Pan-Germanism

Contents

I. The Causes of German Aggression . 1

II. The Myth of English Preponderance

IN Europe .19

Chapter I

FOR some years those at all familiar with current international affairs have known that it was the custom in the German navy to drink a toast, "To the day." Many people have hugged to themselves with glee the "secret" information that the oflScers were drinking to the day when war should be declared against England, but few indeed seem to have realized the splendor of the vision now before German eyes, or the ideas of the international situation which makes victory seem so near as to send German blood coursing swiftly in the anticipation of triumph. The Germans aim at nothing less than the domination of Europe and of the world by the Germanic race.^ One of the fundamental

* **To Germany, a [fleet] is merely a means to an end, and that end — if the Pan-Germans may be believed — is the destruction of the British Empire, the disruption of the French Republic, and the domination of the world." Archibald Hurd in the Fortnightly Review, xci. New Series, 785. Any one who will compare this article with the official Memorandum of the Admiralty prepared for the Dominion of Canada will have little doubt that it was "inspired."

errors, of which idealists and advocates of peace have been often guilty, is to treat this vast project as an unreality. In fact, it is already half accomplished. An equally mistaken view declares it the conception of an individual which chances to find for the moment a response in the German people, or a scheme which depends for its existence upon the transient personal influence of a few men. No doubt, a few men only know the full details of the plans for the realization of this stupendous enterprise, but the whole nation is none the less fired by their spirit and is working as a unit in accordance with their directions. It is literally true that Germany has "become Bismarckian. His heavy spirit has settled upon it. It wears his scowl. It has adopted his brutality, as it has his greatness. It has taken his criterion of truth, which is Germanic; his indifference to justice, which is savage; his conception of a state, which is sublime." "This nation has forgotten God in its exaltation of the Germanic race." Bombastic as such phrases are, they do convey some notion of the militant spirit which has

Mr. Hurd quotes the following sentences from the speech of the Imperial Chancellor in the Reichstag on November 10, 1912: "For months past we have been living, and we are living now, in an atmosphere of passion such as we have perhaps never before experienced in Germany. At the root of this feeling is the determination of Germany to make its strength and capability prevail in the world." See also the note at the end of this chapter.

roused that nation. When Li Hung Chang first learned from Bismarck the magnitude of these plans, he was skeptical. But before his brief stay in Germany was over, he wrote in his diary: "From all that I have seen, I am more than ever convinced that the Kaiser and Prince Bismarck meant what they said when they averred that the German Empire was destined to become a dominant factor in Europe."

The magnitude of the conception, the degree of success already attained, the probability of its complete realization, the grave dangers which it involves to other nations, are most clearly demonstrated by the alarm manifested by the latter. England's foremost soldier. Lord Roberts, has publicly declared that she has never been in all her history in a position of greater peril. The leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons as solemnly affirmed the truth of his statement. Ten years ago, he said, England had command of every sea; now she held control only of the North Sea. Ten years ago her fleet was so strong that she could have confidently expected to emerge victorious from a struggle of the magnitude of the Napoleonic wars; to-day there was no such probability. The ex-Premier of France, M. Clemenceau, said in public: "When I look towards the boundary of a territory which was French when

I was young, and when I see there the massing of lines of bayonets, I cannot dream of disarming." A crisis of the utmost gravity is thus facing Europe, and may at any moment result in a war whose consequences would be felt alike by the farmers in North Dakota, the operators in Lancashire cotton mills, and the savages in the heart of Africa. At the very least, it will overthrow political boundaries whose permanence has been thought assured; at the worst, it may involve the actual destruction of the prosperity and happiness of two or three of the largest countries in Europe and inflict untold misery upon the countless thousands dependent upon European rule in Africa and Asia.

The vital factor in the modern international situation is the aggression of Germany, her determination to expand her territories, to increase her wealth and power. Three centuries ago, Prussia was a tiny state whose many parts were separated from each other by the lands of her neighbors. Cut ojff from the sea on all sides, pushed hither by the oncoming Russian, dragged thither by the encroaching French, surrounded by tiny incompetent states, her rulers saw in aggression the only possible method of preserving the national life. To prevent her absorption by her neighbors, she must grow faster than they; she must rob them instead of waiting for them to rob her. By war, she secured access to the Baltic; by war, she obtained the coveted Silesia; by war, she annexed much of Poland ; by war, she spread her aegis over the whole of northern Germany. The humiliation of conquest she knew under Napoleon, and she has never forgotten nor ever will that no natural barriers stand between her and the invader. Povertystricken, still recovering from the ravages of the wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, menaced on all sides by powerful enemies, her only safety, Bismarck saw, lay in aggression, her only chance of victory depended upon striking the first blow. By this policy, she has built up one of the most powerful states in the world and one of the most populous and prosperous. But she has reached the boundaries of Germany; further expansion means the acquisition of what other nations now own.

