Germany, France, Russia, & Islam

Foreword

THE following essays were brought into print between the dates of 187 1 and 1 895. They cover a varied group of subjects, but they are alike characteristic of the method of thought of the author and of the assured conclusiveness of his opinions. Treitschke does not make space for historic doubts or probabilities. He has the satisfaction of having arrived at final opinions in regard to actual conditions, while his predictions for the future are almost as assured as his descriptions of the present. The first essay in point of date was written in 1871 while the provisions of the settlement with France were being put into shape by the authorities. It would hardly be accurate to say that these provisions were imder consideration with the people of Germany for, under the conditions existing, the people had very little to say in regard to the terms of the treaty. It is possible, however, that the views of Bismarck and Moltke (views which were accepted with little question by the old Emperor) may have been influenced, or at least have been strengthened, by the counsel of so good an advocate of Imperialism as Treitschke. In any case, the adjustment finally arrived at was iv Foreword

in substantial accord with Treitschke*s recommendations. Treitschke phrases the German claim as follows:

The sense of justice to Germany demands the lessening of France. Every intelligent man sees that that military nation cannot be forgiven, even for the economic sacrifices of the war, on the payment of the heaviest indemnity in money. Why was it that, before the declaration of the war, and before a single German newspaper had demanded the restitution of the plunder, the anxious cry rang through Alsace and Lorraine, "The dice are to be thrown to settle the destiny of our provinces' ' ? Because the awakened conscience of the people felt what penalty would have to be paid in the interests of justice by the disturber of the peace of nations.

The term ''disturber of the peace" is one that might properly be recalled in 1914.

Says Treitschke, again indulging in this case in prophecy which we may at this time feel not to have been well founded :

The statesmen of the present day, whenever they have realized the altered equilibrium of the Powers, will feel that the strengthening of the boundaries of Germany contributes to the security of the peace of the world. We are a peaceful nation. The traditions of the Hohenzollerns, the constitution of our Army, the long and difficult work before us in the upbuilding of our united German State, forbid the abuse of our warlike power.

Foreword v

Europe might well wish that this counsel of the Imperial historian had been more thoroughly followed in the twentieth century.

In regard to the rightfulness of securing control of the provinces, Treitschke writes as follows:

In view of our obligation to secure the peace of the world, who will venture to object that the people of Alsace and Lorraine do not want to belong to us? . . . These territories are ours by the right of the sword, and we shall dispose of them in virtue of a higher right — the right of the German nation, which will not permit its lost children to remain strangers to the German Empire. We Germans, who know Germany and France, know better than these unfortunates themselves what is good for the people of Alsace, who have remained under the misleading influence of their French connection outside the sympathies of new Germany. Against their will, we shall restore them to their true selves.

There is a naivete in the admission that the people of the "lost provinces" have no desire to come into the family fold of Germany. The higher German wisdom knew forty-four years ago what was best for these people just as it knows to-day what is best for the people of Belgium who are, in like manner, being taken into the "kindly" fold of the German Empire.

The following reference to France indicates that the assumption of a superiority of German civilization is not a discovery of the twentieth century :

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They [the French] have felt the weight of our sword, and we challenge the whole world to say which of the two combatants bore himself with the greater manliness, uprightness, and modesty. At all times the subjection of a German race to France has been an unhealthy thing; to-day it is an offence against the reason of History — a vassalship of free men to half -educated barbarians.

With reference to Treitschke's claim, which was confirmed as the claim of Germany, that the appropriation of Alsace and Lorraine constituted a "restitution " of territory and of peoples that had been stolen from Germany, it may be in order to ask whether there does not apply, or whether there ought not to apply, to issues betw^een nations as to those between individuals, some statute of limitations? A period of one hundred years, for instance, in which time three generations of men have come into activity, might properly be accepted, under a common-sense code of international relations, as sufficiently long to bar out grievances or appropriations that were back of the birth of the great-grandfathers of living men. If in the civilized relations of states, for which the world is now hoping, some such principle is accepted, an important portion of the texts, or the pretexts, for aggressive wars, will have been removed. It is in any case a dangerous doctrine for a Prussian to propagate that there is no time in the future in which the status of territory can be considered as fixed. If there was good foundation for the claim

Foreword vii

made by Prussia in 1871 that France must be held responsible for making restitution for the "robberies" of Louis XIV, question might well be raised as to the propriety of the restitution by Prussia of the Silesian provinces appropriated by Frederick the Great, and of the territories of Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover "annexed" under King William I. It would have been wiser if the Prussian historian and the Prussian diplomat of the time had left the word "restitution" out of their documents and had let the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine rest on the simple fact of desire and of conquest.

