PUBLIC OPINION: ECONOMIC CAUSES OF THE WAR.
I.
I arrived in Berlin some time after the unravelling of the Morocco
tangle. I knew already that the Convention of November 4, 1911, had
aroused grievous disappointment in Germany. But what was the state
of public opinion? Was it still overexcited, overheated through
the incidents of the past summer? Or was it beginning to cool down
again and revert to its normal temperature of ill-humour towards the
western neighbour-country and of that general bitterness which had
marked Franco-German relations for the last eight years? I decided to
investigate this matter, and the study proved rather a long one.
My first thought was to seek information from the commercial world,
since it is regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a barometer very sensitive
to the ups and downs of public feeling. I had recommendations to
several big bankers in Berlin. Moreover, our Consul-General, Herr F.
von Mendelssohn, joint-director of one of the oldest and most respected
banking firms in the German capital, proved exceedingly helpful,
inviting me several times to his house to meet various interesting
figures in the highest circles of commerce and finance. All these
gentlemen seemed to me strongly in favour of peace. The same pacific
note rang through all their conversation. According to them, the
calm of Europe had at no time been seriously threatened during the
Agadir crisis. Whatever may have been the verdict afterwards passed on
Kiderlen-Wächter’s diplomatic work, it was too soon then to form a fair
estimate of its gains and losses. Industrious Germany wished to live
on good terms with France. Peace was essential to business, and German
financiers, in particular, had every interest in keeping up their
profitable connection with their French colleagues.
After a few months in Berlin, I came to the conclusion that these
pacifists represented at that time (1912) the most widespread but least
noisy opinions, the opinions of the majority. By this I mean, not the
majority of the governing classes, but the majority of the nation
as a whole. The bulk of the population, in fact, the rank and file
of industrial workers attached to Socialist or Christian-Democratic
unions, the little democratic artisans of the towns, the peasants of
the country districts, clung, by instinct as much as by reason, to the
peace that allowed them to live and prosper. They dreaded war, because
it meant loss of work and wages, and was at best an unknown quantity.
No one in Germany feared the other miseries that war brings in its
train—invasion, devastation, or famine; for no one, either among the
proletariate or among the middle classes, had any doubts of victory.
For all that, in this nation of workers, the general desire was not
to make conquests, but to go on earning money and getting rich. The
statements that I heard from some of the humblest contributors to the
nation’s wealth all agreed on this point.
Going up the social ladder, we should also reckon among the advocates
of peace, I think, most of the manufacturers, great and small, and of
the traders, wholesale as well as retail. The industrial employers
who depend on borrowed capital—their name is legion in Germany—needed
credit, and therefore an unbroken calm. Any external crisis, leading to
a stoppage of business, would have made it difficult for them to meet
their bills, and if it lasted for some time, would have faced them with
the prospect of ruin. Heads of great undertakings who acted as their
own bankers foresaw in war a temporary shrinkage in their profits, and
the likelihood of being cut off from countries beyond the seas. We
should not be doing justice to their insight if we believed that they
shared all the illusions of the Imperial Government as to England’s
indifference and her complete aloofness from European conflicts.
Very different ideas must have flitted across the minds of the great
shipowners of Hamburg and Bremen and the directors of the Deutsche
Bank and Disconto-Gesellschaft, those enterprising men who were always
busily working out fresh projects. The care that they took to reassure
their London friends as to the pacific aims of German statesmanship
proves to us the value they attached, if not to the peace of Europe, at
any rate to the peace of the seas.
At the top of the scale, in Berlin society—a very exclusive set, in
spite of the constant efforts of the newly rich to gain admittance—I
met some sincere pacifists. The old German nobility, which figures in
that Golden Book the Almanac de Gotha, is naturally more cosmopolitan
than the country squires, and it gladly keeps up family connections
with the foreign aristocracy. This class did not appear to have any
hatred for the French or for the English. Such hatred was rather to be
found among the middle classes: it was the envy that mushroom opulence
feels for old-established wealth. The personal feelings of a few Serene
Highnesses, however, counted for very little, and the same may be said
of those great lords, courtiers, but not counsellors, to His Imperial
Majesty, who applauded everything that he did, and offered him nothing
but flattery and obeisance.
II.
The bellicose minority, more active and strenuous, included, in the
first place, the war party of which I have spoken in Chapter III.
But by the side of the violently aggressive Germans there were more
lukewarm spirits; by the side of the Pan-Germans and the disciples of
Von der Goltz and Bernhardi there were men of a philosophic cast, who
saw war coming as an inevitable necessity, a crisis decreed by fate,
essential to the well-being and development of the Empire. The shades
of difference among them were as varied as the colours in a prism.
Among the nobles of South Germany, for instance, the military
traditions of their families were tinged with regret for the old days
of independence and with a certain ill-feeling towards Prussia. It was
the same with the aristocracy of Hanover, an impoverished caste (apart
from a few great landowners), devoted to the profession of arms, and
still loyal to the memory of their generous treatment by the English
dynasty, which they liked to contrast with the stinginess of the
Hohenzollerns. In the Rhine provinces, the former contact with France
had left unmistakable traces upon the upper classes, among whom French
culture did not arouse the same scorn and detestation as in the north
and east of the Empire. For all these patricians a fresh war—in other
words fresh victories—meant an even more complete triumph for Prussian
supremacy, and an end of all autonomy for the smaller States. If the
heart of the soldier in them beat faster at the thought of Germany’s
latter-day glory, the eyes of the provincial grew sombre as they saw
the shadows threaten to engulf all that was left to them of a still
cherished past.
