial magnate rather than a sailor, but for the
numerous decorations pinned all over his chest. As a matter of fact, he
is an office man, an organizer who had never held any high command at
sea before he attracted the Emperor’s discerning eye and was appointed
head of the Admiralty. He was at the time director of the naval station
at Kiel, the first military port of the Empire. This station he had
entirely transformed, in the teeth of criticism and jobbery, dominating
all with his iron will, and making a clean sweep of disorder and red
tape. The German fleet owes to him the organization of its torpedoboat
section—which has not revealed its prowess during the war, although
its creator cannot be blamed for that—and of the quite recently formed
flotilla of submarines.
Tirpitz has been head of the Admiralty for eighteen years, a
ministerial length of life that no Chancellor or Secretary of State
has yet reached under William II. In order to remain so long in the
Imperial favour, he has had to show an unusual degree of tact and
intelligence. The Emperor was intensely eager to possess a most
powerful fleet. He had put his own lips to the foghorn; by his speeches
and by an incessant personal propaganda, he had made the public
interested in the development of the navy, in the idea of acquiring the
mastery of the seas. (“Our future lies on the water.”) But the man who
had to carry out the Sovereign’s will was doomed to encounter several
obstacles. The first difficulty for an Admiralty chief was to put his
schemes before the Sovereign in such a way that the latter should
regard himself as their author. In this respect, Tirpitz displayed
more skill than any of his civilian or military colleagues. In the
second place, he had to overcome the opposition that the Reichstag,
always anxious to save the public money, had hitherto raised against
any increase in the naval estimates. With singular adroitness Admiral
von Tirpitz, profiting by various incidents abroad and by the wave of
patriotic feeling they produced in the nation, worked upon public
opinion, and won over many restive or wavering minds in Parliament. Nor
was this all. The bills that he introduced would not have emerged safe
and sound, without any mutilations, from the clutches of the Budget
Committee, had not their framer been gifted with eloquence, with a
power of clear and persuasive speech, which found a responsive audience
in the middle-class parties. No minister has ever been so successful
in winning the ear of the Reichstag, while managing to retain the
confidence of the Emperor.
But why did Germany need so large a navy? Prince von Bülow says in
his book, _Imperial Germany_: “The sea has become a more important
factor in our national life than at any previous period, not excepting
the great days of the Hanseatic League; it has become a vital nerve,
which we must never lose, if the young German nation, which is still
growing vigorously, is to be kept from suddenly lapsing into a decrepit
old age. We should have been exposed to this danger as long as our
foreign trade and our mercantile marine had no State protection at sea
against the stronger fleets of other nations.” True, but it would seem
that this end might have been attained by building a few divisions of
cruisers, strong enough to protect German shipping and at the same time
to threaten the commerce of the enemy.
From the earliest years of his reign, as is well known, William II.’s
first thought has been for his fleet. The navy is his own creation,
his favourite child. Nevertheless, the tremendous growth of Germany’s
naval power coincides, in point of fact, with the entry of Bülow and
Tirpitz on the scene, and with the inauguration of that “world-policy”
for which the former of these two men—according to his own confession,
at any rate—must be regarded as primarily responsible. I have already
pointed out how elastic is the sense of this term “world-policy.” For
the most peacefully inclined of Germans it meant a policy of colonial
expansion. But the formation of a great navy gave the phrase a more
sinister force: it now meant intervention in every part of the globe,
acquisitions and settlements in distant regions, without recoiling from
bloody encounters, such as could not be avoided in European waters.
It is from the year 1897, when both Prince von Bülow and Admiral von
Tirpitz took up office, that we may date these first ambitious schemes
of conquest, which were embodied in the rapid construction of a
formidable naval force, and reached their inevitable climax in the war
of 1914.
Fifteen years were enough for Tirpitz to make the German navy the
second in the world. He advanced by several stages, by successive
leaps and bounds. The bill that was brought in on November 27, 1897,
demanded that seven new ships of the line, two first-class and seven
second- and third-class cruisers should be put on the stocks, and
fixed the end of the financial year as the date by which these units
should be completed. While limiting the period for which ships should
be kept on the effective list, and determining the number and strength
of the squadrons that were to remain on permanent service, the bill
ensured the construction, within a given time-limit, of units to
replace the vessels that were scrapped. In the autumn of 1899, during
the South African War, the seizure of a German mail-boat by a British
warship, and the resentment that this action aroused in Germany, were
exploited in masterly fashion by Tirpitz in order to introduce a new
navy bill. The patriotic furore of the nation enabled this bill to
triumph over all financial obstacles. The explanatory statement called
for the creation of a fleet so strong that the greatest naval Power of
the world might feel uncertain as to the outcome of a struggle with
Germany. This was a palpable thrust at Great Britain. In 1906, after
Germany had met with such disappointment at the Algeciras Conference,
the Reichstag, cleverly manipulated by the Admiral, and with the
pressure of national sentiment behind it, passed the supplementary
navy bill, raising the number of cruisers and providing for the
construction of vessels of the Dreadnought type. The two first German
Dreadnoughts, the _Nassau_ and the _Westphalen_, were laid down in July
1907, launched in 1908, and completed within three and a half years.
