The Mark of the Beast

Front matter

00094468

Digitized with financial assistance from Shri Brinad Bhartiya Samaj on 31 October, 2019

THE MARK OF THE BEAST

Preface

‘* Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine ine tguities, by the iniquity of thy traffick ; therefore will I bring forth a five from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.”

My main object in collecting and rearranging the facts which follow is to drive"home the lesson that an inconclusive peace with the German Empire will be a disastrous defeat. No military details of the war (with very few exceptions) will be found here. For them my _ readers must turn to suchauthorities as Hilaire Belloc, John Buchan, Ian Hay, Lord Ernest Hamilton, and many more. My task has been to record and explain cer- ‘tain facts about German Kultur, German diplomacy, and the atrociouss cruelties perpetrated by the armed forces of the German Empire in flat contradiction not only to vii'

Me

Viii PREFACE the laws of war, but to the dictates of humanity; and this book is therefore divided into three sections dealing respectively with these three main‘ subjects,

The whole of the material (which represents a mass of facts and names) has been carefully verified. It has also beendeliberately removed from its original chronological setting. It is no longer important that the dates of any particular essay should be preserved. After two years of war a more organic and more useful method of arrangement has become possible and necessary. The concentration into one chapter of events or facts which came to light (and were originally recorded) at various times has added very greatly to their significance. I therefore offer no apology for making full use.of what has appeared beiore, either in the Fteld or in reprints of Leading Articles written _ for that paper; for I present it in a very different form, and, I venture to believe, in a far more valuable setting. A great deal of new material (up to October 24th, 1916) has been added.

Many books about the war were written long before the multiple corroborations of 1916 had happened ; and many facts in this latter year, which might have seemed isolated phenomena, gain a vivid interpretation when compared with earlier occurrences which prove them to be the inevitable result of an earlier and a deliberately determined policy. In both of these senses this book has profited by the mere date of its appearance. But it has profited still more by yet another process; for I have been very deeply indebted to many previous writers on the war and on its causes. In most cases they are aware of my personal gratitude. But-if there are others whose work has not been specifically acknowledged, let me cay that I- have freely taken from the whole corpus of contemporary writing any thought, any phrase, any reference, which might strengthen the case here

PREFACE ix set forth. For I have felt that everyone would wish to contribute to the common stock, to that unbought armament of nations which is the mental resolution and decision of their people. I have felt that there is not one of us who would not freely offer everything he had to advance in any way the cause for which we are all fighting either with sword or pen; and that, in such a conflict as we still must face, the usual literary courtesies may for a time rest in abeyance. Let me in any case here openly express my very hearty thanks to all those predecessors who have given me, whether they were aware of it or not, such valuable assistance. After all, it is the Germans themselves who have provided by far the gravest counts in the indictment of their nation.

The murder of Captain Fryatt on July 28th, 1916, did not stand alone in the more recent chronicles of German crime, for in the same week as this gallant seaman was shot for doing his duty we received news that the Germans in Lille -had been carrying out atrocities upon the civilian population which have only been equalled by the most savage slave-traders in Central Africa. Hundreds of men, women, and children were taken from their homes, under circumstances of disgraceful brutality, and packed off into forced labour—and worse—in Germany and elsewhere. One of the many possible observations upon this (apart from other considerations) is the contradiction with Germany’s own interpretation of the law. Not merely had she agreed (at the African Conference of Berlin in 1885) not to inflict on African tribes the forced labour again forbidden by Article 46 of the Hague Convention of 1907, but she based on that very Convention her request to France on March 22nd, 1916, that Germans interned in France should not be forced to work. Early in August, 1916, Commandant Schrack, German Governor of Halluin, near Lille, wrote to its burgomaster to say that “ whatever the x PREFACE

Hague Convention may have decided in the matter

of occupied regions, it is to be understood that no

other will. was valid than that of the German authorities.”

If the civilian inhabitants would not work for Ger- - many, their town was to be destroyed. This is, I

think, the most openly cynical disavowal of the con-

ventions of civilization which even Germany has yet

uttered during this' war.

But it is not by any means the only instance of the preposterous claim that Germans are a law unto themselves. On August 31st, 1916, a report issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross was published by the Gazette de Lausanne. It revealed that prisoners had not only: been forced to work in mines, but that. at Ewald 40 per cent. of them had been totally incapacitated in consequence. It revealed that in September, 1915, a German order was placarded compelling French prisoners to work at Erhhardt’s cannon and munition factory in Diisseldorf ; and the Order set forth the position as follows: ‘ All means will be employed to compel prisoners to work. ... Any appeal of the prisoners to the regulations and laws of their own country will be useless, as the prisoners in point of fact are under the laws of the German Government alone.” We know a little better now. what those “laws” mean; and some of the~ horrors inflicted upon Germany’s unhappy prisoners are set forth in later pages of this book. They imply a national brutality that would be incredible if it were not proved.