The great Liberal middle class has always prided itself on a patriotism
no less watchful than that of the landed gentry. Its representatives in
the Reichstag, as I have pointed out, voted for all the army bills as
unfailingly as the Conservatives. This was not the quarter from which
any aid could be expected, especially after Agadir, in an attempt to
draw closer to France. Yet it seems to me that not a few middle-class
millionaires must have been led, by their personal share in financial
and industrial concerns, to wish for a continued spell of peace. In
such matters it is impossible to dogmatize; but can we believe that
these cool heads, these astute calculators, inclined to the view that,
under the whip-lash of victory, German wealth would take a tremendous
leap forward, and that the products of the national labour would swamp
the markets of the globe? For my part, I think that they were too
shrewd to have any hope of stifling English and American competition
otherwise than by unremitting efforts in their own sphere.
On the other hand, those who supplied the Empire with its guns and its
rifles, with the armour-plates of its navy and the equipment of its
soldiers, must have rubbed their hands with glee when they saw the
signs that heralded a fresh war, since its first effect would be to
increase tenfold the output of their workshops. Other manufacturers
persisted in looking on all Frenchmen as revolutionaries, dangerous
models for the German labourer to copy. Their hatred of the republican
system was enhanced by the fear of strikes, for which these undesirable
neighbours set the example. In spite of the formidable barriers raised
by the most monarchical State in the world, they still dreaded the wind
of emancipation and liberty that might in the long run cross the Vosges
and bring unrest to the disciplined spirit of the German toilers.
It would be a gross overstatement to say that the followers of the
liberal vocations were for the most part in favour of a new European
conflict. Many of them were by nature men of peace; many, again,
were far too much immersed in professional duties and research work
to trouble their heads about politics. Yet all the highly-educated
element in Germany, all those whose minds had been trained by intensive
methods, issued from the same mould, that of the public schools and
universities, where the fire of a white-hot patriotism was kept alive.
Almost all of the younger generation, from one end of the Empire to
another, had been faced, while still at their lessons, with the dilemma
which Bernhardi summed up for his readers in the words: “_Weltmacht
oder Niedergang!_” (“World Power or Downfall!”) Among university
students and even the pupils of the _Gymnasien_ (highest-grade
schools), knotty problems were hotly discussed. Had the era of great
wars vanished for ever? Had not Germany, girt, like the Siegfried of
her legends, with an invincible sword, come too late into the lists, at
a time when the struggle to carve the world had reached its end? Was
Germany therefore to rest content, in cowardly fashion, with her humble
lot, or should she throw down the gauntlet to those who held these rich
spoils in fee? As time went on, these questions grew more and more
pressing, while no change took place in the relative position of the
great Powers.
German literature, drawing inspiration from Tolstoi, the Scandinavian
masters, and the French writers, was extremely fond of painting social
distress. Although much given to criticism, often severe, of the
privileged classes, it never, so far as I know, inveighed against war
and the abuse of might. Vivid sketches of officers, scathing satires
on their vices and on the brutalities of Prussian discipline—of these
there was enough and to spare. They were often very well written;
some have been translated into French and produced with success on
the Parisian stage. No eminent playwright or novelist of the day in
Germany, however, spoke out boldly on behalf of peace and disarmament.
Their pens pricked individual types, and often drew blood; but
they always respected, nay, even glorified the army, as a sacred
institution, the solid pillar of the Germanic union, the instrument of
its greatness to come.
The university professors, taken as a whole, were one of the most
fiery elements of the nation. Not only did they inflame with their
teachings the youthful minds entrusted to their care, and stamp them
with an indelible imprint of nationalism, but they did not shrink from
criticising the policy, too timid for their liking, pursued by the
Imperial Government. I have in my possession letters from provincial
savants, in which the Convention of November 4, 1911, is branded as
a disgrace, and the name of Kiderlen-Wächter held up to the scorn of
every German. One of them wrote: “Such a scandal will not occur again.
Germany, conscious of herself and realizing her strength, will no
longer tolerate a peaceful settlement of such affairs.”
When all is said and done, the resolute champions of war—the only
war in question being one with France, the opponent whose name was
constantly cropping up in the patriotic books and journals—formed,
so far as I could see, a rather small minority of the nation. This
impression, which I gathered from my stay in Berlin and my travels
about the provinces, both rich and poor, remains firmly fixed in
my mind. When I call up the picture of this tranquil people, going
steadily about its business every week-day, or comfortably seated every
Sunday at the café tables and drinking the national glass of beer, I
can remember nothing but those placid faces, on which violent passions,
antipathy to the foreigner, and even the feverish stress of the battle
for existence, had left none of those marks which I have sometimes
observed elsewhere as a looker-on at the human crowd.
III.
How is it that this same nation responded as one man to the call of its
Emperor and hurled itself with enthusiasm at its enemies? Because it
thought it had been challenged, and that the frontiers, the welfare,
the very existence of the Empire were in danger. Middle-class citizens,
Socialist workmen or peasants, all were convinced that they were
defending their country against the attack of Tsarism combined with
warlike France and perfidious Albion; that the war had been desired,
prepared, planned by the Powers of the Triple Entente, impelled by an
ignoble envy or a traditional hatred.