Treitschke makes frank admission of the fact now known to history when he says:

We owe it to the clear-sighted audacity of Count Bismarck that this war was begun at the right time — that the Court of the Tuileries was not allowed the welcome respite which would have permitted it to complete the web of its treacherous devices. . . . The war began as a work of clear and statesmanlike calculation.

Treitschke was clearsighted enough to understand that this war had not been forced upon Germany by France, but was the result of the definite scheme of Bismarck.

Treitschke emphasizes, and with good historic grounds, the terrible and stupid barbarities committed by the armies of Louis XIV in certain towns and provinces of Germany. It would be viii Foreword

difficult to reprobate too severely the futile wickedness of the devastation of the Palatinate. During the two centuries that have passed since that barbarous campaign of Louis XIV, the nations were believed to have made progress towards more civilized standards; but to-day the world stands aghast by the ruthless devastation of Belgium. The destruction of Heidelberg in 1688 is paralleled by the ruin of Lou vain in 19 14.

The following admission as to the relations of Alsace to France and of the indebtedness of the people to French organization is interesting. Treitschke says:

But, alas! when we praise the Indestructible German nature of the man of Alsace, the subject of our praise declines to receive it. He adheres to his conviction that he is no Suabian, and that all Suabians are yellow-footed. He was introduced by France sooner than we Germans have been into the grand activity of the modern economical world. To France he owes a most admirable organization of the means of commercial intercourse, a wide market, the influx of capital on a great scale, and a high rate of wages, which, to this day, draws daily labourers in crowds at harvest-time from the fields of Baden across the Rhine. From the French he has learned a certain savoir-faire; his industrial activity, upon the whole, stands higher than that of his German neighbour.

This paragraph may be compared with the earlier citation in which he refers to the ' ' semi-barbarity of

Foreword ix

the France that has been conquered by Germany." He adds:

The war against Germany appeared in the eyes of the Alsatian peasantry to be a war for the liberty of their persons and for their bit of soil.

The question of ** liberty of person" was doubtless still in the minds of certain Alsatians at the time of the incident of Zabern.

Treitschke speaks of the accounts given in the Erckmann and Chatrian novels as presenting a "clear picture" of conditions in the provinces, and summarizing, without contradicting, the conclusions of the two novelists, he writes of the Pf alzburgers :

In language and sentiment they are Germans, but they have lost the last trace of a remembrance of their ancient connection with the Empire. They are enthusiastic for the tricolore; they bitterly hate the Prussian; and the noveHsts themselves write in French !

Lorraine is, as Treitschke mourns, "more French in its sympathies than Alsace. It is in German Lorraine that we are threatened by the most embittered hostility. " "In both provinces, ' ' he says, "capital and culture . . . are our opponents."

It will be interesting when the present war comes to an end, and the question arises, as it probably must arise, of the readjustment of the political relations of these provinces, to compare

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the statements made forty odd years back by the German historian in regard to the national sympathies and the interests of the people. It is those sympathies and interests which will find expression if opportunity be given for a plebiscite in which Alsace and Lorraine will decide between the Republic on the west and the Empire to the east.

An essay, written a few years later, bears the title The Claims of Prussia, It is an eloquent and forcible argument to show that the power of Germany can be consolidated and the place of Germany in the world can be safely secured only by giving to Prussia not merely a primacy and a leadership, but a substantially absolute control of the men and resources of the new Empire.

A further essay gives an informing analysis of the organization of the Empire. In this paper the historian develops his theory for the overlordship of Prussia, which, as he contends, can be exercised under forms that carefully safeguard the legitimate self-respect of the princes and the people. He points out that ''the German state has been reconducted into the channels of the old Imperial law ; — all that was just and wise in the institutions of the Holy Empire is revived in the new forms.'*

Treitschke makes the interesting suggestion that "in the great crisis of national life, war is always a milder remedy than revolution, for it safeguards fidelity, and its issues appear as a judgment of God."