On the day after Captain Fryatt’s death the final touch was given to the nauseous picture of the Germans and their Kaiser by an announcement from Madrid which is incomparably worse than the advertisements published previously in the Scandinavian “Press offering for sale the furniture and effects looted from French and Belgian homes by the noble German Army in 1914. It appears that several well-known

PREFACE xi members of the Catholic aristocracy in Spain who owned estates in Belgium had expressed a very natural sympathy with the sufferings of their neighbours in that unhappy country. The Kaiser then took a step which is even more sickening than his bullying vulgarisms about “‘ Attila and the Huns” in China, or about our “contemptible little army” in Flanders. He threatened these Spanish gentlemen that if they signed the address of sympathy with the Belgians he would cut down the old trees in their parks, and would fill their chateaux with the “‘ roughest soldiers in Germany,’’ who “‘ would defile and destroy their furniture.”” It is quite impossible to make any adequate comment in these pages upon this disgusting message; but it is an admission, somewhat too belated, that the German Army still contains men sufficiently brutal to do all that was recorded of their pioneers in Belgium. And it affords another proof— if more were wanted—that the whole German nation, from its rulers downwards, are thoroughly unfit to mix with decent civilized society.

It is unfortunately true that the first shock with which we all heard of the atrocities committed by the German Army in Belgium and France has been lessened by the mere effluxion of time. But this only lends an additional importance to our remembering, at this hour, that with such bestial atrocities as this war began in Belgium will the German Empire cheerfully begin every other war in which it may be engaged, for, horrible as it is, this is not merely the way they fight, it is the way they think and live; and therefore these atrocities, in one form or another, have gone on ever since. It is equally essential to-day to remember that, though many excellent British citizens have long ago put out of their minds the tangle of diplomatic intrigue which preceded the definite out~ break of military operations, yet this intrigue has gone on ever since, not merely because the German xii PREFACE

Chancellor has taken every possible subsequent opportunity to tell lies which may ‘“ explain” his position in July and August, 1914, but also because Bethmann- ° Hollweg has been carefully backed up by his master. On August 1st, 1916, for instance, the Kaisér’s open proclamation to his Imperial Chancellor began with the deliberate lie: ‘‘ For the second time the anniversary of the day arrives when our enemies forced me to cali Germany’s sons to arms fo protect the honour and the existence of the Empire.’ It is also a melancholy fact that the deceit and spying which Germans (and Prince von Biilow) call diplomacy have never stopped during the whole war, and are being even more feverishly organized than usual as they see the inevitable end approaching and struggle to escape it. That struggle must be rendered as vain as were their military plots.

The well-known facts on record concerning the diplomacy of their ministers and the atrocities of their army are the real reasons why we cannot for a moment contemplate the usual “‘ terms of peace,” Just as they have continuously broken those rules of war which were really framed to enable the com- - batants to live in peace together afterwards, so they have totally abused those principles of honesty and humanity on which the foundations not merely of treaties, but of all European civilization and intercourse must depend. It is essential to understand this in detail, and not’ merely as a sweeping statement. The documents officially printed by the various Governments concerned confirm these views. And just as the atrocities they committed in Belgium and - elsewhere have for ever dishonoured the German Army and its Kaiser, so the dingy-pedantries which he calls Kultur have for ever vitiated his diplomacy &nd policy, The strongest military organization the world has ever seen did not- meet with the defeat of the Marne, the disaster of Verdun, and the collapse

PREFACE xiii of its effective strength upon the Somme merely because of those technical mistakes in strategy and tactics to which technical military writers can so plentifully point; its downfall was chiefly due to the terrible truth that the inspiration behind it is a demoniac farce, that it has nothing to offer those it would enslave, that it has no shred of spiritual sanction on which the courage of its bravest supporters can finally repose. I have endeavoured to prove this, not by the mere generalizations of philosophic criticism, but by the production of ascertained facts and by quotations from actual German writers.