Their three successors were built with still greater speed, being
finished within two years. The naval estimates, which in 1898 amounted
to £6,250,000, in 1913 reached the sum of £23,350,000. The honours
and decorations showered upon the fortunate Admiral after each of his
parliamentary triumphs bore striking witness to the gratitude of his
Sovereign.
Prince von Bülow indicates in his book the difficulty of carrying out
such a programme and at the same time avoiding a rupture with England.
The most critical moment came in 1908. It had been shown in the House
of Commons, with figures to support the statement, that Germany, by
virtue of her last navy bill, would by the end of 1916 have thirty-six
vessels of the Dreadnought type. This, it was remarked, would compel
England to build forty-four Dreadnoughts within that period. In 1911,
Germany would have thirteen and England only twelve. The German menace
to England’s naval supremacy excited serious alarm in the Island
Kingdom. The Emperor thought he was making a very skilful move in
writing a letter to Lord Tweedmouth, First Lord of the Admiralty, a
personal letter, half private, half open in character, in which he
insisted on the purely defensive nature of the German programme, and
tried to remove British apprehensions in regard to the development of
the Imperial navy. But the shot missed its mark. By taking part in
the discussion, by endeavouring to banish from the minds of English
sailors the spectre of the German danger, William II., as soon as
his unconventional step came to light through its disclosure in the
_Times_, only added fuel to the fire of public feeling, and drove the
British Parliament to get ships built all the faster, in reply to the
German challenge.
The members of the Asquith Cabinet, seeing the approach of the
Dreadnought era, which would involve an enormous maritime outlay at
the very moment when they wished to devote all their available surplus
to social reform, made an ineffectual attempt to check this frenzied
competition. Their public speeches and their private efforts did not
induce Admiral von Tirpitz to deviate for a single instant from the
steady course he had marked out for the execution of his programme. If
for a brief interval in 1913 he seemed to look with favour on the “two
to three standard” (_i.e._, two German to three British Dreadnoughts)
proposed by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill,
he turned a deaf ear to the suggestion that the two countries should
suspend the construction of ships (“a naval holiday”) for the space
of a year. The haughty spirit of the German Admiral would make no
concessions, and those who pleaded for a limitation of armaments, that
vanished dream of the British taxpayer, found that they were dashing
themselves against a wall of granite.
No one in Germany was louder in his praises of the English sailors.
He declared that they were his masters and his models. But, like the
good German he was, he concealed, under the mask of admiration, a
stubborn resolve to conquer them, to strip them of their insufferable
superiority. The fleet that he was mustering was beyond all doubt an
offensive weapon, an instrument fashioned with elaborate care for
inflicting a deadly wound. Hostilities, however, have broken out sooner
than he had foreseen or desired, and before he was ready for the attack.
A few years more, and Tirpitz would assuredly have surprised his
opponent with a war quite different from anything that the latter
expected—a treacherous war of aeroplanes and submarines, which would
have made up for his inferiority in numbers. The blockade of England,
which he has tried to carry out to-day with inadequate means, enables
us to gauge his audacity, as well as his utter lack of humanitarian
scruples. What would have been the result of such a struggle under the
sea, if the German effort had been backed by a patient and methodical
preparation?
Still, even if England had been vanquished, Germany would have been
drawn into other naval wars. In the process of establishing her
world-power, she would have had to force other rivals to lower their
flag. It would have been essential for her to destroy the United States
navy, in order to confine the Americans to the northern half of their
continent, and to keep the markets of South America open exclusively to
her own trade. After this, would she have been content to leave to the
Japanese the mastery of the Pacific, and to be thwarted or driven out
by them in the Far East? What a vista of conflicts for the organizer
of the German navy, what a task for his own tireless energies and for
those of his successors! Such are the inevitable results of the first
step on the endless track of _Weltpolitik_.
Admiral von Tirpitz has been helped in his labours by a host of
nameless fellow-workers, grouped together under the title of “German
Navy League” (_Deutscher Flottenverein_). This society of 1,250,000
members, with branches all over Germany, forms a loyal and well-trained
army, acting under the orders of Admiral von Koester, a former
Commander-in-Chief of the fleet. By its manifold propaganda, its public
meetings, its periodicals, its pamphlets, its cinematograph films, its
arrangements for pleasure-trips to naval ports, the League has spread
among the people, in great towns and tiny villages alike, from the
sandy plains of Brandenburg to the picturesque valleys of the Hartz
Mountains, a knowledge and appreciation of the work that William II.
and Admiral von Tirpitz have achieved. During the darkest hours of the
Moroccan crisis, the League’s overflowing patriotism expressed itself
in scurrilous pamphlets and shameless lies, scattered broadcast, at the
expense of England and France. It is therefore among the elements that
have served to kindle a wrath and foment a hatred for which war alone
could provide an outlet.