ACROSS GERMANY
My first stopping-place was the Grand Duchy of Baden, then Wurtemburg
and, finally, Bavaria. I was everywhere able to confirm that our
Government had received untrue reports and even untruer interpretations
with regard to these countries.
It was true that everyone was weary of the war and the sacrifices of
men and money which the country was making; everyone deplored the
complete stoppage of industry and commerce, and the misery which
was its consequence, and everyone ardently desired the end of these
sufferings and the rapid, the immediate conclusion of peace.
But on what conditions?
Did it mean that this ardently desired peace would be accepted on any
conditions and at any price?
On this capital point people in France had the fondest illusions, and
found themselves most completely mistaken.
Yes, they wanted peace, but they wanted it at the price of a good
ransom which would permit the German Government to indemnify all those
who had suffered damage either directly or indirectly from the war.
Nor was that all. Besides a money indemnity, all were unanimous in
demanding as “guarantees for the future” the cession of Alsace and
Lorraine.
That is the manner of peace they wanted, and if all Germany was tired
of the war and desired its ending, all Germany considered it a crime on
the part of France not to consent and not to understand that the hour
had struck for her to surrender at discretion.
People were exasperated with France for prolonging a hopeless struggle
and by her obstinacy preventing a conclusion of peace for which the
world had an immense need. In such a sense as this Germany was tired
of the war, and had it been necessary to send even more soldiers to
augment the million combatants already on French soil, had it been
necessary to raise and again raise new levies in order to arrive at
the goal, all Germany without exception--north, south, east, and
west--would have given its last man capable of bearing arms.
I will even go further. Supposing for a moment--such a supposition
has no kind of foundation, but suppose for a single moment--that if
Prussia or one or other of her allies had desired the end of the war
under conditions that were easier for France, and supposing they had
attempted to establish this view in the United Council of Ministers,
public opinion would have swiftly reduced such a proposition to
silence. The first Government to have attempted an enterprise of
such a nature would have immediately been overturned by the general
indignation of the whole people, who would have risen against it as a
single man.
A king or prince liberal enough to have proposed such a peace would
have been driven out as a traitor to his country, and as unworthy to
sit henceforward on the throne of his august ancestors.
M. de Bismarck knew his people well, and expressed an indisputable
truth when he told M. Jules Favre, at the interview of Ferrières, that
the King himself could not conclude peace without the cession of Alsace
and Lorraine.
This feeling, far from being weakened since that time, had only been
increased and strengthened. The longer the war lasted, and the greater
the sacrifices that it imposed, the greater and the stronger also grew
the general opinion of Germany that peace must be concluded solely in
return for, over and above a large ransom, the cession of these two
provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, which were regarded as German, and,
above all, as a necessary rampart against France.
Here and there, of course, scattered and lost among the crowd, there
were a few philosophers whose dreams were in more elevated spheres
and who did not wish to admit the right to annex a country by the
brutal path of arms and conquest, at any rate without consulting its
population.... But who would listen to them? Who took them seriously?
They were regarded as Idealists, only to be laughed at; they were
accused of madness, and if they had really been thought to be of sound
mind, they could not have failed to be treated as traitors to their
country.
I spoke with many individuals between the Rhine and the Danube,
but I never met anyone who would have consented to a peace
without territorial gains. Even those whom I had formerly known
as “Liberalists” and belonging to the “Republican Party” were no
exception, and energetically insisted on annexation. The fact is
that the situation had changed since the month of July of the “année
terrible.” At the beginning of the war--as I have already remarked--a
good part of Prussia’s allies were lukewarm enough, but later on
enthusiasm had become general.
I was told an incident which seems characteristic. I will cite it as I
heard it, without comment and without guaranteeing its authenticity.
The King of X., who did not love the new régime, who suffered cruelly
from it in his own capital and who did not wish to let his authority
over his own army be taken away from him, was ready to cry with
vexation when he was asked for the last reinforcements to be despatched
to the theatre of war. He would like to have refused them, but dared
not do so. Shutting himself up in his palace, he refused to see his
troops at their departure defiling with music across the public square
in front of his palace.