The logic of facts, proving the necessity of expansion, is, to such Germans as General Bernhardi, unanswerable. The population has increased so rapidly that it is already difficult for efficient, well-trained men to secure any employment. Not only is the superficial area of the country suitable for cultivation practically exhausted, but intensive scientific agriculture is speedily limiting the possibilities of the employment of more hands on the same acres or the further increase of the produce. Industry has grown at a stupendous rate, and the output from German factories is enormously in excess of the needs of even the growing population. Her exports per capita are $24 a year, as against England's $40, and France's $25, and she has not their exclusive colonial markets. Unless some outlet can be found for the surplus population, and a new and extensive market discovered for this enormous surplus production, prosperity will be inevitably succeeded by bankruptcy. There will be more hands than there is work for, more mouths than there is food, and Germany must either get rid of the surplus mouths and hands or swell the surplus product by employing them at home, which cannot be done without entailing national ruin. Expansion is, therefore, the only alternative, for the German considers equivalent to ruin the reduction of the pressure of population by emigration,* and the avoidance of overproduction

* In 1881, nearly five per cent of the total population emigrated, and in the two succeeding years the number was scarcely smaller. Most of them came to the United States. German emigration at present is almost negligible. The name Pan-Germanism at first denoted a movement for the creation of a greater national unit out of these emigrants and the Germans at home. It aimed at maintaining the emigrants' devotion to the Fatherland by preserving their language and German habits, and at preventing their amalgamation, so far as possible, into the nation to which they had migrated. Its hope was eventually to draw them back to the Fatherby the proportionate reduction of output. For Germany to be thus forced to remain static in population and in wealth, while her neighbors continue to expand, England in her colonies, France in Morocco, Russia in Siberia and Turkestan, means that the date of her annihilation will be fixed by the rate of their growth. And such action on her part would compel her in fact to be an accessory to her own destruction, for her emigrants must strengthen her rivals both in the field and in the factory. To ask a German, therefore, whether the expansion of Germany is desirable, is merely to ask him whether he believes it desirable from any point of view for the German nation to survive.

Already the boundaries of Germany in Europe have been pushed to their furthest extent; more territory can be added only at the expense of other nations, either of her powerful rivals, France and Russia, or of her weaker neighbors, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. Nor would the accession of such territory solve the difficulty. All European nations are already experiencing to

land or t» provide for them new homes under the German flag elsewhere. The methods employed were mainly educational, by means of German newspapers, active German departments in American universities, German societies, frequent visits to the great German " colonies " by German authors and professors. This movement, however, was soon merged into and dwarfed by the greater scheme now known as Pan-Germanism.

some degree the necessity of an outlet for their surplus population and manufactures. A war for expansion in Europe would be without purpose and could only be detrimental to all. Germany must find some territory suitable for development by her own people which is not already choked with men and women. She is seeking the counterpart of the fertile plains of western Canada, of the rich valleys of northern Africa, where her people may build a new Germany whose existence will strengthen her and not her rivals. But such a promised land, tenanted only by native races, is not to be found. Every really available spot is held by England, France, or Russia. Germany can, therefore, obtain colonies suitable for her purposes only at the expense of these last. This is what is meant by the oft-reiterated statements that England, France, and Russia are by their very existence inimical to Germany's welfare, that, if she is to escape ruin, she must fight them. The alternative to colonies is access to some new market for her products, so vast in extent and so unlimited in its capacity of continued absorption, that her surplusage of population can be provided with work at home, and thus prosperity and the increase of the national strength indefinitely insured. The total annual imports into her own colonies she knows to be well under ten millions of dollars; the exports from England to the English colonies alone she knows to total several hundred millions of dollars.^ Such a market she is determined to have, cost what it may. One other fact marks England as the greatest obstacle in the path of her legitimate growth. The English Channel is the only available safe passageway for her merchant fleets. The voyage round the British Isles is long and during the winter months positively dangerous even for steamships. Natural conditions, therefore, by compelling Germany to use the Channel, force her to expose her commerce to the assaults of the English fleet so long as the latter controls the Channel. Even if she should acquire colonies and a great market, she cannot really possess them until she acquires a highroad to them safe from the attacks of her enemies. Short of conquering England and France, she can never free her commerce from actual danger; without a great fleet in the North Sea, strong enough to terrify England into inaction, she cannot even be assured of the continuance of her present freedom of passage. ^

* The leading customers of England in 1910 were in millions of poimds: India, 45 millions; Germany, 37 millions; the United States, 31 millions; Australia, 27 millions; France, 22 millions; Canada, 19 millions. England's exports to these three colonies were 91 millions and her exports to the three nations were 90 millions.