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The constitution of the Empire does not fully meet his desire for a concentrated control. He writes :

The Bundesrath (primarily destined to safeguard the territorial interests) gives a firm and single-handed control to the Imperial policy; the Reichstag, on the other hand, which represents the united nation, has almost invariably exercised an obstructive and disturbing influence.

The Bundesrath is an Imperial Council made up of representatives of the States, and corresponds roughly to the American Senate; while the Reichstag, elected by the people (voting under certain restrictions), may be compared (although the comparison would in many ways not be precise) w^th our House of Representatives.

Treitschke takes the ground that

Prussia alone has remained a true state. . . . The entire Imperial policy reposes upon that tacit assumption that there cannot possibly exist a permanent conflict between the will of the Empire and the will of the Prussian State. ... In all matters of decisive importance, Prussia has the determining voice.

In his analysis of the Constitution of the new Federal Empire, Treitschke finds occasion for references to Switzerland and to the United States. He points out that

like the States of the American Union and like the Swiss Cantons, the individual German States have lost xii Foreword

their sovereignty, and from the strictly scientific standpoint can no longer be regarded as States, for they lack the two rights upon which the idea of sovereignty has been grounded — the right to take up arms and the power to determine the extent of their own prerogative. . . . The language of the Constitution as well as the language of common life speaks of the States of the German Confederation and of the States of the American Republic, but the name is nominal.

If the term "States" is at all applicable, they must be called ''non-sovereign States," but Treitschke believes there is properly no such thing. He makes the distinction, therefore, between a Federal State, in which the sovereignty of the individual States disappears, and a Confederation of States, in which the individual sovereignty has been retained.

A biographical study of Gustavus Adolphus belongs to the same period. Treitschke admits the great indebtedness of Protestant Germany to the "Lion of the North-Land." "Gustavus Adolphus," he says, "does not belong to a single nation, but to the whole of Protestant Christendom."

In the essay on Turkey and the Great Nations^ which bears date 1876 (the time of the Russo- Turkish War), Treitschke takes the ground that "Turkey is not needed in Europe." He is indignant with the "EngHsh stock speeches against Muscovite selfishness." He approves of the

Foreword xiii

pressure of the Russian power to the south-east, and points out that in territories that have been overcome, "the Russians are not meeting, Hke the Britons, in the East Indies, a very ancient civiHzation, equal in birth, but naked barbarism." They appear as the heralds of a superior civilization, and yet, notwithstanding the fact, they are not unapproachably alien to the conquered by descent and morality.

Treitschke prophesies that no European State, least of all Germany, can tolerate a permanent Russian settlement in Stamboul, if only because of the feverish excitement which v/ould be bound to flame through all Slav races at such a movement; and how is it thinkable that they could maintain themselves on the Bosphorus if a German army entered Poland, the troops of Austria marched through the Balkans, and an English fleet lay before Seraglio Point? [He goes on to say, however, that] it is impossible to forbid a mighty Empire to sail with its warships the sea that is before its coast and it [the closing of the Black Sea] is as immoral as was formerly the treaty for the closing of the Scheldt. . . . Even the collapse of Osman rule in Stamboul cannot fill us with blind fright if we calmly weigh the relations of the Powers to-day. . . . But there is no reason that the destruction of the Osman State must needs level the path for the world-Empire of Russia. . . . English statesmen wobble between obsolete prejudices and anxious cares ; self-interest and a feeling of inward elective affinity make them seem to the Turks their xiv Foreword

only true friends. . . . We seek in vain for a creative idea in the Tory Government of Great Britain.

He dreads lest trouble in the Balkans *' might endanger the existence of Austria and that would be a blow at our own Empire." He closes with the words :

In the Eastern Question, Russia needs us more than we her; and therefore an astute, strong German policy has nothing to fear from Russian alliance.

Treitschke writes as one speaking with authority. It seems evident from the present development of German policy and from the course of her history that Treitschke 's ideas have had a larger influence upon German thought and in shaping the work of German statesmen than had been fully realized during the lifetime of the historian. No student of the history of Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth century can afford to neglect the writings of this original and forcible historian.

G. H. P.

New York, January, 191 5.

Contents

TURKEY AND THE GREAT NATIONS GERMANY AND THE ORIENTAL QUEST

ON

WHAT WE DEMAND FROM FRANCE I. WHAT WE DEMAND II. ALSACE AND LORRAINE PAST AND PRESENT III. THE CLAIMS OF PRUSSIA