The Imperial Government’s master-stroke lay in showing the
Austro-Serbian crisis in this light to German credulity, and in
appearing itself as the blameless guardian of peace. We possess an
official document which supplies the proof of this clever presentment
of the facts—the White Book, laid by the Chancellor upon the table of
the Reichstag on the 3rd of August.
This date should be carefully noted. Two days after the expiry of the
ultimatum to Russia, the White Book was already finished. With its
carefully selected reports and telegrams, and its long prefatory
memorandum in which the facts were skilfully doctored, it was printed,
handed out to members of the Reichstag, and issued to the public, all
within twenty-four hours. To accomplish this long and detailed work in
so short a space of time seems an incredible feat. There is no reason,
however, to marvel at the miracle, if, as we may well believe, the
official explanation was drawn up in advance, while the discussions
were still going on and the Imperial Government, anticipating that
Russia would not comply with the summons to demobilize, had already
decided to declare war on that Power. From this it will be seen that,
however much the Chancellor and Herr von Jagow may have been personally
inclined towards a peaceful settlement of the dispute, they were none
the less ready to obey orders from above, and to prepare everything
at their offices, with a view to putting the public off the scent in
Germany and in neutral countries.
On every page the White Book is at pains to throw the blame for the
catastrophe on Russia. Such is the monotonous burden of this diplomatic
chant. No clear light is thrown on the various conciliatory efforts
and devices of the Entente Cabinets. The pacific rôle played by
Germany is carefully put in the foreground, and the right of calling
a whole people to account for an isolated crime is claimed on behalf
of Austria-Hungary as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The military measures of precaution taken by Russia and France are
antedated, and denounced as preparations for a war with Germany.
Nevertheless, the White Book contains a telegram of 29th July which
does not fit in with its line of argument. In this telegram it looks
very much as if William II. were trifling with his brother, the Tsar;
he advises Russia, with regard to the Austro-Serbian War, to go on
playing the part of a spectator, and says that if she does so a direct
understanding between Vienna and St. Petersburg will afterwards be not
only feasible but desirable. An understanding about what, one may ask,
when Serbia has become a mere prey, delivered up to the fury of the
Austro-Hungarian soldiery? The German public, never liable to murmur
at anything that the authorities may say, accepted as gospel truth the
most reckless assertions of the Wilhelmstrasse.
It would be going too far to say that the people were surprised at the
outbreak of hostilities. The vociferous appeal to their patriotism
in the previous year, when memories of the war of liberation were
evoked, had not been made in vain. Their crushing military burdens
had not been imposed with the idea of persuading them that peace
would be maintained. Finally, it was not for nothing that William
II., since his accession, had adopted in his speeches a very warlike
manner of declaring that the harmony of Europe must be preserved. When
he spoke of peace, his hand seemed ready to draw the sword, and he
solemnly told his subjects that, with a view to answering any attack
or insult—which no one in Europe was contemplating—they should keep
their bayonets sharp and their guns in good trim. Rhetorical metaphors,
some may argue. At any rate, it is a bad way of keeping up friendly
relations with neighbour-countries to picture the latter, time after
time, as meditating an assault on Germanism, and as held back only by a
wholesome fear of its armed strength.
We are assured by many admirable writers that the war was inevitable,
because the old murderous passions were not yet quenched in the German
breast. A religion of valour, a love of war, a zest in the combat—these
manly virtues, it is said, are still inherent in a race of warriors,
scions of Arminius, descendants of the Goths, the Vandals, and the
Burgundians. Some, in order to find an explanation of the present
fighting, have even gone back to Odin. However this may be, Germany,
during the past two or three hundred years, has waged fewer wars than
France, as Prince Bülow remarks in his book; the Frenchman has shown
himself more combative than the German. Too little account is taken of
the long period of weakness and depression that preceded and followed
the religious struggles and the wars of Frederick the Great. Madame de
Staël, no doubt, read the German soul of her day accurately enough,
when she discovered in it an ample fund of dreaminess, sentimentality,
and idealism, whereas France at that time was throbbing with
revolutionary ardour. After 1813, this sentimentalism seemed out
of date; as the new Germany awoke, it gradually faded away like a
dream. But it was above all as a result of the Prussian victories
that a warlike enthusiasm, carefully fostered by a whole school of
professors of heroism, flowed into the veins of a certain element in
the German nation. When the struggle began, the youths moulded by this
teaching set the example to their comrades in the field. In France
and in Belgium, young soldiers have been seen to advance at the head
of furious charges, singing under the very fire of machine-guns,
their arms linked together, their eyes lost in a dream of glory and
sacrifice....
Beside this scene, which is not without its grandeur, we must set
others of a very different type. In many German souls, those of
officers and men alike, the war has aroused the predatory instincts
of their ancestors. Rifling the invaded country, ransacking houses,
great and small, from cellar to loft, organizing convoys of booty to be
sent to Germany—this is the seamy side of the fighting of to-day. This
atavism, as persistent as original sin, is certainly not a thing to be
proud of.