2 The preface of the German Naval Bill of 1900 stated: "For the protection of our oversea trade and our colonies, there is only one

Her fleet, therefore, seems to her merely the guarantee of her present position, and it will continue to be a guarantee only as long as its size makes it formidable. Merely to retain what she now has, Germany is condemned to increase her navy at any pace the English see fit to set. Something more will be absolutely essential if the dire consequences of an economic crisis are not to impoverish her and pave the way for her ultimate destruction at the hands of her hereditary enemies, France and Russia.

To secure a share of the world's trade in some fashion which will not expose her to the attacks of the English fleet, and which will create an empire less vulnerable in every way than she believes the British Empire to be, an overland route to the East must be found. The Germans consider perfectly feasible the construction of a great confederation of states including Germany, Austria, Hungary,

means: a strong fleet. Under the present circumstances, the only means for protecting Germany's oversea trade and colonies is: Germany must possess a fleet of such strength that a war, even with the strongest naval power, would involve such risks as to jeopardize the position of that power. For that purpose, it is not absolutely necessary that the German fleet be as strong as the fleet of the greatest naval power, for a great naval power will not generally be in a position to concentrate all its forces against Germany. But, even if the greatest naval power should succeed in meeting us with a fleet of superior strength, the defeat of a strong German fleet would so greatly weaken its own power, that, notwithstanding its victory, its own position on the seas would no longer be secure."

the Balkan States, and Turkey, which would control a great band of territory stretching southeast from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. A railway from Constantinople to Baghdad would effectually tie the great trunk lines, leading from the Rhine and Danube valleys, to Constantinople and the Persian Gulf, and so establish a shorter route to India than that via Suez. Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Persia, India herself, the mother of nations, would fall into German hands and be held safe from conquest by this magnificent overland route to the East. Pan-Germanism is, therefore, in the first place, d defensive movement for self-preservation, for escaping the pressure of France and Russia, both bent on her destruction. It is, in the second place, an offensive movement directed against England, its object, the conquest of the English possessions in the Mediterranean and in Asia. She expects thus to obtain an outlet for her surplus population and manufactures and to create an empire as little vulnerable politically, economically, or strategically as any the world has yet seen.

In reply to the outcries from other nations, denouncing these plans as unprovoked aggression and lacking in morality, as a reversion to the forcible methods of bygone centuries whose brutalities the world long ago outgrew, the Germans derisively point to the presence of the English in India, of the French in Morocco, of the Russians in Manchuria, of the United States in Panama. They insist that their aims and methods are absolutely identical with those their detractors have so long employed. Now that the latter's work is complete and their own futures assured, they are no doubt eager to establish "moral," "ethical," and "legal" precepts whose acceptance by other nations would insure them the undisturbed possession of all they now hold. This, the Germans admit, is but natural and not blameworthy; but they ought not to expect other nations to subscribe to such principles from motives of love or admiration.^ General Bernhardi, a man whose undoubted attainments and learning compel the respect of his enemies, and whose following in Germany is large in numbers and influential in character, declares openly that might is right, and that right is decided by war. He scoffs at such ideas of ethics and morality as his critics represent, and insinuates that, if war happened to

* "That any one should act in politics out of complaisance or from a sentiment of justice, others may expect from us, but not we from them. . . . Every government takes solely its own interests as the standard of its actions, however it may drape them with deductions of justice or sentiment. . . . My belief is that no one does anything for us, unless he can at the same time serve his own interests." Bismarck, Reflections and Reminiscences, English translation, A. J. Butler, New York and London, 1899, respectively, pp. 176, 173, 202.

promise other nations at this moment as many advantages as it does Germany, they would hold views similar to his upon that subject.