* * * * *
But the whole of Germany had become drunk with the unheard-of,
unhoped-for success of its arms, and this success exalted the different
populations all the more that it had been greater than they had dared
to hope for when the war began.
Up to that time France had been a formidable and much-feared power.
The “_Rothosen_,” or “Red Breeches,” were regarded beyond the Rhine as
invincible soldiers. At the news of the declaration of war, the various
peoples were at first in great anxiety; everyone expected to see the
French arrive from one day to the other.
If at that moment, I repeat, we had pushed vigorously forward instead
of groping about and letting the enemy have time to concentrate his
troops, take the initiative, and throw his soldiers in his turn on to
our soil, the war would perhaps have taken another complexion, in spite
of the wonderfully prepared plans of M. de Moltke.
A swift march to the Rhine, a vigorous advance beyond the frontier,
carrying our arms beyond the river into the midst of German soil, would
have produced an immense impression, and would have thrown doubt and
hesitation among the allies of Prussia. Perhaps the whole campaign
might have turned in favour of France.
I have no intention of here trespassing on military ground, where even
those more competent than I are not always in agreement. But I can
certainly bear witness, for it is the exact truth, that the anxiety of
all sections of the German population was great, and that, when the
news of the first victories arrived, one could not believe them, but
rather considered them as miracles and attributed them to the Divine
Justice which wished to punish “impious” France, the hereditary enemy
of Germany, for having forced a quarrel on her and having without
serious reason begun this terrible war. Once the first victories were
won, there was no limit to the rejoicings, and as success increased and
was accentuated, when one battle after the other was won and the German
armies advanced in numbers and irresistibly on to French territory,
this immense, matchless, and unprecedented victory produced an equally
immense change in public opinion. What, was France letting herself
thus be beaten? France, who had set the ball rolling, France, who had
menaced the security of Germany for a century and who would always
menace it, if Germany did not profit by the opportunity and take her
precautions!
And so, from the depths of the German mind, the idea had arisen which
M. de Bismarck expressed so vigorously and insistently to M. Jules
Favre in the interview at Ferrières, the idea which had stiffened the
king’s back and resulted in the interview being fruitless. “We must
have guarantees for the future,” and the more they saw the rapidity and
persistence of their success, the more did they become attached to this
idea: “We must have guarantees.”
Guarantees!
And they insisted on having for “guarantees” what was directly contrary
to all guarantee, for who can deny to-day that Alsace-Lorraine is the
only obstacle, and a permanent obstacle, to a durable peace between
the two nations? But at that moment the most far-seeing could not see
this; their eyes were blinded by success, their spirit was drunken with
military glory and the desire to use their strength up to the hilt and
without consideration for the future.
After the surrender of Metz, where the last soldiers of France
had given up their arms and gone as prisoners of war into German
fortresses, one hoped that the war would be finished and the signing of
peace would only be the work of a few days or weeks. But as the days
and weeks passed, and as Paris was “obstinate” in its resistance and
the provinces continued arming and defending themselves, in a word as
one arrived at the certainty that France would not surrender and that
after the defeat of her armies it was still necessary to conquer the
“nation” and invade the entire country, then passion and impatience
were born. An immense anger seized all Germany; her rulers, her
thinkers, her writers, the whole people, all those who wielded the pen
or the sword, all who lived and breathed, united in a single thought,
and proclaimed and repeated this formula of M. de Bismarck: “We must
have guarantees for the future.”
So much so that when history in the last instance judges and declares
this annexation as one of the greatest mistakes of our century, history
will be obliged to state that the entire German nation forced the hands
of their Government to commit it.
Since France had commenced this “impious” war, and “Divine Justice”
had granted victory, and an immense, a prodigious victory, one had
to have guarantees for the future against the chances of a future
attack. The sacrifices that had been made must not be lost to “the
children.” Future generations must be sheltered from the chances of
new provocations on the part of France, in case the latter should ever
again wish to declare war.
Such was the exact public opinion of Germany, and that is why it was
impossible to arrive at peace without the surrender of Alsace and
Lorraine, if France and Germany were to remain alone on the bloody
field to conclude it, and if the Powers were to refuse to intervene
against German demands and to force her to modify them.
From Munich, my last stopping-place, I went direct to Vienna.