And if only the war had done nothing worse than inflame these ugly
greeds! Alas! it has stirred up the ancestral cruelty that still lurked
in the human slime of the hostile armies. The high command at Berlin
knew its men, when it enjoined the corps commanders to show no mercy,
and these officers were fully aware, for their part, that their orders
would be obeyed to the letter. Twelve centuries of Christianity,
long years of peace, educational progress, and the blessings of
civilization—all this has not succeeded in curing the German soldier of
that thirst for blood which has reappeared, time and again, like some
ineradicable taint.
IV.
The war-philosophy of the university professors and the influence it
has had on generations of students would deserve a volume to itself.
Whence comes this implacable hatred of France among those who lived
through the war of 1870 and among their pupils? We could understand it
more easily if we found it in a conquered nation. And why have these
intellectuals such a loathing for England? It is not enough to say
that France, forty-five years ago, was not weakened enough to satisfy
them, and that in the English they detest the rulers of a colonial
empire which they covet for themselves. The origin of these hatreds may
be traced, and their lastingness may be ascribed, to the teaching of
history as it is practised in the universities, under the impulse of
the Prussian school of historians, from Niebuhr, Ranke, Mommsen, and
Siebel, down to Treitschke, Giesebrecht, Häuser, Droysen, Lamprecht,
and Delbrück. If mere teachers in secondary schools and _Gymnasien_
train their boys to hate foreign races, which they depict as enemies or
rivals, the fact is highly deplorable; but has not the same excess of
blind patriotism, unfortunately, been observed in other countries as
well? What is peculiar to German universities is the way in which their
experts in historical criticism have directed their teaching of the
history of their country to a definite object.
The Prussian school writes German history as if it were the development
of a single idea, the evolution of a movement which, beginning
in the Middle Ages, goes on down to the unification of Germany
achieved by Bismarck, and, starting from the first German Emperor,
Charlemagne, comes to a head in the Kings of Prussia, the present
emperors. According to this theory, the Hohenzollern Empire is not a
new creation, but a new phase of a primeval sovereignty. After the
division of Charlemagne’s heritage, the first reconstruction of his
empire was the work of the Ottonian dynasty—a work carried on by the
Henries and brought to its zenith by the Hohenstaufen. For three and
a half centuries of almost ceaseless fighting, Germany was supreme in
Europe, and ruled almost a third of the ancient Roman Empire. Frederick
Barbarossa, the most popular of these old Cæsars, reigned over Germany,
Italy, and the Kingdom of Arles, before perishing in an attempt to add
to his titles that of King of Jerusalem. The Germany of the past, say
the Prussian historians, is to be revived in the Germany of the future.
They are compelled to explain, however, the long decline that, like an
arctic night, followed this brilliant epoch. Nothing could be easier.
They show us the Germans absorbed from the Middle Ages in the pursuit
of a spiritual and religious ideal, solely engaged in rescuing freedom
of thought and freedom to interpret the Scriptures from the tyranny of
the Church. The noble aim pursued by the Lutheran Reformation could not
be realized without internal struggles that drained Germany of her sap
for many a long year, while the Imperial sceptre came near to falling
from the enfeebled grasp of the Hapsburgs. The fact that the first
nation of Europe was devoting all its efforts to solving the religious
problem and to establishing its spiritual control on the ruins of Roman
superstition, enabled other nations—Spain, France, and England—to fight
during that period for the temporal mastery of the world. The Prussian
school would have us believe that in this way the Germans were cheated
of their destiny. They could not at the same time follow the noblest
of all ideals and fulfil their duty as a civilizing force. Without
the Reformation, which nevertheless gives them an inestimable claim
to the gratitude of the human race, their dominion would now extend
from the Straits of Dover to the Bosphorus and from the Baltic to the
Mediterranean. It would also include vast colonies, for the German
mariners would not have let themselves be forestalled by others in the
exploration and conquest of the New World.
At last, however, the God-given mission of carrying on the work of
Charlemagne and the first elective Cæsars has been entrusted to a new
line of rulers marked out by fate. Successive princes of the great
Hohenzollern house have patiently built up again the edifice that time
had destroyed. In reuniting the scattered limbs of the Germanic body,
in making it once more alive and whole, they have restored all its
ancient vigour. Once more it is master of its destiny, free to pursue
its irresistible onward march.
It would not be difficult to pick holes in these scientific arguments,
which are used, among other things, as a warrant for regaining
territories that once were fiefs of the Imperial Crown, but have been
severed from Germany for hundreds of years. The Hohenstaufen Empire
included races that it was impossible to amalgamate or unify. A
colossus with feet of clay, it soon lost its solidity and was shattered
into fragments. The power of the emperors dwindled away in Germany
itself, choked by the parasitic growth of feudal princedoms and free
cities, while around it in Europe strong and cohesive nations were
being formed. With malice aforethought, the Prussian theory ignores the
fact that countries once attached to the Holy Roman Empire managed
to secure and lead a separate existence long before the Reformation,
and, like the Netherlands for instance, have since then preserved their
own language and customs, which were not the language or the customs
of Germany. Others, like the two Burgundies or the Kingdom of Arles,
retain no trace of their short-lived reincorporation in the Germanic
scrap-heap.
