The war in Europe, its causes and results

Preface

No excuse will be offered for the smallness of this book in comparison with the vastness of its subject. The author has felt a personal need of some knowledge of those conditions of Europe which bear upon the origin of the Great War of 1914. Thence it was a short road to the thought that other Americans might be interested in a brief but systematic statement of the resources, aims, and difficulties of the European powers ; the manner in which they became involved in the war ; and the probable results of the struggle to America and to the rest of the world.

The book is based first of all on personal acquaintance, either through travel or residence, with all the great and small countries at war or threatened with war, except Russia and the Scandinavian countries. Much in these pages results from studies begun thirty years ago in the universities of Freiburg and Berlin, and the Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris. Additional data have been collected expressly for this volume.

v vi PREFACE

I cannot expect to be free from errors of fact, though I have taken pains to verify statements that seemed likely to be questioned. Doubtless there are also mistakes of inference and deduction. At least it may be claimed that such as may be found in these pages do not arise from prejudice for or against any of the contestants; for I have spent happy days and formed friendships alike in Germany, Austria, France, England, and Servia.

The book is intended to be a study of facts, conditions and probable results, and not to be an argument. Upon many critical questions relating to the war, necessary evidence has not yet reached the world. Upon many others, where the facts are established, there is opportunity for honest differences of opinion. Upon few issues are the materials so abundant that a conclusion may be safely reached in the thick of the struggle. Whatever the faults of judgment, they are the author's own; the book has been written without aid or revision from others. The purpose is to treat the subject fairly and impartially. While sympathizing with all the peoples involved, there is one nation in favor of which I feel an unalterable partiality : it is the United States of America, which has her anxieties and interests also in the tremendous struggle.

Albert Bushnell Hart.

Cambridge, October 17, 1914.

Contents

PAET I. CONDITIONS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — Significance of the European War . 1 War in Our Time, 1 ; Approach and Extent of the War, 5; Effect on the Peace Movement, 9; Significance to Americans, 11.

PART II. WAR VI. — War in the Balkans 104

The Balkans to 1878, 104; Balkan Troubles from 1878 to 1912, 107; Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, 111; High Tide for Servia, 113; Atonement for Ferdinand, 115; Responsibility for the Ultimatum, 120.

VII. — The War Becomes European . . . 125 Attitude of Russia, 125; English Efforts at Mediation, 128; Austro-Russian Conversations, 130; Mediation of Emperor William, 133; Mobilization and Diplomacy, 135; France, 138; Great Britain, 140; Montenegro and Japan, 147; Belgium, 149.

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTEB PAGE

VIII. — Psychology op the European War . 154 The Sovereigns, 154; The Ministers, 159; The Military Men, 161; Mobilization, 163; Public Sentiment, 165; Kismet, 166.

IX. — Questions op Neutrality ... 169

What is a Neutral? 169; Military Service, 172; Foreign Trade, 174; Neutrality of Italy, 177; Neutrality of Belgium, 180.

X. — Methods of Warfare 186

Recruiting, 18 6; Information, 189; Atrocities, 193; Noncombatants, 195; Forced Contributions, 202; Airships, 203; Submarines and Mines, 206; Rigors of War, 209.

XI. — Effect of the War on the United

States . . 212

National Sympathies, 212; Trade and Transportation, 21 6; The American Army and Navy, 219; American Democracy, 223; Monroe Doctrine. 227.

XII. — Outcome of the War . . ... . 230

Numbers and Losses, 230; Transportation and Supplies, 234; Command of the Sea, 237; Varied Fields of Warfare, 240; Fortune of War, 243; Possible Terms of Peace, 246; Basis of a True Peace, 251.