With him, the Germans as a whole refuse to admit the validity of any theoretical notions whose application would in any way restrict or interfere with Germany's "full share in the mastery of the world." Do they not see about them the splendidly tangible results of the investment ^ of the huge war indemnity paid by France to ransom her lands from the German army? Do they not know that the indemnity created modem Germany? As a prominent German manufacturer said to the writer two years ago, "Next time we will ask five times as much." In the face of the undeniable territorial gains, equal in amount to several times the area of Prussia and Brandenburg combined in 1640, in the face of that five billions of francs which they have invested and reinvested with such brilliant success for forty years, how can the Germans be expected to believe that the fruits of peace are greater than those

* The indemnity was nominally spent in defraying the cost of the war and in improving the anny and fortifications. It was indirectly distributed to the nation and to individuals; for the army was the nation in arms, the debts were mostly owed to Gennans, the labor and materials employed on the new works were German. However the transaction was recorded formally on the books of the state, the nation itself received the money either in wages or by the remission of taxes.

of war? Is not the very existence of Imperial Germany due to war? Could it conceivably have been created by anything else? Will anything less preserve it? They deny the validity of any particular set of ethical notions of right and wrong to decide issues vital to the continued existence of the Germanic race. If such considerations are to be dragged into the discussion, the notion of the relativity of truth, the doctrine that moral and ethical standards are not fixed but merely reflect the stage of progress each particular age has reached, the Darwinian doctrine of the survival of the fittest, all seem to them infinitely more satisfactory theoretical grounds for action than what Bismarck sneeringly called "the English phrases about humanity."

The most significant question now before the Anglo-Saxon race, therefore, is the truth or falsity of those notions of strategical geography, of military and naval organization, of finance and commerce upon which these vast schemes are based. If the factors, on which the Germans rely, are what they think they are, the domination of the world by Germany and her allies can be only a question of time. If they are not valid, the world will certainly develop along different lines. So widely do the economic and political interests ramify, so completely are all sections of the globe influenced by them, that nothing can happen, from this moment until the final decision of the issue, which will not vitally affect it or be vitally affected by it. The Boer War, Morocco, the strangling of Persia, the war in Tripoli, the Balkan crisis are only incidents in this gigantic struggle in which the very pawns are kingdoms and the control of the entire globe the stake. Indeed, the forces at the disposal of the combatants are so comprehensive that navies and armies might almost be called incidental factors, which it may or may not be necessary to employ, and which might not indeed be decisive for victory or defeat.

Naturally, even to sketch the history of the world in its relation to the modern crisis, even to enumerate the multifold phases, political, constitutional, economic, military, which it necessarily displays, is an impossibility in anything briefer than a series of volumes. An attempt to describe merely the features and factors essential to a comprehension of the most significant phases of Pan-Germanism alone will require the omission of much that is important and will make impossible any account at all of the narrative of recent history. What has happened, what is happening, is of infinitely less consequence than the scope and character of the German plans. The most vital fact for the Anglo-Saxon race to grasp at present is the German view of European history, of European life and ideals, their estimation of the comparative strength of political, economic, and ethical forces. From a grasp of these points, and from it alone, can we hope to understand the apparently inexplicable and inconsistent ideas upon which has been based the most audacious attempt yet made consciously to direct through a long term of years the evolution of a nation and the fate of the world. ^ The following chapters, therefore, will attempt to describe Europe and Germany, as the Germans see them, as the necessary prelude to a brief statement of the progress Germany has made toward a realization of her scheme and a description of the attempts of her "victims" to frustrate it. Then, there will

1 The extent to which the German nation as a whole is conscious of the existence of Pan-Germanism is not demonstrable. There can be no doubt that the Government has consistently attempted to shape public opinion in favor of it. Bismarck's notion of public opinion is enlightening. He said to Crispi : " Public opinion is but a great river formed by a quantity of small streams, one of which is the Government stream. If the Government would but swell its waters sufficiently, it would have a determinative influence upon the great public current. If, on the contrary, the Government wants to measure the strength of all the other streams, which, separately, are less powerful than its own, it must be overwhelmed by the union of their forces. A Government acting thus would be guilty of unpardonable neglect of precautions." Crispi, Memoirs, ii, 163, London, 1912.

In the Fortnightly Review, xci. New Series, 785, Archibald Hurd states: "A section of powerful politicians and vested interests, with the support of the Emperor and the Marine Amt, under Grand- Admiral von Tirpitz, have obtained control of the Government and the most influential newspapers, and dominate German policy."

be an opportunity to weigh the scheme in the balance, to point out its elements of strength and weakness, and thus to arrive at some approximation of the probability of its success or failure.