After all, the most striking feature in this wilful distortion of
events and processes is not its fantastic character, but the goal that
its authors sought to attain. That goal was not so much to produce
work of scientific value, as, by throwing an artificial light upon
the past, the light of an exaggerated patriotism, to equip their
countrymen for the coming struggles. The plan that they followed was
to arouse the nationalist sentiment—never far below the surface—of
the academic youth, by foretelling the resurrection of a great age
that had vanished, by making the conquests of recent years seem paltry
in comparison with those yet to be won—in short, by showing that the
triumphal march of the past century was not yet ended, and that it must
lead to yet more fruitful victories. The Prussian school could only
succeed in their task by inspiring their pupils with a hatred of those
rival nations which it was essential to crush, before the Germany of
their dreams could come into her own.
V.
The most notable representative of this school was Heinrich von
Treitschke, compiler-in-chief of the Hohenzollern saints’ calendar.
Since the beginning of the war, much attention has been paid to him
in England and in France; people have even begun to read him. From
his books on history and politics we try to gain an insight into
those glowing ideas which have played their part in bringing on the
present conflict. In reading them we are struck with their literary
merit; we are amazed at their wealth of document, their profound study
of the original sources; we cannot help admiring the infinite care
with which this true artist paints a historical portrait in all its
details. His influence on German thought, however, and on all classes
of German society, is mainly due to his overpowering eloquence, which
may probably be set down to his Slavonic blood. During the last twenty
years of his life he made a great name for himself as professor at
Berlin University, and saw one of his dearest wishes fulfilled—that of
becoming the real educator of the younger generation.
Entering upon his professorship and his political work during the
Schleswig-Holstein crisis, at the time when Germany was in the throes
of her national unification, he was from the first an ardent admirer
of the Hohenzollerns and of Bismarck. He scornfully compared the
wisdom and resolution of William I. and his minister with the hopeless
mediocrity of the minor German sovereigns, who, he maintained, showed
an alarming family likeness in this respect. The greatness of Prussia,
the glory of a nation that was also an army, the Heaven-sent mission
of that peerless dynasty, the Hohenzollerns—these were the articles of
the faith preached to his countrymen by this apostle of the Bismarckian
policy. The history of Germany, as traced by his pen, culminated in
her union under Prussian sway. After extolling this achievement of
the Hohenzollern sword, the prophetic writer passes on to the vision
of a Germany that will become the first Power in the world, once her
flag has crossed all the seas in triumph. What limit shall be set to
her dominion? Treitschke, in offering these dazzling vistas to the
imagination of his hearers and readers, was probably the true father
of that world-policy for which William II. and Prince von Bülow are
generally held responsible.
One finds in his works all the stock commonplaces, beloved of German
military writers, regarding the necessity and moral value of war. He
glorifies war as the foster-mother of heroic ideas, and for him the
issue of battles is the judgment of God. But among all the historians
who have bowed down before the Prussian Baal, he stands out from
the ruck by virtue, not only of his superior talents, but also of
his extraordinary aversion for England. The pride and envy of this
Saxon who became a Prussian heart and soul could not endure that
England should own a fifth of the habitable globe. It seemed to him
that so vast an empire was out of all proportion to the real strength
of the British nation—a nation of shop-keepers, which had won its
territories, not by any remarkable genius or courage, but through fraud
and hypocrisy, aided by the stupidity of other peoples. It is hardly
surprising that he is accused in England of having undermined the
friendly relations that formerly subsisted between the Anglo-Saxons and
the Germans, and of having brought about that explosion of hatred which
drove them apart three years after his death, at the beginning of the
Boer War.
VI.
Side by side with Treitschke and his pupils (of whom the most
conspicuous, at the moment, is Bernhardi) discerning critics are apt to
place, as furnishing inspiration for the war, the German philosophers
of the nineteenth century, even the poets and musicians, whose
posthumous influence is still strongly felt in Germany. They attempt to
prove that these representatives of the Teutonic genius are the prime
agents, whether consciously or no, in the calamities from which Europe
in general, and the Latin race in particular, are suffering to-day.
The idolatrous worship paid to these artists by their countrymen is
reckoned among the chief causes of that insensate pride and ambition
which have entered so deeply into the national soul.
The German people, believing that it possesses in Fichte, Hegel,
Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche the greatest thinkers, in Goethe
and Schiller the greatest poets, in Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, and
Wagner the greatest musicians, and convinced that it holds the foremost
place in every branch of science and learning, looks upon itself as
a superior race, destined to a material sway over the entire world,
just as it reigns supreme at present, through the glory of its men of
genius, in the intellectual sphere. “Nation of thinkers, poets, and
heroes,” such is the refrain dinned into its ears by its writers and
acolytes—“nation whose supremacy none can question, thou shalt fill
the world with the inexhaustible treasures of thy culture!” In plain
language, this means that material power must go hand in hand with
spiritual rule; the strength and intelligence of Germany shall dominate
all other nations, and stamp them with the ineffaceable imprint of
German _Kultur_.
Other inquirers have deciphered the apocalyptic book of Nietzsche,
and have found, to their amazement, Sibylline oracles that apply with
wonderful force to the campaign carried on by the Kaiser’s troops
and the feelings that these troops seem to harbour in their pitiless
souls. The opening of the era of great wars, the appearance of the
superb blond beast of prey, the glorifying of evil, the contempt for
pity, all that we are now witnessing with horror, is already implied
in the prophecies of Zarathustra. From this they infer, not only that
Nietzsche was a great seer, but that the cruel philosophy of this
visionary, for whom madness lay in wait, has intoxicated Germany and
inspired her actions.