PART I. CONDITIONS

Chapter I Significance Of The European War

WAR IN OUR TIME

WAR is woe. War is destruction. War is death. War is hell. Against war pulls the natural shrinking of every living man, woman, and child from pain and danger. War is a denial of the most elementary basis of political economy, which assures us that men habitually act upon what they suppose to be their interests. War fills with consternation the great owners of property who see impending the poverty of individuals and of nations. War is the enemy of culture, art, education — of everything that exalts the mind. War is contrary to the Christian religion, denying the brotherhood of man and the love of one's neighbor. The responsibility of bringing about war shocks the greatest statesmen and disturbs the most ruthless soldiers.

War is obsolete. War is discredited. For fifteen years the Hague Conferences have been hopefully searching for a way of preventing war and thought the world on the brink of the millennium.

Yet a few weeks ago suddenly burst out the most terrific war ever known to mankind, the largest, the farthest reaching, the most destructive of life. When in 1883 the great volcano of Krakatoa blew itself into fragments, the sound was heard ten thousand miles away on the coast of England. So the clamor of the armed host in Europe crosses the ocean and disturbs the peaceful life of the whole western hemisphere.

Notwithstanding its horror the war seems remote; it is hard for Americans to realize, even after weeks of undiminished excitement, that other countries are being torn to pieces by the shock, destruction, and terrors of furious fighting. While the reader in his easy chair opens this book, far away on the other side of the ocean drab-clad masses of troops are trudging wearily — company after company, regiment after regiment, division after division, steering east, west, north, south — anywhere, to find their human prey. At this moment the bugle is sounding a halt. Tired soldiers are opening their haversacks and watching the kettle boil under the tripod of muskets. At this moment an aeroplane is hovering over a hostile town, watching for the chance to drop a bomb which will presently blow into

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WAR S

fragments a group of babies and nursemaids in the park.

While we think about it, a million men are straining every nerve, flogging gun-horses, cursing, tugging, bringing up the transports, parking ammunition wagons, setting out hospital material, digging rifle pits, exchanging shots with the enemy's pickets ; they are half dead with fatigue, yet only at the beginning of their toil of getting ready for the coming great battle. A fourth of them are unconsciously preparing themselves for the operating table or the soldier's shallow grave.

Just at this moment noncombatants are fleeing with shrieks of despair from their villages — unarmed men, whitebeards, women, cripples, toddling children, rushing out of the range of the battery which is beginning to drop shells among them. They are leaving their little all, the savings of a lifetime's toil, leaving it to go up in smoke. They cringe at the thought of the fate of the helpless peasants in the Balkan War of last year, for even civilized and Christian soldiers do queer things when they have in their power the wives and children of their enemies.

At this moment a regiment of infantry gives way and the cavalry are riding furiously among them, shooting, sabering, breaking their skulls. At this moment the horses are straining at the big siege guns which are slowly moving forward to get into range of the church spire five miles away beyond the trees; and within half an hour the church that has lasted through centuries of battles and sieges and is precious with the memorials of twenty generations, will be a heap of ruins.

Out at sea, in the track of the usual cheerful procession of steamers, every craft that thought itself in danger has been scurrying to port — -to any port except that of an enemy. The tick of a wireless receiver brings alarm to a captain who has laughed at fifty gales. Out on the North Sea comes the boom of heavy guns, and the periscope of the submarine cuts through the water like the fin of a man-eating shark. Perhaps at this very second a vessel, German, Russian, or English, is hit by the unseen projectile of the monster, and is carrying a thousand brave sailors down to the bottom of the sea.

Within the peaceful boundaries of the United States the war makes distress and fear. Your neighbor is frantic because he has no news from his wife and children, last heard of in Strassburg. The next man had everything fixed for a profitable shipment of grain; his wheat is sidetracked at Buffalo, and it may be months before he can get a vessel. Across the street is a cloakmaker; his materials were to have been shipped from Paris this week, and now he must discharge his hands. Another is calculating up his share of the hundred millions of new taxation which the Federal Government has laid. The next man is

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WAR 5

a Serbo-Croatian, called by the Hungarian government to go home and fight his blood-brethren of Servia; and unless he goes he never can show his face again in his Fatherland. No earthquake, no fire, no flood, no hurricane, could cause a tenth of the anguish and terror which has befallen the civilized world.