Though, in defining the issues of the war, we are still so close to the events on which, as an Empire, we are asked to give the most momentous decision in our racial history, the position is far more favourable to the production of a reasonable verdict than has ever been the case in any war before. Not only is the choice immeasurably clearer, but the authentic documents on which evidence for plaintiff and defendant may be based are forthcoming in great numbers. I have published scarcely a single atrocity that has not been proved by the legal processes usual to British justice in our courts of law. I have pilloried scarcely a single diplomatic fact which has not been published in the official statements of one or another of the Governments involved. And lest it should be thought that all the evidence has been taken from one side, I have been careful to make full use of the little material in the way of ‘‘ White Books’”’ which has been published by a Government singularly averse to these productions ever since the days of Bismarck; and my evidence for atrocities rests almost as much on the letters and proclamations of German soldiers as on the testimony of eye-witnesses or of victims, In just the same way my analysis of Kultur has been - based on German writings.even more than on French or English criticisms of them. So I have quoted as xiv PREFACE freely from the works of Bernhardi'! and Frobenius, before the war, as from the famous pamphlet “ Truth about Germany,” after war had begun. I have not’ thought it necessary to call further attention to the notorious writings of Prince von Biilow which have appeared .during both periods. But it should be noted that this typical diplomatist vastly prides himself on his complete deception of England in the matter of the building of the German Fleet. He is no doubt considered by his compatriots to be one of their most valuable assets in the peace-negotiations they still anticipate. If any such negotiations should unfortunately be necessary, which I doubt, we shall know at any rate that von Biilow can never be trusted again, for he has boastfully proclaimed his own duplicity.

Bernhardi, Frobenius, Prince von Bilow, and other modern writers have, after all, only applied to present conditions the doctrines emphasized long ago by Jreitschke and spread all over Germany for the last twenty years by the poisonous propaganda of the militarist caste. That propaganda was always based on certain fixed principles, viz.: Hohenzollern absolutism; the hegemony of Prussia in Germany; the necessity of a military system strong enough to force’ German will upon the world; the duty of abolishing or absorbing all such absurdities as “‘ small States” ; the complete freedom of the German Empire from all “moral” obligations such as treaties, arbitrations, considerations of “‘ humanity ”’ or “ honesty,” or any of the effeminate shadows of an outworn “ honour ”’ which are only invoked by men or peoples too weak to do what they like and take what they please. It could easily be shown that about half a dozen quota-

‘ At the end of August, 1916, Bernhardi réplaced the Austrian General, Pachalo, in command of the Army Corps in the Kovel section, under Hindenburg. I look forward with interest to his next volume on the blessings of War. .

PREFACE XV tions of Treitschke would justify everything the Germans have done and the Kaiser has said since July r914. Here are a few:

“War will endure to the end of history.’ The laws of human thought and of human nature forbid any alternative, neither is One to be wished for.”

‘The God above us will see to it that war shall return again, a terrible medicine for mankind diseased.”

“Tt does not matter, says the State, what you think, so long as you obey. ... Moralists must recognize that the State is to be judged not by the standards which apply to individuals, but by those which are set forth by its own nature and ultimate aims.”

“ Piety is a fundamental requirement in a monarch, since the belief that he stands immeasurably above all other men may actually unsettle his reason if it be not balanced by personal humility which compels him to acknowledge himself God’s instrument.”

‘‘Neither personal excellence nor mental capacity lies at the root of the position of the house of Hohenzollern. Their distinguishing mark is that they are our kings and stand on their own right and exercise a power which is undisputed.”

‘In Prussia they learned long ago how to be subjects and how to seek their glory in the service of the Crown... . There must be no question of subjects having the right to

~ oppose a sovereignty which in their opinion is not moral,”

But no antiquarian researches into Treitschke and the philosophers would be appropriate to pages which are chiefly concerned with recent utterances. I am well aware, too, that very much more could be added to what I have selected even from this latter class. Perhaps the egregious epistles of Professor Lasson may be taken as typical of the rest. In any case, it is only on the evidence of such testimony as I have mentioned that I have ventured to draw the moral which such opinions seem to me inevitably to involve. My aim, in fact, has been ‘to prove that the war can end in a peace of one kind and of one kind only, unless we are deliberately to reject everything for which