All these critics, I venture to say, have been too liable to make the
facts fit in with a cast-iron system. It cannot be disputed, indeed,
that the teachings of historians and philosophers, poets and musicians,
have helped to inflame German pride, to create a blind faith in the
civilizing mission of the German race, to induce that unbalanced,
dangerous state of soul which already existed before the war, and has
since then revealed itself to the world at large. It is probable, also,
that this state of soul will have no little weight in determining the
duration of the war. If it retains its ascendancy, it will keep the
intellectuals arrayed in a solid phalanx round the Emperor, until all
the best blood of the nation has ebbed away, until the final victory
or defeat. Nevertheless, we must beware of building up a theory, of
extending to a whole community the wild dreams of a certain class, and
of exaggerating their influence upon the events of yesterday and to-day.
Although some two-thirds of the Empire’s inhabitants live in urban
centres, the number of those who have been educated at universities
and higher schools is only a small minority in a total of sixtyseven
millions. I admit that this small minority directs the mass, in the
same way as the brain directs the whole human machine; I recognize,
too, that when the fatal hour struck, it had no difficulty in winning
over those Socialist leaders who, tainted though they are with
imperialist ideas, would never of themselves have declared war on their
brethren, the working-men in other countries. Moreover, one must assume
that the warlike passions, stimulated by a peculiar teaching of history
and by scientific vanity, met with approval and encouragement from high
quarters, from the political authority embodied in one individual.
If the Imperial Government and its supreme head had sincerely wanted
peace, the aggressive movement that went forth from the schools and
universities might have been checked in time, or turned off into
peaceful paths by the same disciplinary methods that obtain in the
Prussian army. William II. was not the man to let himself be forced
into a foreign war by civilian Pan-Germans, after the manner in which
Alexander had yielded to Pan-Slavic pressure in 1877. By resisting, it
may be argued, William II. would have lost all popularity. This would
be true if the voice of the mob—the only voice that could make any
impression on so self-willed a monarch—had at any time been raised for
war; but the masses were peacefully inclined, or else indifferent. The
Emperor has always been the autocrat, with a full sense of his rights,
as may be seen from the proud motto that he wrote in the “golden book”
of the Munich town-hall: “_Suprema lex regis voluntas esto!_” (“May the
King’s will be the supreme law!”) He expects his wishes to be taken as
commands. At a word from him, the dreams of world-dominion, born in the
brains of scholars and men of science, would have been scattered to the
four winds, or buried in a vast heap of unreadable books and articles.
In my opinion, therefore, it is far more accurate to say, generally
speaking, that the writers, the artists, and the savants who signed
the famous manifesto of the “Ninety-three”—we honour them too much by
still speaking of it to-day—all those who exploited the historical and
intellectual glories and the great scientific renown of Germany for
purposes of political ambition, were only the auxiliaries and catspaws
of the Imperial policy.
VII.
The incessant growth in the Empire’s population demanded a widening
of its territory. Cooped up within a narrow space, the Germans could
not breathe freely; they needed new lands that could be peopled, new
outlets to drain off some of this superabundant vitality. This, it is
claimed by certain economists, is a biological law, and at the same
time one of the causes that made the war inevitable. It was in the
nature of things that Germany, sooner or later, should overflow her
borders. Another legend! Let us examine the facts.
The population, it is true, was growing by more than 800,000 every
year. But emigration, the usual remedy for overcrowded countries, had
for the past fifteen years been constantly decreasing. The average
number of German emigrants, in the period 1908-1913, was 23,312 a year,
three-fourths going to the United States. During these same five years,
the annual average of foreign emigrants passing through German ports
rose to 215,314! The extraordinary progress of industry, requiring
a larger and larger complement of hands every year, explains why
emigration dwindled almost to vanishing-point. The German, finding it
easy to earn his bread and even live in comfort at home, had no longer
any reason for seeking occupation elsewhere.
The spread of industrialism in Germany has had another result besides
that of drying up the sources of emigration. It has tended to deplete
the countryside. In 1912 no more than 28·6 per cent. of the population
were engaged in agriculture. On this account the farmer now has
recourse to cheap foreign labour in large quantities. Had it not been
for the annual influx of six or seven hundred thousand farm-labourers
from Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, the fields of Brandenburg and of
East and West Prussia would have lain fallow, and the squires of the
eastern marches would have been unable to harvest their crops. This
hardly accords with the picture of an over-populous, famished race,
compelled to hurl itself upon the more fertile lands of its neighbours,
just as the Teutonic hordes of old grasped at the tempting prize of the
Roman world.
The enormous development of industry has been accompanied everywhere by
a feature more or less marked, according as the country has attained
wealth or a modest competence—a falling off in the birth-rate. Germany
believed that she would remain free from this scourge. She was
mistaken; nowadays, as a rule, it is only the poor nations that go on
multiplying. German medical science and hygiene have succeeded, for
the time being, in making up for the decrease in births by a reduction
of the death-rate, especially of infant mortality. But the proportion
of children born, more particularly in the towns (as is shown by
statistics from 1906 onwards), is steadily declining, and this will
end by having serious effects on the growth of population, bringing
it down, in all probability, to the normal level maintained by other
industrial nations.