APPROACH AND EXTENT OF THE WAR

One of the dreadful incidents of the war is the amazing quickness with which it has come on. Most wars which were not sudden inroads of pirates or nomad horsemen have bubbled a long time before the volcano finally broke out. Even Napoleon had a playful way of giving notice that he was about to strike a neighbor by upbraiding the ambassador of that country on some public occasion. The War of the Revolution had been gradually approaching for about a year and a half when it finally broke out in 1775; and even then it was more than a year before the colonies would take the once-for-all step of declaring independence. In the American crisis of 1860-61 there were five months between the secession of South Carolina and the firing of the first gun against Fort Sumter; and up to the very last there were hopeful spirits who thought there would be some kind of compromise. The war of Prussia against Austria in 1866 had been coming on visibly for a long time; and almost three months passed in preparations and discussions before the Prussian troops actually moved. Even the last war in which Prussia was engaged, in 1870, was preceded by several weeks of exchange of views with regard to the proposed choice of a Hohenzollern to be king of Spain. In 1914, however, Europe appeared to be in perfect peace on the morning of July 23 ; but on the evening of August 2 six powers were already committed to war.

The war is, or threatens to be, European in its geographical extent, but it is world-wide in its immediate and future effect. The area of terror and damage reaches into every continent and every ocean. The actual theater of land war includes such distant places as Kiao-Chao on the Chinese peninsula of Shan-Tung; the Samoan and Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean; and the interior of Africa. The King of the Tonga Islands blends his note of opera-bouffe by gravely announcing the neutrality of his kingdom! The cruisers of the various powers suddenly loom up just outside the three-mile limit near any neutral port of the Atlantic, or Pacific, or Indian Ocean and then disappear. The majestic merchant ships of England, France, and Germany scuttle to port or keep the seas with apprehension. When before this year have the most powerful and fastest merchant vessels in the world been

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WAR 7

compelled to put out their lights, blanket their portholes, silence their wireless, and dash through fogs at full speed without the warning whistle? The world is learning the meaning of Kipling's lines :

"The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor

'eeds — The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she

needs."

Never since the Armada have the narrow seas been so full of terror, or the broad seas so beset with losses. Of the great fleet of the Hamburg- American line — two hundred and one ships in all — after about ten days of war, not one was afloat on the ocean. Of these only a few have been actually captured, but the stoppage of transit has affected the commerce of the world. Even

"The little cargo-boats, . . . the same as you an' me"

are afraid of capture, and anywhere in the North Sea are afraid of mines.

No country in the world is detached from this struggle. All the small neutral powers of northern and western Europe are in daily fear of being drawn into the contest. The so-called neutrals of the Balkan region are watching their opportunity to leap into the fray at the dramatic moment. One Asiatic power, Japan, is already engaged in war and China may very easily be brought in. For it is the tendency of such a war to draw into its fearful machinery innocent and unwilling by-standing nations.

Many wars have been waged which, though desperate and long-continued, have little affected the ordinary life of the people. England throughout the Napoleonic period kept up her manufactures and her trade. The North, during our Civil War, grew more populous and richer every year. But the European system of universal military service stops mines, breaks up factories, except those operated for military reasons, depletes capital, and crushes to earth the little business man. The number of men and women who had made a modest success of their workshop or agency or hotel and who are already ruined and never can recover, literally runs into the millions. Where are the flourishing arts of peace? What has become of the attractive exhibition at Malmo in Sweden? Of the great book show at Leipsic? Of the art exhibit at Venice? Who buys pictures, or orders statues, or contracts with prima donnas in such a time as this? Who endows universities, founds schools, builds laboratories, in the midst of the stress and sacrifice of war? Even the arts of peace are, for the time being, almost paralyzed.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WAR 9

EFFECT ON THE PEACE MOVEMENT

The war affects the whole world through its fearful disappointment to those who hope for universal peace. It is a sinister comment on the efforts of the first Hague Conference of 1899 and the second Hague Conference of 1907 and the Hague Tribunal and the Hague conventions, that in the last fifteen years eight wars have broken out ; and in not one have the parties availed themselves of the opportunity for a rational discussion of the questions at issue. The Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Italo-Turkish War, the French War in Morocco, two Balkan wars and the Civil War in Mexico and now this European war all ignored the possibility of arbitration by the new machinery.