“our best and bravest have sacrificed their lives. I xvi PREFACE venture to hope that no one who seriously considers for himself the facts I have recorded can for an instant remain in doubt as to the urgent necessity for continuing the war until it is in our power fully and finally to impose that peace upon the German people. From time to time I have drawn attention to the various utterances of Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Imperial Chancellor, who began his martial oratory with the open admission before the Reichstag of the “ wrong’”’ committed by the German Army in invading Belgium, and who brings his speeches up to date by a description of the kind of ‘‘ Peace”’ which he would like to see produced by the operations of that army from August, 1914, to the present day. The rest of the world is, in one respect, almost-as well able to judge of the actual results as is the Chancellor, fer we know the facts of the period preceding the war; we know the situation now before us; and we observe that Germany, which had risen since 1870 to be one of the greatest and most respected nations of the world, not merely in military and naval power, ‘but in commercial development, in industrial activity, and in intellectual reputation, has become, in the two years since the German Army invaded Belgium, an object of almost universal execration, crippled in both fleet and army, cut off from all the seven seas, blockaded round well-nigh all its frontiers, impoverished by the dislocation of every form of commerce and finance, and fighting for sheer existence against the combined and justly incensed forces of France, Russia, Italy, and the British Empire. It is no wonder that ~ the German Chancellor should think it well to emphasize the blessings of “‘ Peace.” But it is worth noticing that he has as little idea in 1916 of what we mean by _“ Peace” as he had of the results—to him and all of us—of the war he deliberately roused in 1914, In the Nineteenth Century for July, 1916, Mr. J. W. Headiam, who has done sterling work in analysing

PREFACE xvii

German diplomacy for the last two years, published a description of Bethmann-Hollweg’s arguments which everyone should read; and I recommend it chiefly to two classes of thinkers—the first, those who never understood why we had to fight in 1914, or why we are fighting now; the second, those who will be wondering, in a few months, why we go on fighting © after Germany has professed her willingness to treat for peace. The former may be neglected; for if they are not ashamed of themselves, they ought to be, and they will never influence any important section of their fellow-countrymen either in war or peace again. But the latter cannot too early realize that German promises in 1916 will have even less value than she attached to her signed word in 1914. The breaking of treaties is so deeply rooted a tradition in the House of Hohenzollern and its Prussians that their violation of the neutrality of Belgium should have surprised us far less than it did, and their infraction of any terms they might induce the Allies to let them sign this year, or next, would be a matter of course. The war will be ended by a peace that is “ made,” not by signatures that Prussia would disown. There will be no “terms” to sign. Fighting will not cease till a condition of affairs is reached which will render Prussia and the Hohenzollerns impotent for evil either outside their own borders or within them. They made war to show that the Necessity of Prussia was above all treaties; and it is the one asset on which they will be able to count as being widely recognized after their campaign has ended. They made war to prove that there was no Law save that of the Strong, and by that law alone shall they be given peace. They made war in order that the conquerors might have ‘full security”’ to do as they liked afterwards; and by that same prudent motto, will the victors’ plans be guided when we begin to talk of terms at all. They began their diplomatic

XViii PREFACE preparations two years ago on the insolent assumption that a question which instantly and intimately affected the whole of Europe should_not be discussed by any Power save Austria and Serbia, with the inevitable corollary for the future that no European Power should interfere in any question which Prussia desired to isolate. They have since suggested conditions suitable to the victors in a decisive struggle at a moment when their opponents are neither beaten nor dismayed. ;

In July, 1916, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung published the Imperial Chancellor’s latest offer, He “stated that, before peace can be concluded, he has three objects: :

(1) the closing of the doors of attack which are now. Opened on Germany’s heart from the strategic positions of Belgium, France, and the East; (2) the pushing back of Russia behind the rivers, the creation of Poland as a bufferstate and the consequent shortening of the Russo-German frontier ; (3) assurances to Germany that her trade in the world can develop unhindered.’”’

It must be observed that, though his tone of confidence has gradually changed, the spirit of his interpretation remains the same; and there is the evident argument that England and the Allies are uselessly prolonging this war after they have been beaten. It is a subtle suggestion that we might-have peace to-morrow if we would only give Germany legitimate “security’’ with the usual “guarantees.” How simple it sounds! And what damnable sophistry it really is!’ What does “ security’ mean to the Prussian? It means the hegemony of Germany over a prostrate Europe. And what are her guarantees? They would be the bondage of ali other nations to her commerce, her Kultur, her militarist officialdom, her doathsome ideals of life and character. In other words, the Chancellor’s idea of peace is the utter destruction of: everything we mean by a free and

PREFACE xix honourable civilization. I need say nothing more at present of the revolting revelations of innate German bestiality which this war has produced, by sea and land, and in every part of Europe the German troops have touched. Readers of this book will need no more instances of what German Kultur and German honour really mean. But I do not think everyone quite realizes that this is the kind of Kultur Germany proposes for Europe as the result of her war, or that this is the kind of honour with which she would keep — any peace treaty we were fools enough to let her sign. She would only sign it on condition that she was left stronger in the future than England, France, Italy,- and Russia all combined—which means that she would do as she pleased, whatever form of words she ratified ; and she is asking more than sufficient “ securities ”’ and “‘ guarantees ’’ to enable her to do so.