Despite these evils, there was no cause for any real alarm as to
the future of Germany. Yet the powers that be looked askance at her
industrialism, which is the prime agent in this weakening of the
fertility of the race. From motives of a military nature, they are
anxious that the males should be healthy and the females prolific. The
cities and manufacturing centres supply the army with a lower average
of men fit for service than the country districts; all the more reason
for encouraging agriculture. In the calculations of German statesmen,
the needs of war take precedence of all others.
As for the Imperial Government, its most obvious concern has been,
not to look for territories that may be peopled with emigrants, but
to see that the mother-country shall not lose hold of her children in
foreign lands. Among those who had long since left their native soil,
and had become more or less merged in other races, it tried to revive
the national sentiment. To reunite the scattered forces of Germanism
and bind them to the Empire by hidden cables stretched across the sea,
like the unseen waves of an electric current, was the unmistakable
purpose of the legislative work achieved by the Reichstag in 1913, and
such also has been the task imposed upon diplomatic and consular agents
abroad.
The Nationality Act of 1st June 1870 had laid down that German
citizenship would be lost by any one who lived for a continuous period
of ten years in another country. The bill of 22nd July 1913, based on
the principle of _jus sanguinis_ (right of blood), and not of _jus
loci_ (right of domicile), abolished this forfeiture of civic rights.
Furthermore, it allowed a German to become naturalized in another
country without losing his original nationality. There are cases where
a change of nationality is prompted solely by pecuniary motives. In
such cases, naturalization is regarded by the new law as fictitious; it
does not bind one who remains a German at heart and obtains permission
to retain his German citizenship. This permission is granted by the
authorities in the State of his origin, provided he is vouched for by
the nearest German consul (art. 25). Finally, Imperial citizenship may
be conferred upon former Germans and on their descendants, even if they
are not settled on German soil (art. 33).
In thus consolidating the centres of German influence wherever they
existed—in the United States and in South America, in the Far East
and in Turkey—the Government was not thinking only of gaining for the
national products an easier access to the local markets. Its aim was
no less political than commercial. By establishing these colonies of a
new type in the heart of foreign countries, it endeavoured to set up
a sort of Germanic Empire across the seas, as a counterpoise to that
British Empire which was the object of its unceasing envy. Henceforth
the Imperial eagle wished to have German eaglets hatched from all the
eggs it had laid in alien nests.
VIII.
I come, finally, to the economic causes of the war. I must reluctantly
confess that I do not share the opinion of some eminent writers,
who regard these causes as the most prominent and the most decisive.
Germany, according to them, determined to make war—on Russia and
France, be it noted, for prior to the invasion of Belgium there was no
thought of other opponents—in order to secure indispensable markets for
her goods and to avert an imminent economic crisis.
It would be superfluous here to give the figures recorded in all the
tables of statistics, proving the enormous development of German
industry throughout the forty-four years of peace that have elapsed
since the Treaty of Frankfort. Like all growths that are too speedy,
this development had its weak points, its alarming symptoms; it did
not bear the look of perfect health. In an organism that was shooting
up so rapidly, a sudden crisis, a violent illness, was likely to
produce fatal complications. Too many enterprises were being founded
on advances from banks. The great financial and industrial companies
were inflating their share and debenture capital to such an extent
that any slackening in production would have threatened to suspend the
payment of dividends. Two-thirds of the population lived on the wages
earned in workshops and factories. A stoppage in the activity of the
latter, involving prolonged loss of work, would have meant a dearth of
bread in countless homes and a great outcry of distress from countless
throats. It was therefore the imperative duty of the Government, not
only to see that the existing outlets for the national industry were
kept open, but to provide for the acquisition of new ones. Already
some ominous bankruptcies had warned the authorities of what might
happen. Over-production would inevitably lead to extreme measures, in
order that there might be no congestion. Among these measures, the
only infallible one was war, with its invasion of foreign markets by
force, its wiping out of those competitors who would not let German
labour enjoy the monopoly that it needed. Such, in a crude outline, are
the arguments adduced to show the overwhelming importance of economic
causes.
If from industry we pass to farming on a large scale, which is
organized in Prussia on industrial lines, we observe a specious
prosperity, depending in no small degree on the renewal of the
commercial treaty with Russia. This treaty, concluded at a critical
moment, after the Russo-Japanese war, empowered the great Prussian
landowners, thanks to surreptitious export bounties, to send their
wheat and their rye even to Finland, whereas Russian agricultural
produce could only enter Germany after the sale of the German crops.
Well, in my opinion, it would have been a very bad stroke of policy to
begin the capture of the French markets by ruining France—this being
the most likely result of a successful war. Before leaving Berlin,
I already heard some talk of an indemnity of £1,200,000,000 to be
extorted from the vanquished Republic. Bismarck had bitterly repented
having asked for no more than £200,000,000 in 1871, and there was to
be no repetition of that blunder. To this enormous ransom must be
added the vast sums that the war would have cost France, the ruin of
the departments invaded, the havoc wrought by the victors, all the
appalling balance-sheet of a national disaster. How would the sufferers
have been able to pay for the goods with which German industry proposed
to flood their country? The purchasing power of France after the
restoration of peace would have been reduced to the barest minimum. New
markets would have been of little use to Germany, if they had lost much
of their vitality and absorbing power, as would certainly have been the
case in a country that she had bled almost to death. One can hardly see
the necessity of capturing the French home trade on such terms as these.