Still it was hoped that controversies between great European powers would at least give time for discussion in the spirit, if not the precise methods, of the Hague movement. The passions of great nations run too swiftly. Sir Edward Grey in July never hinted at Hague arbitration, though he did his best to bring about a kind of arbitral conference of four powers. The war may bring such disaster to the nations that they will more effectually seek a way of preventing or minimizing war altogether; but it looks as though the slow work of the Hague conferences would need to be done all over again, and even then would be hampered by the fact that the war has introduced many new problems of methods of fighting and ways of treating neutrals.

The war has unchained new forces all over the world. Unless Europe is beaten to a standstill, unless every nation is so exhausted and miserable that it is willing to start again from the point where it stood when the war broke out, the struggle is bound to result in great territorial changes and new combinations of the powers. Austria- Hungary, excepting for the period of its occupation of North Italy, has had about the same territory for several centuries. France, except for Alsace and Lorraine, has about the boundaries of 1689; but now the map of Europe is likely to undergo adjustments.

Even if it remains about what it was before, the war has shown such diabolical progress in the art of destroying life that it is a question whether civilization can endure, unless airships and submarines are put under some kind of international supervision. Apparently the old science of fortification has broken down. The land transportation of men, supplies, and great guns has undergone a change through the use of motors. Swift sea transport brings distant parts of the globe into the European struggle. The Mongol, the South Sea Islander, and the Afghan have a direct interest in the questions of this war and future wars, and may take a hand in settling them.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WAR 11

SIGNIFICANCE TO AMERICANS

To the people of the United States the war has the direct and immediate significance of making irregular and uncertain many lines of commerce and production. The great wheat farmer and the cotton planter look doubtfully across the sea. The banker who is ready and anxious to finance their shipments finds his capital dormant because of the lack of ships. When ships sail there is the serious question of guaranteeing payment for the cargoes on the other side. The ship-owner hesitates to take over foreign ships under the new registry law because he feels doubtful whether he can keep them busy after the war is over. The whole endless chain of personal and business relations is confused and demoralized by a war to which we are not parties.

This is an opportunity to profit by the necessary changes in the currents of trade. Asia and South America are enormously valuable markets, but they cannot buy unless they can sell their own products in exchange ; and it is uncertain how far the United States can either seize upon or hold these opportunities for trade. The people of this country may learn to do without certain foreign articles, or may make good substitutes on this side of the water. On the other hand it is possible that foreign countries will learn to do without some American exports. All we are sure of is that the world's trade once smashed can never be put together in the same form again.

Americans have enormous commercial and social interests in this war. The actual property of American individuals, firms and corporations abroad runs up to the hundreds of millions. The potential profits on the sale of American breadstuffs, coal, cotton, oil, and manufactures are measured by scores of millions. The vast shipping property forms another link in the chain which binds Europe and America together. Socially we are interested in countries from which have immigrated thirteen and a half millions of our own people. The United States is the largest and most successful champion of popular government as against autocratic government, and that is another issue in this war.