NOTE

The following testimony was given under oath in a court of law by the editor of the Rheinisch-Westfdlische Zeitung in a political libel suit instituted by him against the editor of the Grenzhoten. It was printed only [so far as can be learned] by the Rheinisch-Westfdlische Zeitung and the Tdglische Rundschau, but was not denied by the gentlemen named in it, and seems to have been suppressed so far as was possible. The following translation is taken from a semi-official article in the Fortnightly Review, xci, New Series, 462. Whether or not the words credited to the important personages quoted were ever used, they express sentiments which are widely believed to represent their views. After all, it is not so much the truth itself, but what intelligent and sincere men believe to be the truth, which influences the trend of human events.

"Mr. Class, the President of the Pan-Germanic League, is prepared to state upon oath before this court ^ that the Secretary of State for Foreign AflFairs, Herr von Kiderlen Wachter, writing to him from Kissingen, requested Mr. Class to meet him at the Hotel Pfalzer Hof in Mannheim. During the interview, which occupied several hours, Herr von Kiderlen Wachter stated: *The Pan-Germanic demand for the possession of Morocco is absolutely justified. You can absolutely * The italics are not in the original. 17

"jf rely upon it that the Government will stick to Morocco. Monsieur Cambon is wriggling before me like a worm. The German Government is in a splendid position. You can rely upon me and you will be very pleased with our Morocco policy. I am as good a Pan-German as you are* ^ On the 1st of July, Mr. Class called at the German Foreign Office, and, failing to find Herr von Kiderlen Wachter, was received by Herr Zimmermann, the Under-Secretary. Mr. Zimmermann told him: *You come at an historic hour. To-day the Panther appears before Agadir and at this moment (12 o'clock mid-day) the Foreign Cabinets are being informed of its mission. The German Government has sent two agents provocateurs to Agadir and these have done their duty very well. German firms have been induced to make complaints and to call upon the Government in Berlin for protection. It is the Government's intention to seize the district and it will not give it up again. The German people require absolutely a settlement colony. Please prevent, wherever in the Press you have influence, the raising of claims for compensation elsewhere. Possibly France will offer us the Congo. However, the German does not want compensation elsewhere, but a part of Morocco.' "

1 The italics are not in the original.

Chapter II The Myth Of English Preponderance In

EUROPE

ENGLAND, with all her bluster and show," said Bismarck to Li Hung Chang, "has a hundred weak points, and she knows that a conflict with a power nearly her equal will mean her undoing." A vital part of the German scheme for the control of the world depends upon the belief that power is not absolute, but comparative. Not alone Germany's strength, but her rivals' weakness, will be significant factors for victory or defeat. To Germans it is an error to suppose that England is decadent. The fundamental misconception is to suppose that England ever was strong. She has been strong by reason of others' weakness, by the use of others' resources, by the spoils of conquest. She has not less cohesion than before, not fewer vital interests in common with her dependencies. The British Empire has never possessed cohesion; never has had a common, vital economic, or geographical interest; has always been a sham, a figment of the imagination, a glittering generality whose unreality has remained concealed only by reason of the inability of other nations to perceive it.^

England's naval power has been the result of accident, not of genius, think the Germans, and has rested chiefly upon the accidents of geography and geology. The formation of the British Isles, the meeting of strong oceanic currents to the north of them, made the narrow passageway between England and Europe the most important single bit of water in the world. The commerce of northern Europe was forced to pass through the Channel because it could not safely go round. The navigation of this safer passage was made exceedingly difficult for wooden sailing ships by the peculiar formation of the shores and by the treacherous tides, winds, and currents. Chance had, moreover, placed most of the natural harbors on the English side. There was, indeed, between Brest and Hamburg but one spot on the continental side which might serve as a base of operations for a great fleet, the district now known as the Neth-

* The author begs his readers to bear carefully in mind that he is attempting in the following chapters to expound the German view of the situation rather than what he believes to be the truth. Naturally, a view of the international situation, upon which a great nation of intelligent people is willing to base a policy on whose success may depend their national future, will contain many factors whose truth is not to be denied by any impartial student. The general conclusions, derived from considering these obviously true facts, may, however, be vulnerable.

go eriands. The constant use of the Channel necessarily involved, therefore, the use of English harbors as a refuge from storms. Nor were the difficulties of navigation limited to the passage of ships through the Channel. To sail across that narrow way, especially with a fleet, was literally an almost impossible feat except from one or two points on the European shore, the more favorable of which was the Netherlands. The natural barriers to invasion thus furnished by the Channel so limited the possibilities of assault that its defense became comparatively simple. Invasion after invasion, decade after decade, was defeated because the unfavorable weather, continuing for weeks at a time, made it impossible for the enemy to leave Europe. These natural barriers are gone forever, destroyed by the steamship, which is not limited in the time of its departure nor in its course by winds and waves. ^ Never again can an English