Another plan that I have heard ascribed to the great German
manufacturers was that of industrializing France after her defeat,
setting up workshops and factories under the control of German
engineers and overseers, introducing the methods of work, the technical
improvements and the organization that had made Germany the wonder
of the world, and developing by intensive culture the wealth of that
admirable French soil. Why, by so doing they would have breathed
fresh life into an ancient rivalry which they had almost succeeded
in sweeping from their path! At the moment when German industry was
suffering from over-production and plethora, they would have aroused a
competition favoured in many respects with peculiar natural advantages.
I really cannot hold them capable of so signal a miscalculation. I will
readily admit, however, that they might have hoped to oust a ravaged
and ruined France from those foreign markets in which she still held a
strong position. Still, this project would have been difficult to carry
out as regards the special articles for which the French are noted.
Russia, if beaten, would probably have been forced to sign a new
commercial treaty, even more profitable to German agriculture and
industry than the previous compact. Yet I am inclined to doubt whether,
with the great Empire of the Tsars impoverished, the Germans would
have done better business there than before the war, or have found the
new openings that they required. Moreover, can we feel convinced that
the Slav farm-labourers would have flocked in such great numbers as
of old to the land of their conquerors, in order to offer them their
indispensable labour-power? We must not underrate the force of the
hatred and rancour that a devastating war will leave behind it, a war
carried on after the methods of the Berlin Staff. Furthermore, I cannot
believe that economic causes had the slightest influence on the attack
prepared by that Staff against Russia.
There remains the question of colonies. For twenty-five years Germany
had been obsessed with the desire to own a wide domain outside Europe.
The fairly extensive territories that she ruled in Africa, so far
from satisfying her, had only served to whet her appetite. A huge
Continental empire, without adequate oversea possessions, did not fit
in with the plan that the architects of her future greatness were
drawing up. The idea of an empire provided with vast colonies was
suggested to them, above all, by the example of England; but as there
was no longer any unoccupied space worth mentioning in Africa, they
dreamed of stripping France, Portugal, and Belgium of their African
dominions, and establishing a black Germany which should become the
handmaid and slave of their own blond Germany.
As regards the colonies, I grant that economic motives have counted for
something in the ambitions of the Imperial Government. The influence of
these motives is not hard to trace. The manufacturers wished to possess
in Africa the raw materials that they could not obtain at home, such as
phosphates, ores, rubber, and the like, instead of having recourse to
foreign ports. They could not shut their eyes to the splendid vision of
French Africa, Algeria, and Tunis (to say nothing of Morocco), whence
France annually imported goods to the value of twenty to twenty-four
million pounds sterling. This magnificent region was already fully
colonized, and the only way of supplanting her trade there was to wrest
the colonies from her by force. Indo-China did not seem to tempt German
greed, perhaps on account of the Yellow Peril, which William II. had
slightly on the brain, and which he was peculiarly fond of discussing.
On the other hand, the position of German industry, hazardous though it
appeared to more expert eyes than mine, by no means demanded the use of
so heroic a remedy as a European war. What would the United States do,
we may ask—they who have been the educators of Germany in industrial
matters—in the event of a glut in the products of their foundries and
steelworks, and a partial choking up of the vital outlets? They would
let their trusts readjust the market, drain off the excess of output,
close the superfluous workshops, relieve the situation generally, but
they would not declare war on any foreign nation. Economic competition,
in all its stages, is a war not fought with the soldier’s weapons. It
brings ruin in its train, too, but the ruin is not beyond repair. A
series of costly victories in battle would not deliver German industry
from the constant nightmare of the struggle for existence, any more
than they would make Germany the serene and unquestioned mistress of
the entire globe. The commercial and industrial welfare of a nation is
always menaced by the progress of others, by the relaxation of its own
efforts, and by various incalculable factors.
The merciless war waged against us by the Kaiser’s troops is above
all, in my humble opinion, a political campaign. Economic causes have
been grafted upon the primary cause, but the part they have played is
a subordinate one. The schemes framed in Berlin are no longer wrapped
in the haze that once surrounded them, but reveal themselves to us
in clear outline. What was the object of hurling two million men at
France, while the Russian armies were held in check and the Austrians
were sent to annihilate Serbia? To crush once for all the military
Power that stood in the way of German imperialism; to deprive Russia
of all concern in European affairs; to seize for Germany the whole
coast-line of the North Sea; to make her a Mediterranean Power by
annexing French Africa; to dissolve the Balkan alliances and deal
the death-blow to Slav hopes; to give Austria the suzerainty of the
Balkan peninsula; finally, to hold undisputed sway at Constantinople
and in Asiatic Turkey as far as the Persian Gulf. The exploitation of
Central Africa, requiring as it did vast capital, was an economic task
that could not be carried out in a day, and was therefore reserved
for an early future date. The same remark applies to the completion
and utilization of the Bagdad Railway. A few decisive battles, it was
thought, would be enough to enslave Continental Europe, and to build
up, on the basis of that “Mid-European Confederation” of which the
German intellectuals speak quite openly to-day, the political supremacy
of Germany, while England would be left isolated, an easy prey to her
rival in a later campaign.