Therefore, Americans, of all people in this crisis, need a knowledge of the causes, conditions, and probable outcome of the titanic struggle. They have less opportunity than Europeans of seeing the circumstances for themselves. Few American travelers penetrate deeply into the countries or the character of the people of Europe. Our diplomats are changeable; and one who has carefully observed the diplomatic service of all nations declares that most ministers never get acquainted with anybody except those of their own set whom they meet at dinners. Business men who trade on their own account with Europe

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WAR IS

are more apt to have clear views of the conditions, but they see only a portion of the decisive factors. ■-**-•■ *

To the best informed observers in Europe the relations between men and nations which have at last led to war are singularly intermixed ; and the most impartial men hardly know where to fix blame and responsibility. The people of the United States have no alliances and no national prejudices in Europe. During the two recent Balkan wars the popular sympathy went toward what seemed to be an effort to get rid of an obsolete and offensive government. That sympathy has been much disturbed by the rival claims of the Turks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Servians, and Greeks. In the present struggle the United States sympathizes with the Austrian effort to hold members of many races in concord ; with the intellectual and scientific greatness of Germany; with the republican government of France ; with the Russian desire to have a clear entrance to the world's seaways ; with English freedom of commerce. Our desire is to understand what the European nations actually are, and to realize the interplay of those nations upon each other. Still more we need to know what the race elements of Europe are, and how far there is truth in the idea that a race war is unavoidable, and perhaps to be desired.

Each party to the war puts forward its own statement of the reasons which seemed to that power to make war the better choice of two evils ; each power is convinced that its reasons are satisfactory. The ministers and priests of each power pray to the same God for help against each other, and earmark the Almighty as infallibly on their side. Yet to the average American mind in all this turmoil no one reason or series of reasons seems clear or coherent or sufficient to justify a million painful deaths. The only way to form a judgment as to the causes, responsibility, and righteousness of the war is to consider what kind of people they are who have joined battle with such fury and on so tremendous a scale.

Chapter II Small And Large Powers

THE present map of Europe is the result of many thousand years of occupation by primitive people who have left no records ; and of three thousand years of pressure and counter-pressure between organized political groups. Every mile of European frontier has a long record of blood and diplomacy, but the general territorial history has gone through four stages of development. First there were comparatively small tribal or national groups, such as the Norsemen, the Gauls, the Germans. Second, Rome extended her power over southern and western Europe, solidifying these elements. Third, the Empire broke up about 500 a. d., and a multitude of fragments appeared, some of them independent lordships whose territory was little more than the castle in which the lord lived. Fourth, the units were slowly and with great difficulty brought together again, not into one world power, but into countries varying in size from the Republic of San Marino, with 32 square miles, to Russia in Europe with 2,100,000 square miles.

This process has left marks upon every part of Europe. The Roman walls in England, in central Germany, and in the Balkans were parts of the outer boundary of Rome. The little kinks and curves in the frontier between Switzerland and Italy indicate the results of border wars otherwise long since forgotten. Some of the small powers, like Holland, are pieces broken off of a once larger unit. Some of the larger countries such as Austria-Hungary are mosaics of former nations and pieces of nations.

During the last three hundred years the prevailing tendency has been to compress the remaining small units into powerful nations ; and that process has brought about what we now call the six Great Powers — Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia; and there is a tendency to create a seventh unit, by combining the numerous Slav elements in the Balkans and adjacent countries into one empire. Alongside the six powers are fifteen weaker countries, some of them very small. In addition there are five nominally independent states which are really protectorates — Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra and San Marino.

The key to the present situation in Europe is that the great national units do not in any country correspond to racial units. Great Britain has two elements ; one of which, the Anglo-Saxon, is a compound of several races ; and the other, the Celtic, is divided among Scotch, Irish and Welsh. France includes a large infusion of original German blood. Germany does not include the Germans in Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, or the Germanic Dutch and Flemings. Italy comes nearest the ideal of one race inhabiting one country, though northern Italy, like northern France, has a strong infusion of German blood. Austria-Hungary and Russia are inhabited by many races which are by no means friendly to their fellow countrymen.

To understand the war it is therefore necessary to know what are the national units of Europe, and at the same time to realize what is the strength of each in territory, population, wealth, fighting men, and military spirit.