It must be obvious that no one outside Germany is likely to consider the Chancellor’s offer seriously to-day. In September, 1916, M. Briand scornfully refused it on behalf of France. Mr. Lloyd George followed him with an even more emphatic rejection on behalf of the British Empire. I believe that the German people are beginning to have grave doubts about it also, And the war will go on until the stern reality is seared into their minds, For the “‘ security ’’ which Bethmann-Hollweg’ predicates for Germany she shall have in the same measure and with the same guarantees as England, France, Italy, and Russia _have it—by the one law of honourable confidence between nation and nation on which alone European civilization can be based. It is just because Germany broke that law in 1914, and insists on her right to break it whenever she thinks the “ necessity” for doing so may arise in the future, that we shall go on fighting until she is powerless to break it whatever she may wish. That lesson Germany must learn, and no “ terms of peace” matter a farthing in comparison with it, Until the xX PREFACE

Germans have learnt it we shall never lay down the sword or allow Germany’s flag to sail the seven seas ; for the only “ security ’’ the rest of Europe will accept from her is the certainty that she is powerless for evil. Prince von Bilow’s latest publications reveal yet_ more of the great German plot. Never again must Europe live beneath the menace of that black obsession. As Mr. Asquith said in the House of Commons, on October 11th, 1916 :—‘‘ This long and: sombre procession of cruelty and suffering, lighted up, as it is, by deathless examples of heroism and chivalry, cannot be allowed to end in some patched-up, precarious, dishonouring compromise, masquerading under the name of peace.” :

All Europe, and all the civilized world, celebrated with especial fervour ‘“‘ France’s Day,” the 14th of July, in 1916. Think for a moment of the contrast between the memories that anniversary evokes and the ideals to which Bethmann-Hollweg has just given repeated utterance. In that contrast lies the root of the whole war; for it is the contrast between Right and Brutality, between Reason and Ambition, between the gentler arts of life and the morose insanities of organized assassination. I am not among those who thought that the war would continue until its third year was ended, for I have been able continuously to keep

-under observation what may be called the moral and intellectual trend of events as opposed to the simpler issues of military operations; and it is only because those moral and intellectual phenomena will become more and more important as the military defeat of Germany becomes more certain that I venture to reiterate their vital importance as the third year of war begins. The flood of German lies and protestations will rise to unexampled heights as soon as she begins to suspect the possibility that she has lost the material conflict on which she staked her whole reputation and her future. This is the moment when

PREFACE XXi

I ask my countrymen to remember what I have recorded. It is right to go on killing, in fair fight, as many as possible of the German soldiers who support the Hohenzollern policy. It will be right to refuse British citizenship and even admission within our borders to all the German citizens who have been ready to profit by that policy. It will be right to register in the Archives of Civilization the Black List of those murderers and torturers whose names are known in France and England. It will be right to remember in the day of reckoning that the Kaiser, who might have pardoned Edith Cavell and Charles Fryatt, and did pardon others who had done the same, allowed these two to be butchered by legal formalities because they were English. Tt will be right to insist that for every ton of defenceless merchant shipping sunk without warning and without regard to the lives of non-combatants, of women and of children, at least a ton of German shipping is handed over to the Allies ;

it will be right that all German money and property in this country should be sequestrated, and all German shipping of every sort and kind barred from the seven seas of the world, until that debt is paid; and it will be right to refuse all diplomatic representation to Germany until she has carried out in full the terms of the Allies. But it is not right even remotely to consider the question of “‘ reprisals in kind,” and I have invariably deprecated them.

Such a policy of stark terrorism and brutality as the German people have attempted to carry out has brought its dreadful and inevitable punishment, not upon them only, but also upon the actual instruments of each hideous crime. No one who was in London in the very early morning hours of September 3rd,. 1916, will ever forget that memorable spectacle of the Zeppelin flaming in the northern sky, or of its slow descent, like some infernal prodigy of doom, in ashes upon the land it had attempted to destroy. No one xxii PREFACE who heard it will ever forget that thousand-throated murmur from the crowded streets which seemed to voice the verdict of humanity upon the most gigantic effort ever made by man to harm and horrify his fellow-man. .. . ‘‘ Thou shalt make them like a fiery oven in time of thy wrath: the Lord shall destroy them in His displeasure, and the fire shall consume them. ~ For they intended mischief against thee: and imagined such a device as they are not able to perform. Therefore shalt thou put them to flight.”