GERMANY’S PLANS FOR NEW TERRITORIES, COALING STATIONS, AND INDEMNITIES
All through that eventful August and September Wangenheim continued his
almost irresponsible behaviour--now blandly boastful, now depressed,
always nervous and high strung, ingratiating to an American like myself,
spiteful and petty toward the representatives of the enemy powers. He
was always displaying his anxiety and impatience by sitting on the
bench, that he might be within two or three minutes’ quicker access to
the wireless communications that were sent him from Berlin via the
_Corcovado_. He would never miss an opportunity to spread the news of
victories; several times he adopted the unusual course of coming to my
house unannounced, to tell me of the latest developments, and to read me
extracts from messages which he had just received. He was always
apparently frank, direct, and even indiscreet. I remember his great
distress the day that England declared war. Wangenheim had always
professed a great admiration for England and, especially, for America.
“There are only three great countries,” he would say over and over
again, “Germany, England, and the United States. We three should get
together; then we could rule the world.” This enthusiasm for the British
Empire now suddenly cooled when that power decided to defend her treaty
pledges and declared war. Wangenheim had said that the conflict would
be a short one and that Sedan Day would be celebrated in Paris. But on
August 5th, I called at his embassy and found him more than usually
agitated and serious. Baroness Wangenheim, a tall, handsome woman, was
sitting in the room reading her mother’s memoirs of the war of 1870.
Both regarded the news from England as almost a personal grievance, and
what impressed me most was Wangenheim’s utter failure to understand
England’s motives. “It’s mighty poor politics on her part!” he exclaimed
over and over again. His attitude was precisely the same as that of
Bethmann-Hollweg with the “scrap of paper.”
I was out for a stroll on August 26th, and happened to meet the German
Ambassador. He began to talk as usual about the German victories in
France, repeating, as was now his habit, his prophecy that the German
armies would be in Paris within a week. The deciding factor in this war,
he added, would be the Krupp artillery. “And remember that this time,”
he said, “we are making war. And we shall make it _rücksichtslos_
(without any consideration). We shall not be hampered as we were in
1870. Then Queen Victoria, the Czar, and Francis Joseph interfered and
persuaded us to spare Paris. But there is no one to interfere now. We
shall move to Berlin all the Parisian art treasures that belong to the
state, just as Napoleon took Italian art works to France.”
It is quite evident that the battle of the Marne saved Paris from the
fate of Louvain.
So confidently did Wangenheim expect an immediate victory that he began
to discuss the terms of peace. Germany would demand of France, he said,
after defeating her armies, that she completely demobilize and pay an
indemnity. “France now,” said Wangenheim, “can settle for
$5,000,000,000; but if she persists in continuing the war, she will have
to pay $20,000,000,000.”
He told me that Germany would demand harbours and coaling stations
“everywhere.” At that time, judging from Wangenheim’s statements,
Germany was not looking so much for new territory as for great
commercial advantages. She was determined to be the great merchant
nation, and for this she must have free harbours, the Bagdad railroad,
and extensive rights in South America and Africa. Wangenheim said that
Germany did not desire any more territory in which the populations did
not speak German, for they had had all of that kind of trouble they
wanted in Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, and other non-German countries. This
statement certainly sounds interesting now in view of recent happenings
in Russia. He did not mention England in speaking of Germany’s demand
for coaling stations and harbours; he must have had England in mind,
however, for what other nation could have given them to Germany
“everywhere?”
All these conversations were as illuminating to me as Wangenheim’s
revelation of the conference of July 5th. That episode clearly proved
that Germany had consciously started the war, while these grandiose
schemes, as outlined by this very able but somewhat talkative
ambassador, showed the reasons that had impelled her in this great
enterprise. Wangenheim gave me a complete picture of the German Empire
embarking on a great buccaneering expedition, in which the spoils of
success were to be the accumulated riches of her neighbours and the
world position which their skill and industry had built up through the
centuries.
If England attempted to starve Germany, said Wangenheim, Germany’s
response would be a simple one: she would starve France. At that time,
we must remember, Germany expected to have Paris within a week, and she
believed that this would ultimately give her control of the whole
country. It was evidently the German plan, as understood by Wangenheim,
to hold this nation as a pawn for England’s behaviour, a kind of hostage
on a gigantic scale. In that case, should England gain any military
advantage, Germany would attempt to counter-attack by torturing the
whole French people. At that moment German soldiers were murdering
innocent Belgians in return for the alleged misbehaviour of other
Belgians, and evidently Germany had planned to apply this principle to
whole nations as well as to individuals.
All through this and other talks, Wangenheim showed the greatest
animosity to Russia.
“We’ve got our foot on Russia’s corn,” he said, “and we propose to keep
it there.”
By this he must have meant that Germany had sent the _Goeben_ and the
_Breslau_ through the Dardanelles and that by that master-stroke she
controlled Constantinople. The old Byzantine capital, said Wangenheim,
was the prize which a victorious Russia would demand, and her lack of an
all-the-year-round port in warm waters was Russia’s tender spot--her
“corn.” At this time Wangenheim boasted that Germany had 174 German
gunners at the Dardanelles, that the strait could be closed in less
than thirty minutes, and that Souchon, the German admiral, had informed
him that the strait was impregnable. “We shall not close the
Dardanelles, however,” he said, “unless England attacks them.”
At that time England, although she had declared war on Germany, had
played no conspicuous part in the military operations; her “contemptible
little army” was making its heroic retreat from Mons. Wangenheim
entirely discounted England as an enemy. It was the German intention, he
said, to place their big guns at Calais, and throw their shells across
the English Channel to the English coast towns; that Germany would not
have Calais within the next ten days did not occur to him as a
possibility. In this and other conversations at about the same time
Wangenheim laughed at the idea that England could create a large
independent army. “The idea is preposterous,” he said. “It takes
generations of militarism to produce anything like the German army. We
have been building it up for two hundred years. It takes thirty years of
constant training to produce such generals as we have. Our army will
always maintain its organization. We have 500,000 recruits reaching
military age every year and we cannot possibly lose that number
annually, so that our army will be kept intact.”
A few weeks later civilization was outraged by the German bombardment of
English coast towns, such as Scarborough and Hartlepool. This was no
sudden German inspiration, but part of their carefully considered plans.
Wangenheim told me, on September 6, 1914, that Germany intended to
bombard all English harbours, so as to stop the food supply. It is also
apparent that German ruthlessness against American sea trade was no
sudden decision of Von Tirpitz, for, on this same date, the German
Ambassador to Constantinople warned me that it would be very dangerous
for the United States to send ships to England!