SCANDINAVIAN GROUP

The fifteen minor European powers are divided into three groups. First may be mentioned the six prosperous and independent states of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland.* The three Scandinavian countries have been the breeding place of one of the toughest and most warlike peoples that the world has ever known. The Norsemen conquered England and left a vigorous strain in the population of that island. They conquered northern France, and Normandy is full of their sons. They set up a kingdom in Sicily; they pushed into Russia. Sweden for a long time held large territories on the south coast of the Baltic. They had the enterprise to discover America in the year 1000, and America has reciprocated by discovering the strength and substance in those people, of whom 1,250,000 are now a part of our Commonwealth* They have lost most of their former importance in European affairs because of the drift into large units ; and to-day the three kingdoms with 313,000 square miles have a combined population of 10,800,000 (Sweden 5,600,000; Denmark, 2,800,000; Norway, 2,400,000), and would be able in case of emergency to put about 450,000 men on a war footing. Though renowned sailors for thousands of years, the Scandinavian countries now have no navies which would be a serious makeweight in a general war; but their countries have a great strategic importance because they flank the Baltic to the west, and because the only international highway from that great sea out to the greater ocean runs through a narrow water, The Sound, which is commanded by their batteries. Hence Germany and Russia are credited with coveting both Denmark and Sweden; and before this great war broke out the Swedes were arming against the possibility of an attack from the eastward. Though Teutonic in origin and therefore first cousins to the Germans, the Norsemen are not Germanic and have rivaled and fought Germans for ages. As late as 1864 the Prussians proved to the Danes by the resistless logic of bayonets that Schleswig- Holstein was not Danish territory.

HOLLAND AND BELGIUM

Holland and Belgium have gone through an interesting history. As the Italian cities were the center of the southern trade, wealth, and culture during the Renaissance, so the cities of the Low Countries, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and the rest, were the richest and most intelligent and artistic part of the north. Manufactures and commerce brought them wealth. A system of schools open to a considerable part of the boys, appeared earlier in those regions than anywhere else in Europe. They were parts of the Holy Roman Empire. The Low Dutch language was just as good, and for a long time had as much claim as High Dutch to be the German language. These provinces passed to Spain, revolted against Philip II; and seven of them, of which Holland was the most populous and wealthiest, gathered into a confederation (1579) which has become the modern kingdom of Holland. In its little area of 12,600 square miles live 6,000,000 peopie, who have been among the happiest folk on earth. The country is fertile, the Dutch are good sailors ; but the secret of their wealth is the possession of 736,000 square miles of East Indian islands — Java, Sumatra, part of Borneo — which are in a state of vassalage not very far from that of slavery.

Politically and commercially the importance of Holland is that it covers the mouths of the River Rhine. Rotterdam, which has the best and most accessible harbor on the whole coast of the North Sea, except perhaps Antwerp, is an entrepot of German commerce. Holland is a wall between the German interior and the coast, forcing the Germans to betake themselves to the harbors of Bremen and Hamburg, which are less accessible from the sea side and more remote from the land side, than Rotterdam. The Dutch, who are quite aware of the value of their sea front to other people, have been making an effort to fortify their frontiers and keep up an army.

With their war strength of 175,000 men in Europe and their little navy of fourteen second-class vessels Holland could not defend herself more than a few weeks against any one great enemy ; and is not, like Belgium, protected by treaties of neutralization entered into by the Great Powers.

Belgium is the only one of the six northern small powers which has been a party to the present war, and its experience shows how little any single small power counts in the tremendous combinations of the twentieth century. Belgium, with its 11,000 square miles and its population of 7,400,000, is one of the most thickly settled areas on the globe. In the great struggle with Spain three centuries ago the people took the Catholic side and were long bottled up as Spanish and Austrian provinces, but in 1831 they were allowed to form a separate kingdom, and since that time have flourished. They have quantities of coal and are excellent iron-makers. Their country is a garden. Their late King Leopold, one of the "undesirables" of modern life, contrived to make himself sovereign of an enormous area of 900,000 square miles on the Congo where he substantially made slaves of all the negro population that he could reach. The Belgian nation in 1908 shook him out of that principality and made the Congo a colony of the kingdom. There are great potentialities in this equatorial river region and it would be a lure to any enemy of Belgium.